POLLEN, Sir John Walter (1784-1863), of Redenham, nr. Andover, Hants

One of the patrons of Andover before 1832, Pollen managed to regain his old seat on two occasions in the reformed Commons, before being ousted by Liberal ‘bribery and trickery’ in 1841. A ‘bigoted Tory of the old and intolerant school’, his public allusions to his victorious opponent as a ‘jackass’ and a ‘puppet’ sparked a well-publicised ‘affair of honour’, which was conveniently settled by the intervention of his fellow magistrates rather than on the field.1Hampshire Independent, 19 June 1841; Morning Post, 29 July 1841.

Andover had been represented by ‘some member’ of Pollen’s family (though not continuously) for ‘almost 200 years’.2Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1838), 153. Both his grandfather and great-grandfather (also named John) had sat for the constituency, while his father, a bencher at Lincoln’s Inn, had been granted a baronetcy by Pitt in 1795. Following his father’s death in 1814, Pollen had revived his family’s interest in the borough, returning himself from 1820 until 1831, when his implacable hostility to the Grey ministry’s reform bill cost him his seat.3HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 823-4. A local Tory organiser and associate of the notorious Hampshire electioneer John Fleming MP, at the 1832 general election Pollen chaired the unsuccessful Tory campaign in North Hampshire on behalf of Lord Douro, heir of the duke of Wellington.4Hampshire Telegraph, 3, 17 Dec. 1832; Wellington mss WP4/4/3/23-24.4. He did not interfere with the return of two reformers at Andover, where the electorate had been expanded by the Reform Act from 24 to 246, but remained active behind the scenes. His many acts of largesse included paying for a new town hall, for which he was publicly thanked by the corporation.5HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 427; Hampshire Telegraph, 3 Dec. 1832.

He was in Italy when Wellington was appointed caretaker premier by William IV in November 1834, but unlike Peel did not rush home. In his absence his brother canvassed on his behalf at Andover, where he managed to scrape in by just four votes.6Hampshire Advertiser, 6 Dec. 1834; Salisbury Jnl. 8 Dec. 1834; Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 129. He was absent, presumably still on the continent, from the crucial divisions on the speakership, 19 Feb., address, 26 Feb., and malt tax, 10 Mar. 1835, but was in place to vote with Peel on Irish church appropriation, the issue that brought his ministry down, 2 Apr. 1835. Thereafter he gave silent support to the Conservative opposition in the lobbies, dividing against municipal reform, 23 June 1835, Irish church and corporation reforms throughout 1836, and steadily opposing the ballot and any alteration of the corn laws. He broke ranks with Peel to vote for relief for agricultural distress, 27 Apr. 1836, however, and early the following year attended a Hampshire Conservative dinner with ‘the farmer’s friend’ Lord Chandos, alongside Douro.7Hampshire Advertiser, 28 Jan. 1837. As well as assisting with local Tory organisation, Pollen was a trustee of the Hampshire Friendly Society, of which Fleming was president.8Ibid. 8 July 1837.

Pollen’s unopposed return for Andover in 1837 attracted little comment in the press and he continued to chart a predictably Conservative course in the lobbies, voting against the abolition of tithes, alteration of the corn laws, and in support of Stanley’s Irish registration bill, 26 Mar. 1840. In 1838 he served on the Kinsale election committee.9PP 1837-8 (332), xii. 3. Present for most major divisions, he helped to defeat the Whig ministry on Peel’s confidence motion, 4 June 1841.

At the ensuing election it was expected that Pollen would secure an easy victory at Andover over the spendthrift libertine Lord Huntingtower, whose politics were unclear.10Morning Post, 26 June 1841. Finding that the election would take place before he was ‘of age’, however, Huntingtower at the last minute resigned in favour of his friend Lord William Paget, a firm Liberal and second son of the former Irish viceroy Lord Anglesey, a well-respected Whig.11The Standard, 28 June 1841; Hampshire Advertiser, 17 July 1841. A bitter struggle ensued, during which Pollen was lambasted by Andover’s radicals as a ‘confirmed and bigoted Tory of the old and intolerant school’. Pollen was defeated by just seven votes.12Hampshire Independent, 19 June 1841; Hampshire Telegraph, 5 July 1841.

Pollen’s comments at a Conservative dinner about his opponent’s victory having resulted from ‘bribery and trickery’ prompted an ‘affair of honour’ that received widespread attention in the press. Following reports that he had claimed that the electors ‘could have returned a jackass to parliament’ given the level of corruption, Paget, a naval captain, demanded an explanation or satisfaction, ‘the officers of her majesty’s navy not permitting offensive expressions in conjunction with their names’. Although Pollen assured him that ‘the word jackass never escaped my lips’, reports also circulated that he had declared that the voters ‘would have voted for Punch or any other puppet’. Pollen’s admission of this language, but insistence that ‘such idioms were not intended to be personal to you’, appeared to settle the issue, until, it would seem, the ridicule intended by Pollen’s replies became apparent following his publication of all their correspondence. With the affair public, on 25 July 1841 Paget was ordered into custody by the Andover magistrates, who were mostly Pollen’s appointees, and ‘bound over to keep the peace’.13Morning Post, 29 July 1841.

Two years after his defeat Pollen reported to the home secretary Sir James Graham that ‘the Andover Rad[ical]s still shout Huntingtower after me’, and informed him of his decision to ‘turn our backs on these amiable Andover people for two years’ and let his Redenham estate.14Add. 40617, f. 139, 7 May 1843. Encountering him in Wiesbaden, Germany, in September 1844, his Hampshire neighbour Lord Palmerston noted that he ‘was looking very well’ and had ‘gone to stay a month at Frankfurt’.15The Letters of the Third Viscount Palmerston to Laurence and Elizabeth (1979), ed. K. Bourne, 286. Pollen evidently made no attempt to re-enter to the Commons, but on returning home resumed his activities in support of local Tory candidates, proposing the Protectionist Sir William Heathcote for Hampshire North in 1847 and his replacement Melville Portal in 1849.16Hampshire Telegraph, 7 Aug. 1847; Hampshire Advertiser, 31 Mar. 1849.

Pollen died childless in May 1863 at the Grosvenor Hotel in Park Street, London, after ‘an illness of some weeks’.17Hampshire Advertiser, 9 May 1863. A decade earlier both his nephews Richard Hungerford (1815-81) and John Hungerford Pollen (1820-1902), a noted artist and writer, had converted to Catholicism, much to his disapproval.18A. Pollen, John Hungerford Pollen (1912), 10, 245-6, 323. In his will of 16 Apr. 1862 Pollen had consequently made membership of the Church of England an absolute condition for the inheritance of Redenham. Thus although Richard inherited his title, when Pollen’s wife died, 2 Oct. 1877, the estates passed directly to Richard’s son, Pollen’s great-nephew Richard Hungerford Pollen (1846-1918), who succeeded to the baronetcy four years later.19Will of Sir Richard Hungerford Pollen, 3rd bt., proved 15 July 1881.