WILLOUGHBY, Sir Henry Pollard (1796-1865), of Baldon House, Oxon. of Berwick Lodge, Glos. of 63A Lower Brook Street, London, Mdx.

Willoughby came from a Bristol mercantile family, and in 1813 succeeded to a baronetcy and the manor of Baldon in Oxfordshire, which had been purchased by his father, a successful experimental farmer.1HP Commons, 1820-32, 829. His heir held 3,000 acres in Oxfordshire, Gloucestershire, Surrey and Buckinghamshire: J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 480. First returned in 1831, he voted for the reform bill, before vacating the seat of Yarmouth at the 1832 general election.2Hansard, 17 Dec. 1831, vol. 9, cc. 459-65; HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 830, 831. He was returned instead for Newcastle-under-Lyme as a ‘moderate reformer’ who stood ‘equally distant from that party which saw no need of change’, defeating Edmund Peel, the brother of Sir Robert Peel. Although ‘neither Tory, Whig, nor Radical’, he concluded that the present government was ‘in a position to do more good than any other set of men’.3Morning Chronicle, 7 Jan. 1835; J.C. Wedgwood, Staffordshire parliamentary history from the earliest times to the present day, 1213-1841 (1919), 75, 81; Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832.

Over the course of a long and active parliamentary career Willoughby gravitated towards Conservatism, but did not conform to a party line. At Westminster he ‘displayed great habits of business’ and, although not ‘in the front ranks of Parliamentary speakers’, (a ‘dull prosy speaker’, his oratory was not considered ‘particularly winning or impressive’), his regular contributions to debate ‘commanded the ear of the House’.4Morning Post, 24 Mar. 1865; Bury and Norwich Post, 28 Mar. 1865; Caledonian Mercury, 25 Mar. 1865; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1865. Hansard 1803-2005 currently lists 1,034 contributions to debate. He addressed ‘most subjects of importance’, speaking only when ‘he had something pertinent to the matter in hand … and then confined himself to a plain clear statement of his facts or opinions’.5Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1865; Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Mar. 1865. On questions involving ‘Consols, Sinking Funds, or any of the manifold processes by which the taxes are disbursed’, however, it was ‘not always easy to catch the thread of his talk; he overwhelmed you with figures, and never condescended to place his argument in popular phrase’: Bury and Norwich Post, 28 Mar. 1865. He ‘always spoke to temper a warm debate, or to express those moderate views of questions which show the statesman’.6Morning Post, 24 Mar. 1865; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1865. ‘In person, he was the plainest of country gentlemen’, and ‘commonly had an undignified, not to say slovenly appearance’. He ‘stuck resolutely to antiquated fashions in dress’, never being ‘known to wear a white shirt’, and appearing in the House ‘with no collar at all’, a ‘very dingy’ black neckerchief ‘twisted around his neck as a hay cutter would twist a band round a truss of hay’, clad in ‘a swallow-tailed coat of dark brown or green’ and crowned with a hat ‘obviously a stranger to the brush’.7Bury and Norwich Post, 28 Mar. 1865; Belfast News-letter, 20 Feb. 1863, 28 Mar. 1865; Caledonian Mercury, 25 Mar. 1865. He was also a subscriber and regular attendee at Her Majesty’s Theatre in the 1840s: Morning Post, 12 Aug. 1846. Willoughby was tall with ‘a bright pinked hairless face’ that contained ‘hard features, and looked sullen’, and was described by Lord Kimberley in 1863 as ‘a singularly ugly man’, after he had single-handedly opposed the vote for the Prince of Wales’s marriage allowance.8Caledonian Mercury, 25 Mar. 1865; Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865; A. Hawkins and J. Powell, The Journal of John Wodehouse First Earl of Kimberley for 1862-1902 (1997), 85; Hansard, 17, 19, 23 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 414, 502-3, 644-5; Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 225; York Herald, 21 Feb. 1863.

