HILL TREVOR, Arthur, afterwards viscount Dungannon (1798-1862), of Whittlebury, Northants.

Hill Trevor, described by the Conservative election manager Francis Bonham as ‘one of the cannon balls of the Tory right’, had sat briefly for New Romney before his return at Durham City in 1831 as the nominee of his kinsman Lord Londonderry.1A.J. Heesom, Durham City and its MPs (1992), 25. In the pre-Reform parliament, he had quickly gained a reputation as a vociferous opponent of the ministerial reform bill and a staunch defender of the established church.2HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 628-31. The subject of malicious attacks in the Durham press due to his opposition to reform, he was defeated by two Reformers at the 1832 general election, but, backed by Londonderry’s newly formed Durham Conservative Association, he was comfortably re-elected in 1835.3Durham Advertiser, 18 May, 15, 22 June 1832. Although during the campaign he had firmly declared his support for Peel, he insisted that ‘I go to Parliament entirely unpledged’.4Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 159-60; Dod Mss. iii. 1066.

A frequent attender, Hill Trevor divided with the ministerial minority on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and against the Whig opposition’s amendment to the address, stating that ‘he was at a loss to know how honourable members could do otherwise than, in a spirit of fair play, accord an honest and impartial trial to his Majesty’s present government’, 24 Feb. 1835. He voted against Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue which forced the collapse of Peel’s short-lived ministry, and thereafter was a fierce and consistent critic of the Whig government’s attempts to reform the revenues of the Irish church, calling their measures ‘an act of sacrilegious robbery and spoliation’, 27 May 1835. He subsequently presented petitions on behalf of the Durham clergy against Irish church appropriation, but as the only Conservative member in the county, the propriety of the petitions was questioned by local Liberal MPs.5Hansard, 17 June 1835, vol. 28, cc. 843-6. Hill Trevor’s ties with his constituency’s ecclesiastical leaders, whom he regularly defended in the House, made him the subject of criticism from his Radical opponents throughout his parliamentary career, with Daniel O’Connell ironically dubbing him ‘the meek and modest representative of the clergy of Durham’.6Ibid., 25 Apr. 1839, vol. 47, c. 540.

Hill Trevor’s numerous speeches in the House were often laced with hyperbole, and ‘his tall thin person appearing perpendicularly’ to speak could provoke ‘scenes of uproar and confusion’.7Recollections of the Lords and Commons (1838), ii. 101. In a debate on the municipal reform bill, he labelled the clause to disenfranchise freemen ‘a sentence of condemnation, the most unjust and most unfounded that it was well possible to conceive’, 23 June 1835, and despite the defeat of his motion to remove the clause, he rose again, ‘amidst loud manifestations of impatience’, to insist that the proposal ‘would constitute the House the executioners of fraud and violence’ and that ‘if the public sanctioned this gross breach of faith, England must be much altered’.8Hansard, 23 June 1835, vol. 28, cc. 1117-8. Using similarly melodramatic language to criticise Sir William Molesworth’s motion to repeal the property qualification for MPs, he argued that ‘a more obnoxious or objectionable measure ... had never been suggested’, and successfully led the arguments against the proposal, 14 Feb. 1837.

A zealous advocate of the established church, the majority of Hill Trevor’s contributions concerned religious measures. He regarded the Melbourne ministry’s commutation of tithes bill ‘with fear and apprehension’, 25 Mar. 1836, and he subsequently argued that the appointed commissioners should only be members of the Church of England, but his motion was defeated 58-19, 24 June 1836. His fiercest invective, however, was reserved for his unyielding opposition to the extension of religious liberties. Responding to a proposal to admit dissenters into the university of Durham, he insisted that ‘he would rather see the whole establishment fall to the ground’, 15 Apr. 1836, and in a debate on the removal of Jewish civil disabilities, he stated that ‘by admitting Jews into this House, you unchristianize this House. ... I consider this a truly disgraceful bill. ... [I]t will be quite possible, if it should ever pass into law, for this House to be composed entirely of Jews – no very enviable state of things’, 15 Aug. 1836. He was also a vocal supporter of the Protestant minority in Ireland, declaring that he feared the government’s Irish municipal corporations bill ‘and every other measure introduced by the ministers as having for its object to convert Ireland from a Protestant to a Popish country’, 11 Apr. 1837. Unsurprisingly, he was a consistent critic of the Maynooth grant.

