SPOONER, Richard (1783-1864), of Elmdon Hall, Warwickshire; Henwood Lodge, Warwickshire

A ‘yellow-faced little man’, Spooner, with his colleague Charles Newdegate, was one of the leaders of the ultra-Protestant ‘quasi-religious party’ in the 1850s and was best known as the ‘able and indefatigable but unsuccessful opponent of the grant to the College of Maynooth’.2E.M. Whitty, The Derbyites and the coalition (1854), 76 (first qu.); ‘The House of Commons in 1857’, Gent. Mag. (1857), i. 19-28 (second qu. at 19); The Times, 25 Nov. 1864 (third qu.). Spooner was adjudged by the Morning Chronicle to be ‘one of the greatest bores in the House’, but even his opponents acknowledged that he was ‘a remarkable man in many respects’.3Morning Chronicle, 9 Aug. 1847; E. Edwards, Personal recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham men (1877), 50. Although Spooner was described as a ‘Tory and a Protestant of the Georgian era’, this is most appropriate for his religious views, as despite his political divergence from his friend and business partner Thomas Attwood, Spooner remained a lifelong advocate of the ‘Birmingham school’ of economics and supporter of currency reform.4Morning Post, 26 Nov. 1864.

In 1791, Spooner’s father Isaac, a ‘stern Tory magistrate’ with interests in land and industry, had established a bank in Birmingham with Matthias Attwood, and their sons, Richard and Thomas, joined the firm after completing their schooling, in the former’s case at Rugby.5D.J. Moss, Thomas Attwood: a biography of a radical (1990), 17-26 (qu. at 78). Firm friends as well as business partners, in 1812 Spooner and Attwood successfully lobbied for the repeal of the 1807 orders-in-council, and although the latter, who was serving as high bailiff, was given the credit, it was Spooner who was the real driving force.6Moss, Thomas Attwood, 35-49. An observer later recalled Spooner’s ‘very telling oratory – clear, fluent, vivacious and though not profound, yet quite sufficiently so for the purpose in hand’.7Qu. in Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Nov. 1864.

Like Attwood, Spooner was concerned about the government’s plan to resume cash payments (making paper notes convertible into gold), but unlike his friend does not seem to have published any pamphlets or letters on the issue. However, through his conversations with Attwood, Spooner undoubtedly contributed to the development of the ‘Birmingham school’ and for the rest of his life remained faithful to its tenets.8Moss, Thomas Attwood, 54, 72. Chief amongst these was the belief that the rigid monetary system imposed in 1819 was deflationary, depressing prices, profits and wages, and was responsible for the fluctuations and distress of the time. This could be remedied by currency reform to secure a circulating medium sufficient for the nation’s needs, which would achieve full employment, prosperity and rising wages.9This summary is based upon: A. Briggs, ‘Thomas Attwood and the economic background of the Birmingham Political Union’, Cambridge Historical Journal, 9 (1948), 190-216; S.G. Checkland, ‘The Birmingham economists, 1815-1850’, Economic History Review, 1 (new series, 1948), 1-19; F.W. Fetter, ‘Introduction’, idem (ed.), Selected writings of Thomas Attwood (1964), pp. vii-xxi; idem, Development of British monetary orthodoxy, 1797-1875 (1965), 74-8, 114-16; A.J.B. Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce (1977), 56-7, 65-6, 70-1; Moss, Thomas Attwood, chs. 3-4; D.P. O’Brien, ‘Introduction’, Foundation of monetary economics (1994), vi., pp. vii-xiv. On other issues, Spooner, like Attwood, was considered to be a member of Birmingham’s ‘liberal’ party, distinct from both the High Church Tories and the Unitarian Whigs.10Moss, Thomas Attwood, 90.