On entering the reformed Commons Willoughby was ‘a great supporter of church property’. He opposed the Irish church temporalities bill, 11 Mar. 1833, and Althorp’s proposal to replace church rates, 21 Apr. 1834, and while he broadly approved of the ministry’s Irish tithes bill, was strongly opposed to appropriation for secular purposes.9In June 1833 he advised Peel that opposition to the measure would be stronger if the critical motion stated that the surplus would be applied generally to ‘ecclesiastical purposes’, rather than specifically to the established church: C.S. Parker, Sir Robert Peel (1899), ii. 222. He voted against Hume’s proposals for making economies in the public service, 14 Feb. 1833, and Attwood’s motion for an inquiry into public distress, 21 Mar. 1833, but divided against the abolition of flogging in the army, 2 Apr. 1833, and opposed Jewish emancipation, 25 May 1833 (and would again in 1847, 1848 and 1853).10Although Willoughby did not object to Jews holding office, he contended that they ‘would be unfit to hold any post’ connected to the Church of England. ‘A Jewish Prime Minister’, he argued ‘would be an absurdity’, given that it would be his duty to nominate the dignitaries of the Church: Hansard, 3 Apr. 1848, vol. 97, c. 1243. He also voted against shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833, and the repeal of the Septennial Act, 15 May 1834. Regarding reforms to the monetary system, he opposed the retention of ‘a metal as a standard’, which he believed had contracted the ‘circulating medium’ upon which productive industry relied, and denounced the Bank of England as ‘a great jobber in public securities’, which served its own rather than the nation’s interests.11Hansard, 23 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 469-74; 2 Aug. 1833, vol. 20, c. 296. In 1834 he became an outspoken critic of the new poor law and would subsequently, according to sympathisers, labour ‘fearlessly and devotedly … to uproot and annihilate its unholy and unconstitutional measures’. He denounced centralised administration and extolled the virtues of vestries which, he claimed, ‘were generally composed of farmers and tradesmen, who had a sympathy for and an influence over the poor’, and later denounced the ‘workhouse test’ as ‘dangerous and unjust’.12G. Fletcher, Parliamentary Portraits (1862), 107; Hansard, 14 May 1834, vol. 23, c. 1002; Morning Post, 24 June 1841. For details of his objections, see his letter to The Times, 15 Dec. 1841. In 1862 he was to claim that the ‘system had broken down’, the ‘hundreds of large union-houses’, never having been filled, standing as ‘monuments of the folly of the law which had called them into existence’: Hansard, 24 July 1862, vol. 168, cc. 775-6.

Willoughby was ‘very attentive to his parliamentary duties’ in this period, serving on select committees on the sale of beer, the Channel fisheries, hand-loom weavers’ petitions, the water supply of the metropolis, and election expenses.13Morning Chronicle, 7 Jan. 1835; PP 1833 (416) xv. 1; PP 1833 (676) xiv. 67; PP 1834 (556) x. 1; PP 1834 (571) xv. 1; PP 1833 (591) ix. 263. Although he approved of the government’s position on the remission of taxation, he was sorrowed by Lord Stanley’s departure from the Whig ministry, and disagreed with Lord Grey’s Irish policy. As a supporter of the factory bill, outdoor relief, freeman’s rights, and scrutiny of the pensions list, he stood for re-election at Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1835 as a ‘moderate and independent’ follower of Peel. However, in spite of enlisting the support of the borough’s reformers, he was defeated by Peel’s brother and a second Conservative.14Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835; Wedgwood, Staffordshire parliamentary history, 77, 87. His supporters claimed that his defeat was ‘entirely owing to his determination not to pay money to the lower class of voters during the progress of the poll’: Morning Post, 14 Jan. 1835. He unsuccessfully contested Poole in the Conservative interest in 1837, where his campaign was allegedly obstructed by ‘hired mobs of sailors, and others’.15Hampshire Advertiser, 22 July 1837; Standard, 26 July 1837. Having recovered from a serious riding accident in Hyde Park in July 1840, he contested Northampton in 1841 as an ‘independent Conservative’, but was again defeated by two free-spending Reformers.16The Times, 16 July 1840, 21 June 1841; Bury and Norwich Post, 7 July 1841. By now regarded by detractors as ‘a regular tory hack’, he was finally returned for Worcester in 1847 as a ‘Liberal-Conservative’. Adhering to ‘Protestant principles’, and holding ‘the tenets of the Catholic religion to be incompatible with the extension of civil liberty’, he voted against the Catholic relief bill, 8 Dec. 1847, and objected to the Maynooth grant as ‘a first step to the endowment of the Catholic clergy’.17Daily News, 5 Dec. 1849; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 29 July, 5 Aug. 1847. He did, however, oppose Richard Spooner’s anti-Maynooth motion, 23 Feb. 1853. Possessed