Backed by the united support of the Durham freeman, Hill Trevor was re-elected at the top of the poll at the 1837 general election, but his succession as third viscount Dungannon in December of that year heralded a quieter phase of parliamentary activity. His attempts to pass a bill to restrict the opening of beer-houses, which he believed to be a hive of criminal activity, came to nothing, 10 July 1838, 27 June 1839, and apart from questioning ministers as to the threat posed by Chartist meetings, 30 Apr, 6 June 1839, he confined his contributions to predictable defences of the established church. He remained loyal to Peel’s leadership of the opposition, and in the critical debate on the Conservative leader’s motion of no confidence in Melbourne’s ministry, he attacked ‘a Government whose policy had been fraught with danger to the best interests of the country’, and divided in the oppositional majority, 4 June 1841. Following the dissolution, however, he retired to focus on the management of his inherited estates in Belvoir, county Down.9Durham Advertiser, 2 July 1841; T.J. Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975), 119-22.

In April 1843 Hill Trevor, now styled viscount Dungannon, offered again for Durham City at a by-election following the appointment of Robert Fitzroy, the sitting Liberal member, to the governorship of New Zealand. Opposed by John Bright, the anti-corn law campaigner, the campaign gained national prominence, and following a brief and bitter contest, Dungannon won by a majority of 102.10G.M. Trevelyan, The life of John Bright (1925), 111; Newcastle Courant, 7 Apr. 1843. Back in the Commons, he criticised any attempt to repeal the corn laws, 12 May 1843, and returned to his vigorous defence of the established church in Ireland. He spoke in support of the Peel ministry’s Irish arms bill, 15 June 1843, and accused his political opponents, who ‘vituperated’ the Protestant clergy ‘as idle drones, living on the fat of the land’, of causing ‘much of the bad spirit which was engendered in respect to that Church in the minds of the people’, 23 June. This, however, was to be his last known speech in the Commons as he was unseated on petition, 14 July 1843, on the grounds that his agents had paid ‘head money’ to several hundred electors.11Bean, Parliamentary representation, 140; The Times, 13, 14 July, 1843. He did not stand again, despite being requisitioned.12HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 30.

In September 1855 Dungannon was elected a representative peer for Ireland, and thereafter became an active member of the House of Lords, focusing his energies against legislation dealing with the marriage laws. He led the opposition to the divorce bill of 1857 and Lord Wodehouse’s marriage law amendment bill in 1859. He also retained his interest in ecclesiastical matters, and in May 1862 led the opposition to Lord Ebury’s motion for the abolition of clerical subscription.13G. Le G. Northgate, ‘Trevor, Arthur Hill-, third viscount Dungannon (1798-1862)’, rev. H.C.G. Matthew, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. In August that year, he died at his London home, in Grafton Street, from an internal rupture.14The Times, 13 Aug. 1862. With no male children, the viscountcy was extinguished. He left everything to his widow, and as his father had willed, the estates passed to his nephew, the 3^rd marquess of Downshire’s son, Lord Arthur Edwin Hill (1819-1911), Conservative Member for County Down from 1845 until his elevation to the Lords in 1880 as Baron Trevor.15HP Commons, 1820-32, ?? During his lifetime, Dungannon wrote several political tracts on the church, municipal reform, education, religious toleration, rural crime and divorce, and published The life and times of William III (2 vols., 1835-6).16‘Trevor, Arthur Hill-, third viscount Dungannon’, rev. Matthew. His correspondence with Lord Londonderry is located in Durham record office.17Dur co. RO. Ref. D/Lo.