HUGHES HUGHES, William (1792-1874), of Clapham Common, Surr.; 15 Manchester Buildings, Westminster and Bellevue House, Ryde, Isle of Wight.

The ludicrously styled Hughes Hughes, baptised William Hughes Hewitt, had changed his surname on inheriting a vast fortune in 1825 from his maternal grandfather William Hughes, a Clapham property speculator and landlord.1Prob. 11/1699/264; London Gazette, 11 June 1825. Abandoning his career as a solicitor, Hughes Hughes had sat for the bar and, according to the detailed biographical accounts he later sent the editor of Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, ‘practised on the Home circuit and at the Surrey sessions until January 1832’, although he evidently was not very active.2Gent. Mag. (1825), i. 476; PROB 11/1699/264; IR26/1045/511; Yale University, Dod mss d. 50, vol. 1, f. 621, Hughes Hughes to C. R. Dod, 15 Nov. 1833. By then he had constructed a ‘highly ornamented’ residence overlooking Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, which he named Bellevue.3The Mirror of literature, amusement, and instruction (1826), vii. 402.

Emphasising the service that ‘a man of complete leisure’ could give, Hughes Hughes had secured election for the notoriously venal borough of Oxford on his second attempt in 1830. An independently-minded Member, he had given general support to the Grey ministry’s reform bill and taken a prominent, but not always welcome, part in the attempts to amend some of its details, most notably the proposed disfranchisement of future freemen.4HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 745-52. The triumph of the campaign to preserve the freemen franchise, which was taken up by others, however, belied his standing in the House, where his vanity and self-conceit did little to endear him to other Members. His unabashed interventions in debate, in particular, and evident disregard for conventions restricting the use of notes were said to have rendered him ‘one of the most thoroughly unpopular of all the Members’. His reported speeches in Hansard give little indication of his impact in the House, where invariably ‘his rising was the signal for general uproar’.5Morning Post, 16 Oct. 1874. Describing one ‘scene’ in July 1835, the parliamentary reporter James Grant recounted how:

The moment he pronounced the word “Sir”, addressing himself of course to the Speaker, he was assailed with the most tremendous uproar and confusion. Such a variety of sounds, and so discordant, hardly ever before greeted mortal ear ... One honourable member near the bar repeatedly called out “Read” (to the member endeavouring to address the House) in an exceedingly bass and hoarse sound of voice. At repeated intervals a sort of drone-like humming, having almost the sound of a distant hand-organ or bagpipes, issued from the back benches: coughing, sneezing, and ingeniously extended yawning, blended with the other sounds, and produced a tout ensemble which we have never heard excelled in the House. A single voice ... imitated very accurately the yelp of a kennelled hound ... Not far from the same spot issued sounds marvellously resembling the bleating of a sheep, blended occasionally with an admirable imitation of the braying of an ass ... The deafening uproar was completed by the cries of “Chair, chair!” “Order, order!”, groans, laughter etc. which proceeded from all parts.6J. Grant, Random Recollections of the House of Commons (1836), 73-5.

Narrowly defeated at Oxford in the 1832 general election by two rival reformers, Hughes Hughes successfully overturned the return of his nearest opponent on petition and topped the poll in the ensuing by-election.7Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 15 Dec. 1832; 5 Jan. 1833; The Times, 19 Mar. 1833. Denounced by the ousted Member as ‘a political apostate, veering with every puff of wind that blew, the execration of all, wherever he went’,8Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Jan. 1835. Hughes Hughes continued to chart an enigmatic course in the reformed Commons. He voted with the radicals for shorter parliaments, pension and tax reductions, lower corn duties, and humanitarian initiatives such as the abolition of military flogging and Lord Ashley’s factory bill, but opposed the secret ballot, the removal of Jewish disabilities and allowing Dissenters into universities, though he insisted that he was a ‘steady advocate of religious freedom’.9Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 10 Jan. 1835. Explaining his hostility to the opening of the universities in the Commons, 2 June 1834, he warned that as well as admitting ‘persons of every or any religious persuasion’, it would ‘allow men destitute of all religious principle whatever, to matriculate and take degrees; and, so privileged, they would go forth to the world with all the force and effect which learning could confer, to forward and accomplish their mischievous designs’.10Hansard, 2 June 1834, vol. 24 cc. 9-10. He brought up countless petitions against the proposals between 1833-4, mostly from Oxford, and unsuccessfully moved to have the bill postponed, 28 June 1834. He was also a minority teller against Jewish emancipation, 21 May 1834.

Otherwise Hughes Hughes continued to support the Whigs on most major issues, before being alienated by their proposals for Irish church reform and the new poor law, which he later claimed to have ‘opposed to the utmost of his power’.11Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 7 Jan. 1835. His bill enabling the central criminal court to abstain from pronouncing sentences of death for certain capital felonies was taken up by the attorney general, 30 June 1834. The success of his interventions in debate is not always clear, but his reported contributions in this parliament included criticism of the repeal of the Beer Act, for the ‘ruin’ it would cause beer retailers, 1 Aug. 1834, and a reversal of his earlier stance against the colonisation of South Australia bill, after finding that his suspicions about the motives of it sponsors were unfounded, 2 Aug. 1834. An assiduous attender, he was said to have been present ‘every day’ of the 1834 session, leaving him ‘exhausted’, whereupon he decamped to France and the Channel Islands to ‘restore his health’.12Morning Post, 27 Oct. 1834.