of ‘a large fortune’, he was soon regarded as ‘one of the most active of the parliamentary landed interest’.18Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Apr. 1850. Yet, although he was committed to the ‘judicious protection of domestic industry and agriculture’, he opposed the taxation of ‘raw products’ and considered himself ‘a pupil of Malthus and McCullough’. Priding himself on having ‘never voted for a Corn Law in his life’, he claimed to have been ‘a repealer before Cobden took up the cause or the League was in existence’.19Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 4 July 1852, 5 Aug. 1847. He developed a position on the question in the late 1820s, and in December 1833 defended the increasing importation of Irish agricultural produce into the English market, arguing that sound policy required ‘that the productions of different parts of the same empire should be freely interchanged’. He supported the removal of the malt tax, 27 Feb. 1834, and voted against Hume’s motion for a low fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834. In 1843 he warned agriculturalists against the ‘danger of trusting too much to Corn Laws for high prices’, advising them instead to seek relief from ‘the whole host of rates which daily … invade the pockets of the farmers’: HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 830; The Apology of An English Landowner, addressed to the Landed Proprietors of the County of Oxford (1827); ‘To the Agriculturalists of England’, Standard, 24 Dec. 1833; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 29 Apr. 1843.

Classed as a ‘Free Trade Conservative’ by Jones and Erickson, Willoughby was, however, no Peelite, and was ‘bitter in his hostility to the Whigs’.20W.D. Jones & A.B. Erickson, The Peelites 1846-1857 (1972), 237-9; Freeman’s Journal, 18 Apr. 1850. He was by instinct a Conservative and voted solidly with the Derbyites on all key issues over the next six years, even attending a meeting of the ‘Protectionist Members’ at Lord Stanley’s residence in November 1847.21J.B. Conacher, The Aberdeen Coalition, 1852-1855 (1968), 135; idem., The Peelites and the Party System (1972), 224, 229, 232. He opposed the repeal of the navigation laws, 12 Mar., 23 Apr. 1849, and supported Disraeli’s motion to relieve agricultural distress, 15 Mar. 1849. However, in November 1849 he opposed a bill to relieve stock-in-trade of taxation, a matter considered to be of vast importance to the agricultural interest.22Standard, 12 Nov. 1849. He did not divide on two motions to repeal the malt tax, 5 July 1850, 8 May 1851. In April 1850 he assisted the efforts of Disraeli, to whom he was said to be ‘attached most warmly’, to reduce official salaries, and that month successfully proposed an amendment to reduce stamp duty.23Freeman’s Journal, 18 Apr. 1850; Hansard, 15 Apr. 1850, vol. 110, c. 335; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 July 1852. In the previous ten weeks he had suggested ‘three out of the five moves which brought about the five signal defeats of ministers’: Freeman’s Journal, 18 Apr. 1850. Having opposed Roebuck’s motion approving government foreign policy, 28 June 1850, he once again backed Disraeli’s motion for agricultural relief, 13 Feb. 1851, and in April proposed an amendment to the window tax which the government was obliged to support.24Hansard, 14 Apr. 1851, vol. 116, c. 167; Morning Post, 5 May 1851; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 July 1852. He joined a meeting of the members committed to the ‘protection of native industry’ that May, and attended Lord Derby’s parliamentary dinner in February 1852. Being ‘strongly opposed to all measures of a compulsory nature’, he opposed the local militia bill and supported Francis Charteris’s unsuccessful motion against selection by ballot.25Hansard, 17 May 1852, vol. 121, cc. 721-2. He argued that only unmarried men between the ages of 20 and 25 should be liable for service: Ibid, cc. 718-9. Willoughby reluctantly voted for the income tax, which he considered ‘inquisitorial and grossly unequal’, but vowed to call for its reduction at the next general election.26Hansard, 6 May 1852, vol. 121, c. 350; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 July 1852. He supported Palmerston’s amendment to the militia bill, which precipitated the resignation of Lord John Russell’s ministry, 20 Feb. 1852, and, having declined an invitation to stand for Oxfordshire in May 1851, was re-elected for Worcester in 1852, pledged to support Derby, provided that he did not ‘go back to Protection’.27Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 3 May 1851; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 July 1852. He divided in favour of Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852, and voted for Hume’s motion to remove the remaining protective duties on agricultural and manufactured imports, 3 Mar. 1853. He was, however, one of 16 members absent ‘without a specified cause’ from the division on Gladstone’s budget resolutions, 2 May 1853.28Morning Chronicle, 4 May 1853.

