TALBOT, Christopher Rice Mansel (1803-1890), of Penrice Castle, Glam.; Margam Park, Glam.; and 3 Cavendish Square, London, Mdx.

A ‘tall slender figure’, with a ‘shy manner which is occasionally mistaken for hauteur’,1Western Mail, 24 Oct. 1873. it was said of Talbot, Glamorgan’s MP for almost sixty years, that ‘no man in the kingdom more completely unites in his person culture, wealth, and thorough going liberalism’.2Bradford Observer, 13 Nov. 1869. Said to be Britain’s wealthiest commoner, he was a powerful presence in Glamorgan, but was virtually silent in the House: an apocryphal story suggested that he only spoke once, to ask someone to close a window because of a draught.3J.V. Hughes, The wealthiest commoner: C.R.M. Talbot (1803-1890) (1977), 16. (In fact his only known contribution to debate was a brief remark on the Dublin corporation water bill, 28 May 1861, prompted by his service on the relevant committee.4PP 1861 (0.94), l. 443.)

Descended from the earls of Shrewsbury, Talbot’s forefathers had purchased lands at Margam at the Dissolution, and intermarried with the Mansels of Oxwich and Penrice to become Glamorgan’s largest landowners, with 34,000 acres by Talbot’s time.5HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 362. The Mansels had long provided county representatives, and while Talbot’s father did not seek election, he led Glamorgan’s ‘independent’ party until his death in 1813.6T.M. Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot (1803-1890): a Welsh landowner in politics and industry’, Morgannwg (2000), xliv. 68; HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 362. Born at Penrice, Talbot had strong Whig connections through his mother: her father was the second earl of Ilchester and her brother-in-law was the third marquess of Lansdowne.7http://yba.llgc.org.uk/en/s-TALB-MAR-1700.html; Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 68. Charles James Fox was Ilchester’s cousin. His idleness at Harrow prompted maternal concern, but although he told his cousin, the pioneering photographer William Henry Fox Talbot, that he had ‘done little at Oxford, besides hunting’, he obtained a first in mathematics, and later published an authoritative work on the law of curvatures.8Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 9-11; C.R.M. Talbot to H. Fox Talbot, 14 Jan. 1822 [http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/letters/transcriptName.php?bcode=Talb-CR&pageNumber=7&pageTotal=68&referringPage=0]; C.R.M. Talbot, Sir Isaac Newton’s enumeration of lines of the third order (1860). He reportedly refused to subscribe to the university test.9The Times, 18 Jan. 1890.

Talbot attained his majority in 1824 and succeeded to his father’s estates, to the lordships of numerous manors and as patron of several livings.10Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 7; PP 1835 [67], xxii. 346, 648, 654. After a Mediterranean tour on his new yacht, he familiarised himself with his properties, which included agricultural land in the Gower peninsula and mineral-bearing land in the growing industrial area around Aberavon.11Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 13-14; HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 362-3; Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 68. In 1883, half of Talbot’s £44,000 annual rental income came from profits from the lessees of mines: J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edn., 1883), 433. At the 1830 election Talbot’s stepfather, Sir Christopher Cole, stood down as Glamorgan’s MP, and Talbot was returned unopposed in his place.12HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 363-4. Re-elected in 1831, he supported the reform bill, and helped to secure a second county seat for Glamorgan.13Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 16; Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 71.

