TULK, Charles Augustus (1786-1849), of 19 Duke Street, London, Mdx.

Tulk is best known as a leading theologian and founding member of the English Swedenborgian Society established in 1810, a radical christian movement centred around spiritual and mystical interpretations of the New Testament, and for his connections to William Blake, Samuel Taylor Coleridge and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, among others.1See, for example, R. Lines, ‘Charles Augustus Tulk: Swedenborgian Extraordinary’ in Arcana, iv. (1997), 5-32; R. Rix, William Blake and the Cultures of Radical Christianity (2007), 115-8. An amiable man of ‘remarkable gentleness and courtesy’, who nevertheless repeatedly fell out with orthodox Swedenborgians (including his father) over doctrinal issues, during his spell in the unreformed Commons he had pursued an independent course, siding with the advanced Whig opposition on many key issues, but voting against vexatious motions for economic retrenchment and Catholic emancipation, which he steadfastly opposed.2M. Hume (afterwards Rothery), A Brief Sketch of the Life, Character and Religious Opinions of the late Charles Augustus Tulk, ed. C. Pooley (1890), 7-8; HP Commons 1820-32. It may have been this which eased the way for his adoption by the Tories of Poole at a by-election in October 1831, according to the Tory whip William Holmes, in order ‘to annoy the reformers’, as an independent challenger to the official Whig candidate.3Arbuthnot Corresp. 150. Although defeated, his private wealth and apparent largesse curried favour with Poole’s notoriously venal voters, who had not anticipated a contest, and at the 1832 general election he was persuaded to offer again, describing himself as a ‘decided reformer of every abuse in Church and state’. With two other Liberals but no Tory in the field, he was again supported by those of ‘opposite opinions’, a ‘strange anomaly’ which some believed contributed to his defeat by just 18 votes. A show-down with the local Tories eventually occurred at the 1834 dissolution, after he refused to pledge support for the caretaker administration of the duke of Wellington, ‘a man whom every true reformer must look upon as an enemy to his county’s liberties and rights’. This initially left him stranded, but following the retirement of one of their sitting Members the local Liberals rallied to his support, promising to return him ‘free of expense’. After a heated two-day contest in 1835, in which he successfully rebutted charges of being a turncoat and leaving election expenses unpaid, he was returned in second place as ‘a reformer, but not a revolutionist’, who had ‘no wish to destroy the established church of this country’, for ‘had I been a revolutionist, would those gentlemen who formerly supported me, have taken me by the hand as they did?’4Poole Borough Poll Book (1835), pp. 5, 6, 9, 11, 27; Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 160.

A regular attender, accused of entertaining ‘extreme liberal opinions’ by a commentary of 1837, he backed the reappointed Melbourne ministry on most major issues, but resumed his general support for his friend Joseph Hume’s radical motions and also often sided with the Irish radicals.5The Assembled Commons (1837), 173. (His appearance in the minority lists included votes in favour of the secret ballot, earlier sittings of the House, the removal of bishops from the Lords, the admittance of ladies to the strangers’ gallery, tax reductions, revision of the corn laws, and against the government’s Irish tithes commutation bill and Irish church bill.) In his first known speech back in the House, he welcomed a measure for better observance of the sabbath, not on religious grounds but to enable the poor to be ‘free from labour’ and ‘partake of innocent recreations’, 20 May 1835. The following month he criticised the cost of fitting up the temporary Commons after its destruction by fire, citing the erection of other public buildings at a fraction of the cost, 12 June, and rallied to the defence of the Dorchester labourers (Tolpuddle martyrs), claiming that he was well ‘aquainted with the working classes’ and was sure the accused were unaware of the provisions against ‘unlawful oaths’, 25 June. On 30 June he presented a petition from Poole in favour of municipal reform, which he of course supported. That summer he and James Silk Buckingham, the radical MP for Sheffield, jointly prepared and brought up a bill to encourage the formation of public institutions, including libraries and museums, for the ‘benefit of the humbler classes’, which was defeated, 18 Aug. Tulk’s introduction of another bill three days later to compensate Buckingham for losses incurred from the East India Company was frowned upon by some Members, and after trying the patience of the House was thrown out at its second reading by 125-81, 24 Feb. 1836. Tulk’s attempt to revive the issue with a petition was unsuccessful, 22 Mar. 1836. He did not serve on the inquiry into Poole’s first council election appointed that month, for which he had repeatedly voted, but was named to those on the paving of Regent Street, 7 June, and the increase of shipwrecks, 14 June 1836. Two more legislative initiatives got up with Buckingham during 1837, for the establishment of public walks, play grounds and public institutions for promoting the health, morals and instruction of the people, and for better regulation of all places selling intoxicating drinks, went the same way as their earlier bills. In his last known intervention, he presented a Poole petition favourable to church reform but against the abolition of church rates, 8 June 1837.

At the 1837 general election Tulk retired, apparently without explanation, but probably in order to accommodate the leading local Whig’s son, who had just come of age. He had promised to ‘retire into private life’ if unsuccessful in 1835 and apparently made no attempt to find another berth, throwing himself into his religious writings and further doctrinal tussles with members of the Swedenborgian Society, of which he again served as chairman in 1843. The publication in 1846 of the first intalment of Spiritual Christianity, a digest of his numerous religious articles, however, prompted an irrevocable rift with the movement, and ‘so noxious was he to the Swedenborgians that his death [in 1849] was not even mentioned in their magazine’, the New Church Advocate, whose editorial board he had been forced to quit.6W. White, Emmanuel Swedenborg (1868), ii. 698-9; Rix, 116. His valuable Middlesex estates in Leicester Square, which his father had inherited from his elder brother James, were divided equally, though not harmoniously, between his five surviving sons and three daughters, excepting his ‘beloved eldest son Marmaduke’ Hart Hart (d. 1853), for whom his maternal grandfather had already provided. A political career did not interest his sons, of whom the best remembered is Augustus Henry Tulk (1810-73), the founder of the state library of Victoria, Australia.7The Times, 7, 22 Dec. 1848, 12 Feb. 1849; Oxford DNB; PROB 11/2088/148.