VENABLES VERNON, Hon. George John (1803-1866), of Sudbury Hall, Derbys. and 25 Wilton Crescent, Mdx.

‘An expert rifle shot’, Vernon was a young Whig who quickly tired of political life.1DNB (1899), lviii. 275. The son and heir of the 4th Baron Vernon, he was invited to stand as a second Whig candidate for Derbyshire at the 1831 general election, and although he was wary of appearing as the nominee of the duke of Devonshire, whose vast estate dominated the north of the county, his independent rhetoric proved to be popular.2HP Commons, 1820-32. The Reform Act split Derbyshire in two, placing Vernon in a quandary, as his family’s lands were located in the south of the county, but the duke wanted him to contest the northern division.3HP Commons, 1820-32; C. Hogarth, ‘The Derbyshire parliamentary elections of 1832’, Derbyshire Archaelogical Journal (1969), lxxxix. 68-85 (at 77-80). However, he eventually declared his candidature for South Derbyshire and was elected with his fellow Whig, Lord Waterpark, at the general election of 1832, easily seeing off their Tory opponent, Sir Roger Gresley.4Derby Mercury, 26 Sept. 1832, 19, 26 Dec. 1832; Hogarth, ‘Derbyshire elections of 1832’, 80-82; HP Commons, 1820-32.

Although claiming to be an ‘independent member’, Vernon gave generally solid support to the Whig ministry, and cast votes against radical measures such as currency reform and the ballot.5The Times, 13, 21 Feb. 1833, 26, 29 Apr. 1833; Derby Mercury, 13 Mar. 1833. Occasionally, however, he took an independent line, such as when he voted in the minority for a low fixed duty on corn in 1833.6Hansard, 17 May 1833, vol. 17, cc. 1356, 1378. That session he served on two public bill committees, presented petitions for the better observation of the Sabbath and against slavery, and accompanied a deputation of local abolitionists to lobby Lord Althorp, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the latter issue, 23 Apr. 1833.7CJ lxxxviii. 297, 303; Derby Mercury, 8 May 1833; The Times, 26 June 1833.

In 1833, The Times commented that Vernon had ‘justice and common sense on his side’ in his proposed bill to standardise the sale of corn by weight and measure, but he postponed action and settled for chairing a select committee on the issue the following session.8The Times, 8, 29 July 1833, 5, 10 Aug. 1833. For the draft bill see Derby Mercury, 18 Sept. 1833. The inquiry argued that the diversity of methods for selling corn - by weight alone, by measure alone, or by fixed weight per measure - made it difficult to compare prices, and this confusion should be replaced by a uniform system of ‘Measure, with the actual weight per Measure in each case’, which indicated quality as well as quantity.9PP 1834 (517), viii. 5-11, 25-27 (at 6). The report contained a draft bill, but Vernon’s removal from Parliament after 1835, as well as opposition from vested interests, meant that no legislation was forthcoming.10See The Times, 21 Aug. 1833, 10, 14 Sept. 1833, 16 Oct. 1833 for the arguments of correspondents in favour of and hostile to the idea. He was also a silent member of the select committee on the weights and measures bill.11PP 1834 (464), xviii. 244.

He had reluctantly consented to stand again in 1835, on the condition that he was to be excused from taking part in the campaign, and although his friend and MP for North Derbyshire, Thomas Gisborne, deputised for him, he was defeated in third place.12C. Hogarth, ‘The 1835 elections in Derbyshire’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal (1974), xciv. 45-59 (at 45-48); Derby Mercury, 10 Dec. 1834, 21 Jan. 1835. He continued to be spoken of in the event of another vacancy, but was elevated to the Lords by his father’s death, 18 Nov. 1835.13Derby Mercury, 13 May 1835; Hogarth, ‘The 1835 elections in Derbyshire’, 51-57. He overcame anxieties about his voice to answer the address to the queen’s Speech, 5 Feb. 1839, when he spoke about the navy, the corn laws, and slavery.14Hansard, 5 Feb. 1839, vol. 45, cc. 12-18; HP Commons, 1820-32. Thereafter, he spent much time in Italy, and indulged his love of Dante by translating and publishing a number of works by the great poet.15DNB (1899), lviii. 275-76; F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1901), iii. 1090. He died in May 1866 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Augustus Henry Venables Vernon (1829-83), who abandoned politics after missing out on the second South Derbyshire seat by a single vote in the 1859 general election, having failed to vote himself.16Ibid.; Poll book for South Derbyshire (1859), 45, 145; C. Hogarth, ‘Derby and Derbyshire elections, 1852-1865’, Derbyshire Archaeological Journal (1981), ci. 151-72 (at 167); W. Vernon, Recollections of seventy-two years (1917), 197. The title survives today, but the family home of Sudbury Hall was transferred to the National Trust in 1967.17G. Turbutt, A history of Derbyshire (1999), iv. 1632.