Although several challengers were mooted, and Talbot feared opposition from Merthyr Tydfil’s industrialists, he was returned unopposed in 1832, alongside his fellow Whig, Lewis Weston Dillwyn, whose oldest son married Talbot’s sister in 1833, cementing the two men’s close relations.14HP Commons, 1832-68: ‘Glamorgan’; HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 362. Their victory was aided by the marquess of Bute’s decision not to field a Conservative opponent.15L.W. Dillwyn, diary, 29 Sept. 1832, cited in R. Grant, The parliamentary history of Glamorgan 1542-1976 (1978), 155. Publicly a Whig, Talbot reassured Bute privately that ‘I think it very possible to be both “conservative” and friendly to the present ministry’, but would not back either party until he knew what their policies were. He felt that Grey’s reform bill had gone too far, but was preferable to none at all. He believed that ‘more practical good’ had been done by Wellington and Peel than was likely to emanate from Grey or Althorp, and declared that ‘I am no admirer of the present ministry either in regard to their financial views, or their foreign policy’.16NLW, Bute MSS, L75/145, C.R.M. Talbot to Marquess of Bute, 16 Sept. 1832. For a fuller citation from Talbot’s letter, see HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 364-5. A later hostile account suggested that it was ‘intellectual half-penny-tossing’ which made Talbot plump for the ‘ill-fitting guise’ of Liberalism in 1832, but this overlooks his genuine Whig sympathies on religious questions in particular.17Western Mail, 24 Oct. 1873. Talbot was joined at Westminster by his cousin, Fox Talbot, and his brother-in-law, John Iltyd Nicholl, Bute’s Conservative nominee at Cardiff.18HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 412; vii. 362. Talbot and Dillwyn were also spared a contest in 1835. At Westminster, Talbot generally divided with Whig ministers, supporting them on abolition of slavery, the poor law and municipal corporations.19M. Cragoe, Culture, politics, and national identity in Wales 1832-1886 (2004), 54. His votes with Russell on the Irish church in 1835 prompted an approving address from nearly 100 ‘respectable’ Bridgend residents.20North Wales Chronicle, 2 June 1835. He opposed the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833, and Hume’s motion for a moderate fixed duty on corn, 8 Mar. 1834. Talbot promoted his own interests by obtaining an Act in 1834 for the establishment of the Aberavon Harbour Company, in which he played a key part.21H. Pollins, ‘The development of transport, 1750-1914’, in A.H. John & G. Williams (ed.), Glamorgan county history, vol. v. Industrial Glamorgan from 1700 to 1970 (1980), 485. Further Acts relating to Aberavon were passed in 1836 and 1840. In 1838 Talbot purchased the Taibach copper works in Aberavon, but sold it later that year: Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 25.

Alongside development of Aberavon – subsequently known as Port Talbot – Talbot constructed a new mansion at Margam, which reportedly cost £50,000. It was completed between 1830 and 1835, although work on other buildings continued into the 1840s.22Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 15; Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 66. Margam Park passed out of family hands in 1942, and was gutted by fire in 1977, but has since been restored by the local council: Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 35; http://www.neath-porttalbot.gov.uk/default.aspx?page=1333. Talbot took an unusually hands-on approach to estate management, with a somewhat harsh attitude towards his tenants.23Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 95, 97. Unlike other landlords, Talbot made tenants pay for their own repairs, although he did reduce their rents by 10% in compensation. He criticised the unwillingness of Welsh tenant farmers to invest in their farms, and encouraged innovations such as turnip husbandry, which he profitably adopted at Penrice in 1844.24Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 96. Turnip husbandry formed part of the East Lothian system of farming, the merits of which Talbot extolled in a paper to the Swansea Farmers’ Club, of which he was president, in 1850: C.R.M. Talbot, Remarks on the advantages of the East Lothian system of farming (1850). A ‘staunch Anglican’, Talbot was a benefactor to local churches, but was more tolerant than many local landlords in also allowing Nonconformist chapels to be built on his estates.25G. Orrin, ‘The role of the Talbot family in church building and restoration in Victorian Glamorgan, 1837-1901’, Morgannwg, xlvi. 58; Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 29. Despite apparently reading personally each of the 10,000 letters he received annually, Talbot pursued numerous other interests.26Daily News, 12 Feb. 1861; Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 28. Yachting was his passion, making wagers on races with fellow members of the royal yacht squadron: in 1834 he reputed lost £50,000 in a race against Lord Belfast.27Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 11. He was vice-commodore of the squadron, 1851-61.28http://www.rys.org.uk/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=33&Itemid=55. Although Talbot never learnt to swim, he waded into the surf at Kenfig sands to help rescue the Sunda’s crew in 1859, for which he was awarded the Royal National Lifeboat Institution’s silver medal, the only MP ever to receive this.29Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 28. He was a talented chess-player, musically accomplished, and a keen art collector. He encouraged Fox Talbot’s photography experiments, and helped to found the Royal Institution of South Wales in 1835.30Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 19; Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 66. He enjoyed hunting and riding, and was ‘an excellent marksman’.31Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 20.