The lack of parliamentary support for currency reform led Spooner to contest a number of constituencies in the 1820s, although he was also motivated by personal ambition.11Ibid., 86. Elected for Boroughbridge in 1820, Spooner was unseated on petition three months later, defeated in the Warwickshire by-election later the same year, and was unsuccessful in his attempts to secure election for Boroughbridge and Stafford in 1826 and Coventry in 1830.12Ibid., 88-93, 132-3; ‘Spooner, Richard’, HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 241-3 (at 242-3). Although he supported Charles Tennyson’s attempts to enfranchise Birmingham at the expense of East Retford, 1827-30, Spooner did not join the Birmingham Political Union (BPU) founded by Attwood in January 1830, and ‘this sudden divergence was never satisfactorily explained’.13‘East Retford’, HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 804-6; Moss, Thomas Attwood, 139, 145-7, 154-5 (qu. at 155). Spooner claimed that his responsibilities as a magistrate were incompatible with membership of the Union, and that he could best serve the cause of parliamentary reform working on his own, although he did attend some BPU meetings.14Ibid.; C.M. Wakefield, Life of Thomas Attwood (1885), 124; Report of the proceedings of the first annual meeting of the Birmingham Political Union held ... on ... July 26, 1830 (1830), 14. He declined to be chairman of the Worcester Political Union in 1832, but in December 1834 accepted the chairmanship of the newly formed Birmingham Loyal and Constitutional Association (LCA), the BPU’s Conservative rival, and challenged Attwood and his colleague Joshua Scholefield at the 1835 general election for Birmingham.15Political Union Register (1832), i. 78; Moss, Thomas Attwood, 254; J.A. Langford, A century of Birmingham life, 1741-1841 (1870), ii. 624-5; Morning Post, 19 Dec. 1834.

Attwood thought Spooner had been ‘seduced by a knot of Tories’, whilst later Liberal critics implied that repeated electoral defeats had ‘led him to reconsider his principles’.16Wakefield, Life of Attwood, 283; Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Nov. 1864. At the nomination, Spooner explained that although he had supported Catholic relief and parliamentary reform, these issues were now settled and his point of departure from the Whig government was their plan to appropriate Irish church revenues, which he believed opened the way to the endowment of Roman Catholicism.17Triumph of reform!: great and overwhelming majority in favour of Attwood and Scholefield (1835), 11-12. The defence of the established church and Protestantism was the core of Spooner’s Toryism, and his candidature had been preceded by his unsuccessful attempt to reintroduce church rates in Birmingham.18Langford, Birmingham life, i. 565-6; The Standard, 8, 18 Dec. 1834; The Times, 9 Dec. 1834; Morn. Chro., 13, 16 Dec. 1834; J.P. Ellens, Religious routes to Gladstonian liberalism: the church rates conflict in England and Wales, 1832-1868 (1994), 30-2. Spooner’s change of opinions was also perhaps influenced by his family context, as although he had a similar background to Attwood, he had much stronger Tory, aristocratic and clerical connections. His brother-in-law, Sir Charles Wetherell, had been one of the leading parliamentary opponents of the reform bill, and his cousins included the Calthorpes, barons of Edgbaston, and fellow founder members of the Birmingham LCA.19Spooner was married to Wetherell’s sister, and his mother was the sister of the 1st Lord Calthorpe: Burke’s landed gentry (1879), ii. 1500-1; D. Cannadine, ‘The Calthorpe family and Birmingham, 1810-1910: a “Conservative interest” examined’, Historical Journal, 18 (1975), 725-60 (at 737); ‘Wetherell, Sir Charles’, HP 1790-1832, v. 520-1; ibid., 1820-1832, vii. 707-23. Despite Attwood commenting on Spooner’s election defeat in 1835 that ‘he could not but rejoice in his humiliation’, the two men remained friends.20Wakefield, Life of Attwood, 286, 379, 417.