The destruction of Parliament by fire in October 1834 brought Hughes Hughes notoriety as the only MP to be present ‘during the first hour of the conflagration’. He had been returning from the Middlesex sessions to his residence in Manchester Buildings, Westminster, to dinner at six o’clock, when ‘he was called out to the fire’. Arriving at the Speaker’s library ‘soon after seven’, he ‘succeeded in securing and, with the aid of the police, conveying to his own residence, a large quantity of the private papers and most valuable property of the Speaker, and assisted in saving the books, pictures, and beautiful tapestry in the library and levee rooms’, along with a ‘chimney piece’.13Morning Post, 27 Oct. 1834; The Standard, 30 Oct. 1834. Initially mistaken for Joseph Hume MP, who had arrived at 7.30pm, the press later corrected their error, noting that he had been ‘the first Member on the spot’, who, ‘after seeing all had been done in removing Mr. Bellamy’s property, where the fire was making most head’, had proceeded to the Speaker’s.14The Standard, 21 Oct. 1834. A letter from the Speaker thanking him for his ‘exertions, which were not only most energetic ... but also most judicious’ also found its way into the newspapers.15The Standard, 30 Oct. 1834. He later joined Hume in refuting allegations of ‘inebriation or wantonness’ on the part of the firemen, soldiers and police who had tackled the flames, noting that it was only ‘between eleven and twelve o’clock, and when everything had been accomplished which it was possible for activity and zeal to effect’, that ‘beer was given to the men, and exhaustion in some instances, caused it to have an effect which the same quantity would not have produced at another time’.16Hampshire Telegraph, 25 Oct. 1834; Morning Post, 27 Oct. 1834. In a clear allusion to Hughes Hughes, ‘a small gentleman with a sharp nose’ and ‘an ex-alderman and a sort of amateur fireman’, Charles Dickens, a parliamentary reporter at the time, later related how:

He, and the celebrated fireman’s dog, were observed to be remarkably active at the conflagration of the two Houses of Parliament - they both ran up and down, and in and out, getting under people’s feet, and into everybody’s way, fully impressed with the belief that they were doing a great deal of good, and barking tremendously. The dog went quietly back to his kennel with the engine, but the gentleman kept up such an incessant noise for some weeks after the occurrence, that he became a positive nuisance. As no more parliamentary fires have occurred, however, and as he has consequently had no more opportunities of writing to the newspapers to relate how, by way of preserving pictures he cut them out of their frames, and performed other great national services, he has gradually relapsed into his old state of calmness and obscurity.17C. Dickens, Sketches by Boz (1837), 137. I am indebted to Dr Caroline Shenton of the Parliamentary Archives for bringing this reference to my attention.

Hughes Hughes was back in the public eye next month, when, following the king’s dismissal of the Whigs, it was reported that during a stage coach journey to Oxford he had been overheard remarking that the mayor was a Tory, ‘as all sound-headed and good men must be’, and saying, ‘I voted the duke of Wellington out of office in 1830, and now I shall as earnestly vote him in’. Charged with ‘dark, deep, damning treachery and apostacy’ by the Liberal Morning Chronicle, 25 Nov. 1835, he publicly refuted their accusations, denying that the alleged conversation had taken place.18Morning Chronicle, 27 Nov. 1834. Offering for Oxford the next day, he cited his voting record as evidence of his ‘undeviating independence’, and reiterated his support for maintaining the privileges of the established church.19Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 29 Nov. 1834; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 86-7. After an ill-humoured campaign, in which he was accused of behaving in an ungentlemanly manner after publicly expressing ‘deep hatred’ towards a fellow candidate, he was returned at the head of the poll.20Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 10, 15 Jan. 1835.

Listed by the Liberal press as one of the ‘Doubtful Men’ likely to support Peel’s new ministry, Hughes Hughes was soon embroiled in another public spat over his voting intentions on the speakership. Rebutting rumours that he had indicated that he would support the Whig challenger Abercromby, for which he had received a Liberal whip signed by Lord John Russell, he declared his support for Manners Sutton, the Tory incumbent.21Morning Post, 13 Feb. 1835. ‘The silly member for Oxford’, who has ‘pretended to be a reformer’, has stated his ‘desire to be classed among “gentlemen”, though, as the Globe observes, voting for Manner Sutton will not turn Hughes into a gentleman’, commented the Morning Chronicle, adding:

We never relied for an instant on his vote ... He is one of those essentially unimportant persons who strive to make themselves of temporary consequence on such occasions ... He also seems to think, that because he saved some of the Speaker’s furniture in the late fire, he is bound to vote against Mr. Abercromby. It is evident that Mr. Hughes is no every day logician.22Morning Chronicle, 17 Feb. 1835.