Talbot faced his first contested election in 1837, when Dillwyn stood down. The Conservative viscount Adare, heir to local estates, offered in his place, but was opposed by the industrialist John Guest. Guest’s free trade sympathies did not find favour with Talbot, who preferred to see the representation equitably divided, and ‘I strongly recommended him not to stand, but as he persisted I could not turn my back on him when there was against him a man belonging to a party whose politics I believe to be most dangerous to Ireland’.32P. Jenkins, ‘Glamorgan politics 1789-1868’, in P. Morgan (ed.), Glamorgan county history, vol. vi. Glamorgan society 1780-1980 (1988), 11; C.R.M. Talbot to Lady Mary Lucy Cole, 11 Aug. 1837, cited in Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 73. Talbot’s ‘coolness’ towards Guest may explain why he was ‘very inactive’ during the contest, and only secured second place behind Adare.33Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 20; Earl of Bessborough (ed.), Lady Charlotte Guest: extracts from her journal 1833-1852 (1950), 56. On his return to Westminster, Talbot again supported ministers on church rates, 23 May 1837, the Irish church, 15 May 1838, and in confidence votes, 31 Jan. 1840 and 4 June 1841. He opposed the ballot and revision of the corn laws, but favoured reduction of the sugar duties, 18 May 1841. He sat on the 1839 committee on lighting the House, which superintended Gurney’s experiments with lamps.34PP 1839 (501), xiii. 8.

Seeking re-election in 1841, Talbot experienced ‘great pain’ at finding fault with the Liberals35The Times, 10 Aug. 1841., but nonetheless declared his opposition to reductions in the corn and timber duties.36C.R.M. Talbot, Election address, 14 June 1841, cited in Grant, Parliamentary history of Glamorgan, 173. Returned unopposed alongside Adare, reports that Talbot had ‘renounced all connection with the Ministerial party’ were erroneous.37The Times, 12 July 1841. He continued to divide with the Liberals on religious questions, supporting abolition of university tests, 25 May 1843, and the Dissenters chapels bill, 6 June 1844. He was in the minority of 30 against the second reading of the bank charter bill, 13 June 1844, and divided against the Maynooth grant, 18 Apr. 1845. He served on committees on commons’ enclosure (1844) and the highways bill (1847).38PP 1844 (583), v. 2; PP 1847 (683), viii. 183. He consistently divided against corn law repeal, but was absent from the decisive votes of 1846, having gone to Malta the previous winter for his wife’s health. She died there in March 1846, but Talbot was unable to return home for her funeral that May as his youngest daughter was ill.39Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 21, 23. Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 72, incorrectly states that Talbot divided against repeal in 1846.

