PRICE, Robert (1786-1857), of Foxley, Herefs.

Described by Denis Le Marchant as a ‘dull Herefordshire baronet’, Price represented both the county and city in two spells after 1832.1Three early nineteenth-century diaries, ed. Aspinall (1952), 10. His friend Edward Bolton Clive, MP for Hereford, described him as an ‘active and industrious member’.2Hereford Journal, 2 Aug. 1837. A reasonable attender, Price regularly voted in a quarter to a third of divisions.31849: 69 out of 219 divisions; 1852-3: 61 out of 257; 1856: 48 out of 198. Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849; Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck (1857), 8. His undeviating support for successive Whig governments led local critics to snipe that ‘such is his complete identity with “his party”, that all they say or do must be right’.4Hereford Journal, 28 July 1847. Loyalty to party meant that he opposed the numerous proposals to relieve agriculture in the 1830s, and his endorsement of the Whigs’ proposed fixed duty on corn in 1841 led to his ousting from the county representation. He came in for Hereford in 1845, sitting until mounting financial difficulties and ill health compelled his retirement in 1857.

Price’s ‘literary and classical attainments were far above the ordinary standard’, but he had ‘no taste for the sports of the field’.5Hereford Times, 14 Nov. 1857. First returned for the county in 1818, he voted with the Whig opposition throughout the 1820s. At this stage he was already a private critic of the corn laws, writing to his friend Lord Milton in 1826:

The landed gentlemen must be prepared for a change of system, and prohibitory duties must cease in respect to corn, as they already have ceased on so many other articles of commerce. What is the precise amount of protection to which we are entitled is another question. I shall probably be for a higher duty than you would concede, though I do not carry my pretentions very far.6Robert Price to Lord Milton, 22 May 1826, Northants RO, Fitzwilliam Mss, Box 125/16.

Such a view was increasingly at odds with those of his constituents.

In 1830 the country banker John Biddulph, of Ledbury, had observed of Price and his Tory colleague that ‘they are not popular, or very useful in the House’.7John Biddulph diary, 21-22 July 1830, Herefordshire Record Office, G2/IV/J/57. This, however, proved to be no barrier to Price’s unopposed re-election as a Reformer at the 1832 general election, when he was notably more partisan on the hustings than his colleagues. Arguing that the reformed Commons should ‘do away with monopolies, so injurious to the people at large’, Price suggested that the corn laws would ‘require some amendment’.8Hereford Journal, 3 Oct. 1832, 19 Dec. 1832. He also advocated the abolition of slavery, commutation of tithes and the reduction of taxation.9Hereford Journal, 19 Dec. 1832.

In the first reformed Parliament Price generally voted with Grey’s ministry against radical motions for retrenchment, and defended naval offices paid out of the exchequer as not sinecures but a cheap and advantageous way to reward public service, 25 Mar. 1833. He supported Lord Althorp, Whig leader of the House and chancellor of the exchequer, in resisting proposals from various self-styled champions of the agricultural interest, such as currency reform. Justifying his stance to his constituents on the grounds that such measures would damage the public credit, he also doubted whether ‘in this cider county, such wonderful effects would have flowed from the repeal of malt tax’.10Hereford Journal, 14 Jan. 1835. He criticised Lord Chandos’ proposal for a select committee on agricultural distress in the chamber, 7 July 1834, and later told electors that it was ‘a mere clap-trap motion, a mere humbug, pretending sympathy for the agriculturists, but in reality to turn out the Reform administration’.11Hereford Journal, 14 Jan. 1835.

Instead Price welcomed the commutation of tithes, 18 Apr. 1833, as providing practical relief for farmers, although he thought the details of the government plan would cause difficulties. Price was at pains to emphasise the value of such measures, and the Grey ministry’s reduction of taxation, at the 1835 general election, when he was challenged by a ‘farmers’ friend’ candidate, but re-elected in third place.12Ibid. He restated his views at a post-election dinner, speaking against ‘endless prohibitions on foreign grain’.13Hereford Journal, 21 Jan. 1835; The parliamentary test-book (1835), 132.

Price voted with the Whig leadership in the key party divisions of the ensuing session on the speakership, address and the Irish church, 19, 26 Feb., 2 Apr. 1835. He made brief contributions on tithe legislation, 24 Mar. 1835, 24 Mar. 1836, 24, 27 June 1836. After the 1836 select committee on agriculture, on which he had served, failed to produce any recommendations, Price told other MPs that this showed that agriculturists themselves were divided on what measures would provide relief, 21 July 1836.14PP 1836 (79), viii, pt. I, p. 2; 1836 (189), viii, pt. I, p. 227.

At the 1837 general election, when he was returned unopposed, Price expressed satisfaction at the ‘steady reform of every remaining abuse in our institutions’, and highlighted his support for Irish church and municipal reform.15Hereford Journal, 2 Aug. 1837. A defender of the new poor law, Price argued against giving guardians the power to grant outdoor relief to able-bodied labourers, as this had been the main flaw in the old poor law, 8 Aug. 1839. He believed that the measure would work if it was implemented as intended rather than tampered with or modified as its critics wanted. He joined the chorus of parliamentary criticism of the king of Hanover (the former duke of Cumberland) for continuing to receive money from the British exchequer after acceding to the Hanoverian throne, 27 Mar. 1840. He opposed Joseph Hume’s amendment to the budget to equalise taxes on personal and real property as ‘peculiarly unfair to the landed interest’, 15 May 1840. He later resisted the same Radical MP’s attempt to reduce the number of assistant poor law commissioners, which Price thought were ‘absolutely necessary’, 9 July 1840.