Writing to the editors of Dod’s Parliamentary Companion that month, Hughes Hughes, in one of his regular updates, again described himself as a ‘moderate reformer’. He also added FSS to the acronyms FSA. FLS and FHS after his name, and called attention to ‘the new edition of De Lolme’s Constitution of England, with notes’, which he had published the previous year, all of which were incorporated into his 1835 entry.23Dod mss vol. 1, f. 628; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1835), 130. See also J. Coohill, Ideas of the Liberal Party: Perceptions, Agendas and Liberal Politics in the House of Commons, 1832-52 (2011), 34. He was in Peel’s minority on the speakership, 19 Feb., the address (as a pair), 26 Feb., and Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, but was not listed among the Derby Dilly by Stanley, 23 Feb. 1835, and has subsequently been classified as one of those ‘who became Conservatives’ by 1837.24R. Stewart, The Foundation of the Conservative Party 1830-1867 (1978), 374, 376. However, at least one contemporary doggerel poem about the members of ‘The Derby Dilly’ observed: ’There’s Bentinck next upon the list, who with Sir Stratford Canning, Assists their oracle Hughes Hughes, in every scheme he’s planning’.25Sheffield Independent, 14 Mar. 1835.

Far less conspicuous in the lobbies during his last parliament, Hughes Hughes gave general support to the Conservative opposition following the reappointment of the Whig ministry, especially on matters relating to the established church and Ireland, but continued to chart an independent course in some areas, including voting with the radicals for inquiry into pensions, 19 Mar. 1836, and in the minority for a modification of the corn laws, 16 Mar. 1837. A staunch opponent of the 1835 English municipal corporations bill, he made a number of interventions in defence of the condemned freemen, citing the ‘hard and successful struggle for their preservation, in which he (Mr. Hughes Hughes) took an active part during the discussions under the reform bill’, and revisiting the arguments he had then made on their behalf, 23 June 1835.26Hansard, 23 June 1835, vol. 28 cc. 1119-20. He also endorsed Peel’s calls for a ‘pecuniary qualification’ for councillors and an increase in their numbers, 30 June 1835. Although his remarks went unheeded in the Commons, similar amendments were subsequently implemented by the Lords.

The replacement of Oxford’s unreformed corporation with an elected council removed a mainstay of Hughes Hughes’ support at the 1837 general election, when he offered again as a ‘zealous defender’ of church and state and a ‘real reformer of every proved abuse’, stressing his ‘independent’ principles. Spurned by his former Liberal supporters, who charged him with being an ‘apostate’, and plagued by ‘misrepresentations of my parliamentary votes and conduct’, he was defeated by ‘a nominee of Joseph Parkes and the London Reform Club’.27Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 8, 15, 22, 29 July 1837; Morning Chronicle, 27 July 1837. Reporting the result, one paper commented that ‘much Tory raff has been scattered before the wind’. Another article, however, classified him as ‘a moderate Whig voting on both sides alternately’.28The Examiner, 30 July 1837; Hampshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837.

At the 1841 general election Hughes Hughes offered again for Oxford, only to be persuaded to retire by his ‘friends’, who were concerned that his candidature would thwart the return of two Conservatives. Endorsing their candidature, he reaffirmed his attachment to Conservative principles.29Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 26 June 1841.

Hughes Hughes, who is not known to have sought re-election elsewhere, appears to have dissipated a large part of his fortune in his six Oxford contests from 1826 to 1837. His nephew Henry Claylands Field, writing in 1897, believed that he spent ‘more than £70,000 in his elections’.30http://familytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/h/e/w/Sarah-M-Hewitt/WEBSITE-0001/UHP-0384.html, private letter from H. C. Fields to W. H. Field, 28 Feb. 1897. Having previously sat as a City of London alderman from December 1831 to July 1832, he was re-elected for Bread Street ward, after a scrutiny, in 1843, whilst serving as master of the company of cordwainers.31A. B. Beaven, Aldermen of London (1908), i. 54, 186, 188, 242; The Times, 19-21 Sept., 19 Oct. 1843, 13 Apr. 1848. The term of office ended in 1848. He had left the Isle of Wight by 1857, having apparently ‘lost so much money’ in railroad schemes that he was forced to sell up, and was living at Ilkley Wells, near Skipton, Yorkshire, when he died in October 1874.32Letter from H. C. Fields to W. H. Field, 28 Feb. 1897. By his will, dated 15 Oct. 1872, he left small legacies to various relatives and to his `highly valued friend Mary Ann Kemp’. The residue of his estate, proved under a modest £300, 11 Nov. 1874, was divided equally between his only son William Hughes Hughes of Highbury Quadrant (1817-1904), a barrister and Middlesex magistrate, his five surviving daughters, and the children of his late daughter Ann Hughes May. His ‘political creed’, observed one obituary, ‘appears to have been a little confused’.