Talbot was re-elected unopposed in 1847 and 1852, in both cases alongside protectionist Conservatives. In the latter year, it was said of Talbot that he was ‘so considerable that his seat is perfectly secure’,40Morning Chronicle, 7 June 1852. and although his brother-in-law, Nicholl, was pressed to stand as a Peelite, he withdrew at the nomination.41The Times, 15 July 1852. Talbot displayed his protectionist sympathies by opposing repeal of the navigation laws in 1849, and was in the minority of 53 against free trade, 27 Nov. 1852. He divided for Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852, and against Gladstone’s, 2 May 1853. He continued to vote with his party on religious questions, however, supporting removal of Jewish disabilities and abolition of church rates. He divided for consideration of Irish church temporalities, 27 May 1856, and, reversing his earlier position, supported the Maynooth grant, 19 Feb. 1857. These votes, together with his changed stance on the ballot – he first divided in its favour, 14 June 1853 and routinely thereafter, although opposing wider reforms such as Hume’s ‘Little Charter’ – were seen as ‘a guarantee that he has dissolved the ties which did, for a short time, exist between himself and the Conservatives upon the question of free trade’.42Morning Chronicle, 20 June 1856. Although a biography claimed that Talbot ‘made every effort to vote on important parliamentary matters’,43Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 16. he was never an assiduous attender, present for 45 out of 219 divisions in the 1849 session, 42 out of 257 in 1853, and 55 out of 198 in 1856.44Bristol Mercury, 13 Oct. 1849; Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiott, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 25. He was absent from Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, although he had supported Palmerston on the Don Pacifico affair, 28 June 1850. His committee service was again limited, sitting on the 1855 inquiry which recommended that £10,000 be awarded to Captain McClure and those who assisted in finding the north-west passage.45PP 1854-55 (409), vii. 1ff.

Outside Parliament, Talbot had taken on two important new roles in the late 1840s. The first, the lord lieutenancy of Glamorgan (1848), cemented his local standing. The second, the chairmanship of the South Wales Railway (SWR) from 1849, reflected his growing commercial interests. He remained as chairman until 1863, when the SWR was absorbed by the Great Western Railway (GWR), of which he became a director.46Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 90; The Times, 13 May 1863; Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 26-7. In addition to his railway directorships, Talbot was a director of the Eastern Steam Navigation Company and the Anglo-Luso Brazilian Royal Mail Steam Navigation Company: Morning Post, 16 July 1852; PP 1860 (350), xiii. 246. When the projected Gloucester to Milford line was halted in 1849 due to lack of funds, Talbot provided £500,000 for its completion. A friend of Isambard Kingdom Brunel, he contributed £60,000 towards his steamship, the Great Eastern. When the GWR board ignored Talbot’s recommendation to purchase the Chester and Birkenhead line, he invested profitably himself. His railway holdings were estimated at £3 million by 1890, contributing significantly to his position as Britain’s wealthiest commoner.47Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 26-7.

Although Talbot faced a contest in 1857, he and his fellow Liberal Henry Hussey Vivian triumphed over their Conservative opponent, and were unopposed both in 1859, when Talbot declared his opposition to the Conservatives’ reform bill, and 1865.48The Times, 11 Apr. 1859. Talbot’s parliamentary career continued much as before, with a limited amount of committee service, including on the Oxford (1857) and Norwich (1859) election petitions, the 1860 piers and harbours bill and the 1863 Thames embankment bill.49PP 1857 sess. 2 (170), viii. 11; PP 1860 (448), xv. 328; PP 1859 sess. 2 (140), iv. 366; PP 1863 (367), xii. 548. He submitted written evidence to the 1861 commission on lights, buoys and beacons.50PP 1861 [2793], xxv. 913. Obituaries claimed that Talbot’s silence was all the more surprising because he was actually ‘a clever and ready speaker’.51The Times, 18 Jan. 1890. He continued to divide for the ballot and abolition of church rates and university tests, and backed Gladstone on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868. He supported extension of the borough franchise in 1864 and 1865, and the Liberal reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866. He was in the minority for John Stuart Mill’s women’s suffrage amendment, 20 May 1867, but opposed the disfranchisement of small boroughs, 3 June 1867. Outside Parliament, Talbot encouraged the expansion of Swansea docks in the 1850s and oversaw further improvements at Port Talbot in 1865.52Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 25; Pollins, ‘Development of transport’, 485. Port Talbot subsequently stagnated somewhat after the liquidation of the Copper Miners’ Company, which it served, but was developed further after Talbot’s death. During the French invasion scare of the late 1850s he raised a large volunteer detachment at Margam, and was instrumental in founding the Glamorgan Rifle Association in 1860.53Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 28-9.