In 1835, the Banker’s Circular remarked that ‘few people are so well informed on all subjects relating to Banks, Currency, and Agriculture, as Mr. Spooner’.21Banker’s Circular, 15 Aug. 1835, 25. Spooner’s knowledge was derived from his thirty years experience as a farmer, although he complained that his Worcestershire smallholding was ‘very unprofitable’, despite his application of improving techniques, and he gave evidence to the Commons and Lords committees on agriculture in 1836 and 1837.22PP 1836 (465), viii, pt. II, 342-63; PP 1837 (464), v. 256-79 (qu. at 259). Attributing agricultural distress to monetary causes, Spooner advocated a bimetallic (gold and silver) standard and a paper currency inconvertible into precious metals, but with note issues to be limited by the amount of national debt and taxes.23PP 1836 (465), viii, pt. II, 347-52; 1837 (464), v. 266-74. Like other Birmingham currency reformers, Spooner argued that high agricultural prices were impossible under the ‘money laws’. The corn laws were a ‘dead letter’, Spooner observed, with the result that ‘the landed interest has the odium of monopoly without one iota of protection’.24PP 1836 (465), viii, pt. II, 358 (first qu.); 1837 (464), v. 278 (second qu.). In 1839 Spooner told the annual meeting of the Worcestershire Agricultural Society that ‘the corn laws had not worked well for the country, nor did he think that they ever would be found to do so’: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, qu. in Anti-Corn Law Circular, 12 Nov. 1839.

After declining to stand in 1837, Spooner was again defeated at Birmingham at the 1841 general election after offering ‘unvaried, unchanging, and unchangeable opposition’ to the Whig government, although, like them, he favoured a low fixed duty on corn.25The Times, 21 June 1841; Staffordshire Gazette, qu. in The Times, 25 July 1841. The following year, as chairman of the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce, Spooner lobbied the prime minister Sir Robert Peel through four memorials on his currency plan.26Richard Spooner to Sir Robert Peel, 3 Aug. 1842, Add. 40513, f. 69, first ‘Memorial from the Birmingham Chamber of Commerce’, ibid., ff. 71-2; Spooner to Peel, 4 Nov. 1842, Add. 40518, f. 109, second ‘Memorial’, ibid., ff. 112-15; Spooner to Peel, 26 Nov. 1842, 2 Dec. 1842, Add. 40519, ff. 250-5, third ‘Memorial’, ibid., ff. 257-61; Spooner to Peel, 9 Dec. 1842, Add. 40520, f. 187, fourth ‘Memorial’, ff. 190-4. The correspondence was later published as The currency question (1843). Peel, a dogmatic supporter of monetary orthodoxy, did not approve and struggled to comprehend what note issues limited by dividends or the national debt actually meant. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he asked. If not convertible into gold, what was the pound note to represent? Peel denied that a paper currency could be based upon the national debt or national solvency as ‘these things are utterly unavailing as standards of value’.27Peel to Spooner, 2 Dec. 1842, Add. 40519, ff. 269-79 (first qu. at 273); Peel to Spooner, 12 Dec. 1842, Add. 40520, ff. 195-200 (second qu. at 196). However, Spooner seems to have envisaged the national debt or taxes less as a standard of value and more as a rough measure of how much circulating medium the country required. Spooner’s currency views remained a ‘tower of strength’ in Birmingham, and worked to his advantage at the 1844 by-election.28Morning Post, 11 July 1844. Derided as a ‘glutton for punishment’ in view of his innumerable election defeats, Spooner, who described himself as ‘no Peelite’, had the last laugh when he profited from his opponents’ divisions and was returned.29The Examiner, 13 July 1844 (first qu.); The Times, 6 July 1844 (second qu.).