In all key party votes, including Baring’s budget and Peel’s motion of no confidence, 18 May, 4 June 1841, Price voted with Whig ministers. His support for Lord John Russell’s proposed fixed duty on corn was consistent with his long criticism of the present corn laws. The suggested measure would be a ‘mode of protection far preferable to the sliding scale’, he told electors. However, he conceded that such a view rendered his continued representation of the county untenable. Unwilling to pledge his total opposition to any alteration in the corn laws, Price retired at the 1841 general election.16Hereford Journal, 30 June 1841. Even so, a correspondent to the Conservative Hereford Journal expressed his admiration for Price’s consistency in maintaining that farmers should look to their landlords rather than Parliament for relief, which was ‘plain, open, honest, manly and sound advice’.17Letter from Thomas Powell in ibid. Joseph Bailey, who had ousted Price, praised his predecessor for acting ‘like a man of prudence, a man of honour and a gentleman’.18Hereford Journal, 7 July 1841.

Replacing his late friend Edward Bolton Clive as MP for Hereford at a by-election in 1845, Price declared his support for the Maynooth grant at the nomination, when he was returned unopposed.19Hereford Times, 2 Aug. 1845. At the subsequent dinner, at which he was described by Col. Scudamore, of Kentchurch, as ‘one of the most honest and loyal and true representatives that ever entered that House’, Price reiterated his criticism of the sliding scale, which made the corn laws in their current form ‘an evil’. The ‘promotion of the agricultural interest’ had always been the ‘cause of the Whigs’, he argued, and the new poor law and tithe commutation had ‘done more good than all the acts passed during the 200 preceding years’.20Hereford Times, 9 Aug. 1845.

It was no great surprise when Price divided in favour of the repeal of corn laws the following year and was in the majority that voted Peel out of office over the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846. He was returned unopposed at the 1847 general election, and when nominating the Liberal candidate for the county, could not resist telling his audience that he had been right about protection all along.21Hereford Times, 7 Aug. 1847. Shortly after his re-election, Price paid fulsome tribute to the Whig prime minister Lord John Russell:

there is no family in the British dominions which has a greater claim upon our sympathies - our love - our respect - than that to which the noble lord belongs. He is himself worthy of that distinguished race who have given the best blood of the greatest of their name as an offering at the shrine of liberty.22Ibid.

Price voted with Russell’s ministry in all key divisions, dividing in favour of repeal of the navigation laws in 1849, against Disraeli’s motions on agricultural distress and opposing radical pressure for retrenchment and political reforms. Responding to one of Joseph Hume’s amendments for a reduction in the ordnance estimates, Price wearily declared that ‘he deprecated these fruitless divisions’, 12 July 1849. Most of Price’s other interventions were similarly brief. In the same year he admitted that holding quarter-sessions in public houses was unsatisfactory, but that it was difficult to find alternative venues, 2 Mar. 1849. He repeated his defence of the powers of the poor law commission, 27 May 1850. He supported a fellow MP’s complaint that more Welshmen should have been appointed to the select committee on ‘Kaffir’ (Xhosa) tribes, due to the apparent similarity between the Welsh language and Xhosa, 9 May 1851.

Although representing the city freed Price of the need to genuflect to protectionist farmers, at the 1852 general election he was put under pressure to pledge to political reforms in the form of the ballot. While he was prepared to concede extending the franchise and was not against shorter parliaments, he drew the line at the ballot, which would remove ‘all responsibility from the elector’.23Hereford Journal, 7 Apr. 1852. He later expressed his willingness to see the ballot trialled in a few constituencies if ‘no other practical remedy’ could be found for intimidation and bribery.24Hereford Times, 10 July 1852.

After topping the poll, Price divided in favour of Villiers’ free trade motion and opposed Disraeli’s budget, 26 Nov., 16 Dec. 1852. He called for Gladstone to reconsider the levy on timber proposed in the succession duty bill, 20 June 1853. He showed characteristic loyalty to the Aberdeen coalition, even supporting it in the vote on Roebuck’s motion that led to its downfall, 29 Jan. 1855. He was equally undeviating in his backing for the successor government led by Palmerston, opposing the critical motions proposed by Disraeli and Roebuck, 25 May, 19 July 1855.

In December 1855 the parlous state of Price’s financial position was publicly exposed. His family’s Foxley estate had been heavily encumbered when he inherited it in 1829.25 HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 888. He had once declared of county elections, that ‘I am sorry to say that in these contests a large purse is required’, and while his parliamentary career was long, it was always precarious due to his pecuniary difficulties.26Hereford Times, 7 Aug. 1847. In 1852 he was criticised for his involvement with the Agua Fria, a Californian gold mining business, which local critics likened to a bubble company.27Hereford Times, 10 July 1852. Disastrous speculation in railways and the iron trade financed by a series of additional mortgages left Price a bankrupt in all but name.28HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 890. He resisted considerable pressure to resign for over a year, before retiring in favour of George Clive, the son of his old friend, in February 1857, citing ill health.29The Times, 31 Dec. 1855; Hereford Journal, 16, 23, 30 Jan. 1856, 13 Feb. 1856; Hereford Times, 7 Feb. 1857. Price died later the same year. Before his death, Foxley had been sold to the Davenport family, Stoke pottery manufacturers. Price left no heirs, and probate was awarded to his widow.30HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 890.