Talbot was returned unopposed in 1868, but was no more active in Parliament than before.54A hostile report in 1873 complained that ‘Mr. Talbot has had the power and the opportunity of doing everything, and has done nothing’: Western Mail, 24 Oct. 1873. He declined Gladstone’s offer of a peerage in 1869, because his only son Theodore preferred hunting to politics and was unwilling to contest Glamorgan in his place.55Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 30-1. Talbot told Gladstone that ‘long habits and many friendships have made the House of Commons to me almost a home, and one which I could not quit without regret’ (cited in Ibid.). He also rejected subsequent offers, partly because Gladstone refused to revive the dormant ancestral title of Lord Mansel.56Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 10 Dec. 1889. He was re-elected for Glamorgan in 1874 and 1880, and returned unopposed for the new Mid Glamorgan seat in 1885. Although he divided against the second reading of the home rule bill, 7 June 1886, he remained loyal to Gladstone, and was re-elected with the support of his constituency Liberal association in 1886.57W. Lubenow, ‘Irish Home Rule and the social basis of the great separation in the Liberal party in 1886’, HJ (1995), xxviii. 129. Some press obituaries stated in error that Talbot did not vote on the home rule bill. Outside Parliament, he continued his sporting interests, and his steam yacht Lynx was the first vessel to sail through the Suez canal after its opening in 1869.58Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 30. He had a special safety saddle made so that he could continue riding in later life despite problems with his legs59Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 32., but his ‘leading passion’ was billiards, ‘which he plays till seven o’clock in the morning, if his companion is agreeable and efficient’.60Aberdeen Weekly Journal, 10 Dec. 1889. Despite his vast wealth, he was ‘somewhat eccentric, frugal and economical in late years’.61Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 28.

Talbot died at Margam in January 1890, after a ‘prolonged illness’, suffering from inflammation and congestion of the lungs, and was buried at Margam church.62The Times, 18 Jan. 1890; Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 33. At the time of his death, he was Father of the House, a position he attained in 1874, and was one of only two sitting MPs to have served before 1832. However, unlike the other survivor of the pre-reform House, The O’Gorman Mahon, Talbot’s service was unbroken.63The O’Gorman Mahon, who died the year after Talbot, sat for county Clare, 1830-1 and 1879-85; Ennis, 1847-52; and county Carlow, 1887-91. His political longevity served to reinforce the picture of him – influenced by his protectionist and later his Unionist sympathies – as ‘something of a parliamentary oddity’.64Jenkins, ‘Glamorgan politics 1789-1868’, 9. His son Theodore, who had been on his way to converting to Catholicism, predeceased him, dying in 1876 from injuries sustained in a hunting accident the previous year.65Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 32; Jenkins, ‘Glamorgan politics 1789-1868’, 14. Like Theodore, his sisters Emily and Olive were Anglo-Catholics: Campbell, ‘C.R.M. Talbot’, 82. The bulk of Talbot’s estate, including an estimated £1 million in GWR stock, passed to his unmarried eldest daughter, Emily Charlotte (1840-1918), with generous provision for his other two daughters. His personal estate was sworn at £1,388,617 13s. net, but his total wealth was estimated at £6 million.66The Times, 17 Apr. 1890; Morning Post, 18 Jan. 1890; Hughes, Wealthiest commoner, 34. Bertha Isabella (1841-1913) received all Talbot’s London and South Western Railway stock, while his youngest daughter Olive Emma (1842-1894) received his three per cent consols in trust, with reversion to Emily. His youngest daughter Olive rebuilt St. Nicholas’s church, Nicholaston in his memory.67Orrin, ‘Role of the Talbot family in church building’, 65. The Margam and Penrice estate papers are located in the National Library of Wales, as is Talbot’s correspondence with Vivian. Material relating to Talbot is also held by the West Glamorgan Archive Service, and his correspondence with Fox Talbot has been collated by The Correspondence of William Henry Fox Talbot Project.68http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=F9240; http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P27907; http://foxtalbot.dmu.ac.uk/letters/name.php?bcode=Talb-CR&pageNo=0.