In the House, Spooner joined his Radical colleague George Frederick Muntz in criticising the new poor law, supporting currency reform, advocating a progressive property tax, and opposing the 1845 Maynooth college bill.30Hansard, 18, 25 July 1844, vol. 76, cc. 1005, 1056-7, 1419-20 (poor law); ibid., 25 July 1845, vol. 82, cc. 1100-8 (currency); ibid., 5 Mar. 1845, vol. 78, c. 578 (property tax). However, whereas Muntz was hostile to all religious endowments, Spooner’s opposition to the last measure stemmed from his doctrinal objections to Catholicism, which he believed to be ‘dangerous, delusive and unscriptural’, a position he shared with Charles Newdegate, protectionist MP for North Warwickshire.31Hansard, 17 Apr. 1845, vol. 79, cc. 909-14 (at 909), see also ibid., 19 May 1845, vol. 80, cc. 566-74. Like Muntz, Spooner believed that repeal of the corn laws without prior reform of the monetary system, which remained the ‘monster evil’, would depress prices.32Hansard, 27 Feb. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 292-6; 13 Mar. 1846, ibid., cc. 1010-21 (qu. at 1013). Unlike his colleague, however, Spooner divided against repeal in 1846. Spooner’s unwillingness to countenance political reform contributed to his defeat at Birmingham at the 1847 general election, but he was returned for North Warwickshire as a protectionist shortly afterwards.33Morn. Chro., 28 July 1847; Daily News, 31 July 1847; The Times, 11, 14 Aug. 1847; Morning Post, 12 Aug. 1847; D. Fraser, Urban politics in Victorian England (1976), 195; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 24, 302. As he had never supported the corn laws, Spooner was an idiosyncratic protectionist. Like Muntz, he argued that, for reasons of justice and consistency, once agriculture had been deprived of protection so too must other trades.34Hansard, 3 July 1848, vol. 100, c. 22. However, he opposed the lowering of duties on foreign sugar, which he believed would promote slavery, and the abolition of the navigation laws, on grounds of national defence.35Ibid. Although Spooner continued to vote in the protectionist minorities of the time, he emphasised the need for currency reform above all else, but his proposed report was rejected by the 1848 secret committee on distress, which endorsed the status quo.36Hansard, 6 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 255-7; 22 Aug. 1848, vol. 101, cc. 406-14; 8 Mar. 1850, vol. 109, cc. 579-80; PP 1847-48 (395), viii, pt. I, pp. 2, 8-12. Spooner’s attempts to suppress trading in prostitution through creating a new offence of procuration and the imposition of severe penalties, foundered on legal objections.37Hansard, 23 June 1846, vol. 87, c. 909; 16, 30 Mar. 1847, vol. 91, cc. 20-1, 616-17; 13, 17 May 1847, vol. 92, cc. 688-9, 789, 793-4, 1017-19; PP 1847 (245), iv. 11-16; CJ, cii. 520, 571-2, 644, 800; LJ, lxxix. 638, 695, 723. However, with the help of his nephew, Samuel Wilberforce, bishop of Oxford, in the Lords, his much-simplified protection of women bill received royal assent, 28 July 1849.38Hansard, 27 June 1849, vol. 106, cc. 1024-9; 25 July 1849, vol. 107, cc. 953-5; CJ, civ. 396, 466, 567, 585, 591; LJ, lxxxi. 32; 12 & 13 Vict., c. 76. Spooner’s eldest sister was the wife of William Wilberforce, MP, the famous Evangelical opponent of slavery.

