TYRELL, Charles (1776-1872), of Polstead Hall, nr. Hadleigh, Suffolk; Plashwood, nr. Haughley, Suffolk and Gipping, Suffolk

Tyrell, who was ‘brought up to be a well educated country gentleman’, was a member of the Stowmarket branch of the Tyrell family, who had been major landowners in Essex and Suffolk since the Norman Conquest.1G.M.G. Cullum, Pedigree of Ray of Denston (1903), 20. Through inheritance and two marriages Tyrell gained the Suffolk estates of Gipping, Plashwood, near Haughley, and Polstead, near Hadleigh.2Tyrrell Family History Society (1981), iv. 23. After serving as high sheriff of Suffolk, 1815-16, he had remained active in local Tory politics and in 1821 had been a founder member of the Suffolk Pitt Club.3HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 521-3. Following his return for the county at the 1830 general election, he was listed among the Wellington ministry’s ‘friends’, but he divided against them when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. Thereafter he gave steady support to the Grey ministry’s reform bill.4Ibid.

Tyrell’s conversion from a Tory to a Reformer, and his allegiance to Sir Henry Edward Bunbury, a well-connected scion of a distinguished Whig family, who had sat for Suffolk 1830-32, was the source of considerable comment at the 1832 general election, when he offered for the newly created western division of the county. The Conservative Bury and Suffolk Herald attacked Tyrell for:

his subservience to Sir H. Bunbury in St. Stephen’s and to ... [his] faction in Suffolk, notwithstanding that he had opposed the one and the other all his life before ... [which] betokened a mind ready to break faith with an old friend the moment it was found a more beneficial collusion could be made with an old enemy.5Bury and Suffolk Herald, 26 Dec. 1832.

At the nomination Tyrell asserted that he was coming forward on ‘free and independent principles’ and insisted that, aside from the question of Reform, he had no partisan loyalties. He took great care, though, to present himself as ‘a friend to agriculture’, and argued for a fixed or graduated duty on corn, rather than the removal of protection. He also called for the abolition of slavery and the reform of church tithes.6Bury and Norwich Post, 19 Dec. 1832. He was elected by a commanding majority.7Ibid., 26 Dec. 1832.

Tyrell attended steadily and gave silent support to Grey’s ministry on most major issues.8R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834), 22-3. His support for the agricultural interest was evident when he voted in minorities for Chandos’s motion for a select committee on agricultural distress and the relief of taxation, 21 Feb. 1834, and for the repeal of the malt tax, 27 Feb. 1834. He opposed a fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834, despite having appeared open to the policy on the hustings.9Bury and Norwich Post, 19 Dec. 1832. He backed currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, but voted against radical motions for the abolition of army and navy pensions, 14 Feb. 1833, and shorter Parliaments, 18 Feb. 1834. He presented a petition for the abolition of slavery, 13 May 1833, and supported Thomas Fowell Buxton’s motion to shorten slave apprenticeships, 24 July 1833. His select committee work appears to have been limited to the 1833 inquiry into the sale of beer.10PP 1833 (416), xv. 2.

Preferring the pursuits of the country squire to the demands of a career in Parliament, Tyrell retired at the 1834 dissolution, in order to return to ‘the repose of domestic life’.11Bury and Norwich Post, 7, 21 Jan. 1835. He continued, though, to play a prominent role in local politics. At the 1835 general election he proposed his successor, Henry Wilson, and gave a lengthy speech in which he attacked Peel’s ministry for being insensitive to agricultural distress.12Ibid., 21 Jan. 1835. He was also an active magistrate and deputy lieutenant for Suffolk and as a landlord was known for his ‘generosity and courtesy’.13Ipswich Journal, 6 Jan. 1872.

Tyrell died at Plashwood, Haughley in January 1872, at the advanced age of ninety-five.14Morning Post, 8 Jan. 1872. He was succeeded in his estates and manors by his elder son Charles Tyrell (1805-87). His will also made provision for other family members and his servants.15IR26/2757/647. His effects were valued at under £800.16England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administrations, 18 May 1872. A selection of the family’s papers is held by the Suffolk Record Office.17Suff. RO (Ipswich), Tyrell mss.