TOLLEMACHE, Frederick James (1804-1888), of Ham House, Surrey and 1 Hyde Park Place, London

Tollemache, ‘a very tall and uncommonly handsome young man’, began his political career as a Tory before steadily moving over to the Liberals after 1846.1Drakard’s Stamford News, 16 June 1826. He was the second youngest son of Sir William Manners, MP for Ilchester, 1803-4 and 1806-7, who, following the death without issue of his uncle, Wilbraham Tollemache, 6^th earl of Dysart, in 1821, was styled Lord Huntingtower and took the name Tollemache in lieu of Manners.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 534-6. A Tory ‘notorious for his occasional eccentricities’, Huntingtower was lord of the manor of Grantham and head of the local ‘Blue’ party.3Gent. Mag. (1833), i. 370. At the 1826 general election Tollemache was brought forward for Grantham by his father, and following a severe contest in which he described himself as ‘an enemy to Catholic emancipation’, was returned in first place.4Drakard’s Stamford News, 16 June 1826. However, he made little impact in the Commons, and his opposition to parliamentary reform cost him his seat at the 1830 general election.5HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 462-3.

Tollemache’s early political career was entirely at the mercy of his father’s wishes, and at the 1831 and 1832 general elections Huntingtower opted to bring forward his youngest son, Algernon, for Grantham. Algernon represented the family interest in the borough until 1837, when he made way for Tollemache. Like his younger brother, whose party allegiance had been ambiguous, Tollemache informed the electors that he would represent them ‘unshackled and unpledged’, though he stated that his political opinions were ‘of a decidedly conservative character’.6Stamford Mercury, 28 July 1837. Returned in second place, he followed Peel into the division lobby on most major issues, and backed his motion of no confidence in the Whig government, 4 June 1841.

Like his brothers, Tollemache is not known to have spoken in debate, and his select committee service was limited. A director of the New Zealand Company who owned a modest section of land in Wellington, he sat on the 1840 select committee on the colony,7PP 1840 (582), vii. 447. but in contrast to Algernon, who was a significant shareholder in the company and sponsored a group of labourers from the family’s Ham estates in Surrey to emigrate to New Zealand, Tollemache played only a minor role in the company’s proceedings, and retired as a director in 1844.8S. Middleton, ‘The seven servants of Ham: labourers’ letters from Wellington in the New Zealand Journal, 1840-1845’, New Zealand Journal of History, 44, 1 (2010), 62; Nelson Examiner and New Zealand Chronicle, 28 Dec. 1844.

Re-elected unopposed in 1841, when he was described as possessing ‘staunch Conservative principles’, Tollemache gave silent support to Peel’s ministry.9Lincolnshire Chronicle, 2 July 1841. He paired off against Lord John Russell’s motion not to reintroduce income tax, 13 Apr. 1842, and opposed motions to redress Irish grievances, 12 July 1843, 23 Feb. 1844. He backed Peel’s proposed sliding scale on corn duties, 9 Mar. 1842, and voted against corn law repeal, 15 May 1843, but was absent from the subsequent divisions on the issue until he voted for repeal, 27 Mar. 1846. Defending his vote at the 1847 general election, he declared:

He gave the vote that had been objected to conscientiously, knowing that he should offend, and he felt assured that he had offended deeply. He rejoiced at the vote, and if the time were to come over again he should give the same. All the experiments in favour of free trade had proved favourable; and it seemed to him the less we shackled trade the more it progressed.10Ibid., 6 Aug. 1847.

Tollemache also dismissed local criticism of his support for the Maynooth grant. Although he maintained that he was ‘no friend to the Roman Catholic system of religion’, he asked ‘did the electors think that the Church of England ... could be endangered by a paltry grant?’11Ibid. The Lincolnshire Chronicle, though, was unimpressed, describing his address as ‘trite and haughty, evidently showing the writer’s intention to treat the electors with the same indifference he has evinced towards the interest of the borough in general’.12Lincolnshire Chronicle, 30 July 1847.

Following his unopposed return in 1847, Tollemache’s votes in the Commons reflected his inexorable drift towards the Liberals. An occasional attender, he supported Lord John Russell’s Jewish disabilities bill, 17 Dec. 1847, the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, and Roebuck’s motion backing the government’s foreign policy, 28 June 1850, and opposed Conservative motions on agricultural distress, 21 Feb. 1850, 11 Apr. 1851.13In the 1849 session he was present for 49 out of 219 divisions: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849.

At the 1852 general election, Tollemache’s proposer described him as ‘a fair representation of the Conservative liberal party’.14Lincolnshire Chronicle, 9 July 1852. In truth, he was a Liberal candidate in all but name. He called for ‘household suffrage’ and admitted that he was nearly ‘a convert’ to the principle of the ballot. He was also defiant about his change of opinions:

[H]e first came among them little more than a boy. He was then 22 years of age, and was he to live from that to 44 with his eyes shut? Consistency was not to go blundering on in error, but, if wrong, to get into the right way as soon as possible’.15Stamford Mercury, 9 July 1852.

However, the proselyte Tollemache, who was directly opposed by the second Conservative candidate, Lord Montagu Graham, cut an unpopular figure, and was defeated in third place, with one elector quipping that ‘Mr Tollemache had a right to change his opinions, and they had also a right to change their member’.16Lincolnshire Chronicle, 9 July 1852.

At the 1857 general election Tollemache offered again for Grantham. Now unambiguously Liberal, he lambasted the ‘do-nothing policy of the Conservatives’, backed Palmerston, and was returned in second place.17Ibid., 3 Apr. 1857. He supported Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, and opposed the Derby ministry’s reform bill, explaining later that he had voted for Russell’s resolution ‘not from factious motives’ but because it ‘embodied his own views as to what a proper Reform bill should contain’.18Stamford Mercury, 6 May 1859. Re-elected unopposed in 1859, he continued to support franchise extension, dividing in minorities for Locke King’s county franchise bill, 13 Mar. 1861, and Baines’ borough franchise bill, 10 Apr. 1861. He voted for church rate abolition, 14 May 1862, and the Liberal government’s tests abolition (Oxford) bill, 14 June 1865.

Tollemache restated his party allegiance at the 1865 general election, arguing that ‘Conservatism never mended anything until compelled; but Liberalism improved things as soon as they discovered a way of doing so’.19Lincolnshire Chronicle, 14 July 1865. However, opposed by two Conservatives, he was defeated in third place. He regained his seat at the 1868 general election and retired in 1874.

Tollemache died suddenly at Ham House, Surrey, in July 1888. He was survived by his daughter from his second marriage, Ada Maria Katherine, wife of Charles Douglas Richard Hanbury-Tracy, 4^th baron Sudeley. The bulk of his estate, which was valued at £238,951 13s. 1d., was divided equally between his brother Algernon and baron Sudeley.20England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 1 Sept. 1888. A statue of Tollemache was erected on St. Peter’s Hill, Grantham, in 1891. He remains the only politician commemorated by a statue in the town.21New York Times, 26 Jan. 2012. There is, though, a statue of Sir Isaac Newton, who was educated in Grantham and sat briefly as MP for Cambridge University in 1689 and 1701.