In partnership with Newdegate, Spooner was one of the parliamentary leaders of ultra-Protestantism, using the National Club as a base from which to plot resistance to an 1848 bill to establish diplomatic relations with Rome.39J. Wolffe, The protestant crusade in Great Britain, 1829-1860 (1991), 219; Hansard, 24, 25 Aug. 1848, vol. 101, cc. 494-5, 518-19. Repenting of his past support for Catholic emancipation, Spooner became a vociferous opponent of the Catholic relief bills of the late 1840s.40Hansard, 24 Feb. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 482-4; 14 Apr. 1847, vol. 91, cc. 770-3; Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 230. He regarded attempts to admit Jews to Parliament as ‘but another step towards the total abandonment of all the safeguards to the constitution of Church and State’, 18 May 1849.41Hansard, 11 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, cc. 493-9; 7 May 1849, vol. 104, cc. 1419-21; 18 May 1849, vol. 105, c. 680 (qu.). Between 1848 and 1852 he repeatedly moved in vain to remove the sum granted to Maynooth for repairs from the budget of the Irish board of public works.42The 1845 Maynooth College Act meant that the seminary’s endowment was rendered permanent and no longer subject to an annual vote. However, as a public building, Maynooth received a small sum from the Irish board of public works for repairs, which was subject to an annual supply vote, which Spooner sought to challenge. Hansard, 14 Aug. 1848, vol. 101, c. 137; 1 June 1849, vol. 105, c. 1043; 16 June 1851, vol. 117, cc. 820-2. On the last occasion his amendment was defeated by just two votes (ibid., 831-3). In 1850, Colonel Sibthorp deputised for the absent Spooner: Hansard, 24 May 1850, vol. 111, cc. 363-4. He expressed ‘great hostility to the principles of the Roman Catholic religion’, and contended that conciliatory measures were pointless as the Church of Rome would not ‘be satisfied with anything short of supremacy’.43Hansard, 6 June 1851, vol. 117, cc. 558-9 (first qu.); 9 May 1851, vol. 116, c. 823 (second qu.) The accession of Derby’s protectionist ministry to office in February 1852 encouraged Spooner to escalate his campaign against Maynooth, with the timing also motivated by his belief that the establishment of a Roman Catholic hierarchy of bishops in 1850 had revealed the aggressive expansionism of Rome to all.44Hansard, 27 Feb. 1852, vol. 119, cc. 931-2; F. Wallis, ‘The revival of the anti-Maynooth campaign in Britain, 1850-1852’, Albion, 19 (1987), 527-47 (at 531-2, 534). When Derby’s government adopted a ‘studied ambiguity’ on Maynooth, Spooner forced the issue by moving for a select committee on the educational system of the seminary, 11 May 1852.45Hansard, 11 May 1852, vol. 121, cc. 501-23; Wallis, ‘Anti-Maynooth campaign’, 532; qu. from Greville memoirs, vi. 463 (12 May 1852), who also noted that ‘It would, however, look as if they [Derby’s government] meant to pander to the ‘No-Popery’ rage which is now so rife’. Spooner’s speech emphasised his religious objections to Maynooth’s teachings, which were ‘injurious to society … having a tendency to create immorality, and … completely subversive’.46Hansard, 11 May 1852, vol. 121, c. 501; Wallis, ‘Anti-Maynooth campaign’, 532-4; idem, Popular anti-Catholicism in mid-Victorian England (1993), 129-34. However, repeated adjournments and obstruction by Liberal and Irish MPs delayed a division and Spooner withdrew his motion, 15 June 1852.47Hansard, 25, 27 May, 3 June 1852, vol. 121, cc. 1113-68, 1255-62, 1378-9; Wallis, ‘Anti-Maynooth campaign’, 535.

After being re-elected in second place at the 1852 general election, Spooner resumed his campaign, but his motion for repeal of the 1845 Maynooth College Act was defeated 162-192, 23 Feb. 1853.48Hansard, 22, 23 Feb. 1853, vol. 124, cc. 413-36, 521-3. He had more success with his amendment to strike out the grant to Maynooth from the Irish board of public works budget, 19 May 1853, as he ‘packed his side, and tricked the Treasury benches’, winning the division by twenty votes, after which he ‘strutted about the lobby’.49Whitty, The Derbyites, 134 (both qus.); Hansard, 19 May 1853, vol. 127, cc. 398-9, 405-6. Spooner continued to bring forward annual motions against Maynooth and was not satisfied by the 1855 report of the royal commission, appointed by Lord Aberdeen, into the seminary’s teaching.50Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 266-7, 271, 276-7. An indefatigable attender, Spooner voted in all but ten divisions in 1856, and his ‘solemn and imposing voice’ was a habitual presence in religious debates.51‘The House of Commons in 1857’, Gent. Mag. (1857), i. 27 (qu.). Spooner voted in 138 (63%) out of 219 divisions in 1849; 187 (72.7%) out of 257 in 1852-3; and 188 (94.9%) out of 198 in 1856: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849; Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck (1857), 20. In partnership with Newdegate, Spooner was ever vigilant against any concession to Catholicism, no matter how small. For example, he opposed a grant of £550 to Catholic priests visiting prisons, 12 July 1854, saying that ‘for Parliament to give its sanction to the propagation of the Catholic religion would be a national sin’.52Hansard, 12 July 1854, vol. 133, c. 1419.

Considering the Crimean War ‘just and necessary’, Spooner nevertheless doubted that it could be carried on under the 1844 Bank Charter Act.53Hansard, 13, 21 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 685-6 (qu.), 1094-1101. In supporting Muntz’s unsuccessful motion for a select committee on the monetary system, 28 Feb. 1856, Spooner rejected the laissez-faire view that ‘panics and oscillations were owing to a law of nature, and nothing could prevent them. He knew of no such law of nature. It was the law of that House’.54Hansard, 28 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 1534-8 (at 1535). Spooner spoke in favour of currency reform, 4, 7 Dec. 1857, although he denied that he had ever favoured an inconvertible paper currency, and was one of only two dissenting members of the 1858 select committee on the Bank Acts.55Hansard, 4, 7 Dec. 1857, vol. 148, cc. 180-4, 312-13; PP 1857-58 (381), v. 3-28, 55-6, 73, 76.

Unchallenged at the 1857 and 1859 general elections, Spooner’s anti-Maynooth campaign suffered from declining momentum in the late 1850s, with his annual motions now regarded as ‘one of the standing jokes of the House of Commons’ and ‘ridiculous & impractical’.56Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Nov. 1864 (first qu.); The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865, ed. T. Jenkins, Camden Society, 4th ser., xl (1990), 38 (29 Apr. 1858). Although his 1856 bill to repeal Maynooth’s endowment had passed its first reading before being talked out by Irish MPs, thereafter Spooner’s motions were defeated by increasing majorities and he himself complained on one occasion that no Conservative MPs ‘thought it worth their while to attend’.57Hansard, 21 May 1857, vol. 145, c. 670 (qu.); Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 147-8; Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 277-80. He was also hindered by his deteriorating eyesight as Sir John Trelawny, observing Spooner’s annual anti-Maynooth speech, 29 Apr. 1858, noted:

The old man is evidently breaking up. He could scarcely read his papers – even with the aid of an enormous pair of coloured spectacles.58Trelawny diaries, 38 (29 Apr. 1858).

Although his hostility to the endowment remained undiminished, Spooner’s almost complete blindness forced him to relinquish the leadership of the anti-Maynooth campaign to George Hampden Whalley, MP for Peterborough, in 1861, and he retired from public life after the 1862 session, although he remained an MP until his death in November 1864.59Hansard, 21 Mar. 1861, vol. 162, c. 154; Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 149-53; Edwards, Personal recollections, 51; The Times, 25 Nov. 1864.

Regardless of his political and religious views, Spooner had been a diligent constituency MP, and even after his removal to North Warwickshire, ‘for all purposes of Ministerial or Parliamentary business Birmingham enjoyed all the advantages of a third Member’.60Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Nov. 1864. His personal qualities were held in high esteem by all, including his political opponents, as one local Liberal obituary noted:

In the Birmingham town hall, on the county hustings, and in the House of Commons, he was always the same – frank, out-spoken, courageous, manly and invariably good-humoured.61Ibid.

His personal estate, sworn under £5,000, passed to his two sons Richard (d. 1867), an Indian civil servant, and Isaac, vicar of Edgbaston, neither of whom played any part in their father’s old bank, which collapsed in 1865.62Burke’s landed gentry (1879), ii. 1500-1; Edwards, Personal recollections, 51-2; Moss, Thomas Attwood, 356-7; Calendar of the Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration, England and Wales (1865), 302, www.ancestry.com. The increasingly isolated Newdegate, Spooner’s political heir, carried on his fight against Popery until his retirement in 1885.