It was said of Willoughby that his ‘passion is finance’, his dreams being ‘haunted by visions of irregular or unexplained balances in the Exchequer’. He became distinguished for the close attention he paid to government finances and was credited with doing much to simplify ‘the national accounts’.29Gent. Mag. (1857), i. 28; Gent. Mag. (1865), i. 663. Although his speeches on exchequer bonds were as ‘impregnable to human intellect as Bradshaw’s railway book’, (for examples, see Hansard, 29 May 1854, vol , 133, cc. 1116-8; 7 Aug. 1855, vol. 139, cc. 1925-7; 10 Mar. 1859, vol. 152, cc. 1627-9), he was said to be ‘perhaps more competent than any other person in or out of Parliament to analyse and dissect a Budget, discover a fallacy in an array of figures, or cross-hackle a Chancellor of the Exchequer’: Freeman’s Journal, 29 Aug. 1855; Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865. From 1849 he was a prominent figure in supply debates where, being ‘deeply read in blue-books’ and possessing ‘an astonishing memory’ for figures, he was relied upon to closely scrutinise the estimates.30Caledonian Mercury, 25 Mar. 1865; Belfast News-letter, 2 July 1857, quoting Saturday Review; T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 187. Feeling that the country ‘was overrun with too many Commissions … whose Blue-books were seldom read, and served only for waste paper’, he championed the select committee as ‘the proper tribunal to examine anything which concerned the expenditure of the public money’.31Hansard, 24 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, c. 1465. He himself sat on inquiries into the bankrupt law consolidation bill, and the registrar’s office (bankruptcy) in 1849-50, as well as several election committees.32PP 1849 (551) viii. 159; PP 1850 (153) xviii. 419. He also complained of the cost of the new Houses of Parliament and was still arguing in 1865 that it was ‘the duty of Parliament to ascertain when and where this drain was to stop’.33PP 1847-48 (455) lx. 389; Hansard, 10 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, c. 178; M.H. Port, Imperial London. Civil Government Building in London 1851-1915 (1995), 155, 301. He complained of ‘the costly nature of the finishings of the Houses’ which, he claimed, ‘though computed to cost £700,000’ had actually cost ‘the magnificent sum of £2,500,000’: Hansard, 22 June 1857, vol. cc. 149-50, 157-8. By the mid-1850s he had made hundreds of contributions to debates on government finances and called for numerous returns.34For just one example, see the return of public income and expenditure from 1842-52: PP 1852-53 (68) lvii. 169. He frequently communicated his ideas through letters to the press, and in 1857 asked his fellow members to consider whether their control over the public purse had become too great a responsibility for a legislature which lacked effective procedures and regulatory measures to control mushrooming expenditure, particularly on the military.35The Times, 2 June 1849. Convinced that previous attempts to control public finances by statute had been bypassed or ignored, he called for the establishment of a ‘controlling power’ over public spending, and demanded a regular audit of the public accounts.36H.P. Willoughby, A few words on the question, whether there is by law any effective control over the public expenditure (1857). He suggested that greater power be given to the comptroller of the exchequer, a post established in 1831. He further claimed that the functions of the commission for the reduction of the national debt had effectively been absorbed by the Treasury.37Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 28 Mar. 1857; Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1857. In July 1858 he tried unsuccessfully to amend the appropriation bill in order to limit the Treasury’s authority to re-distribute surpluses without reference to parliament.38Hansard, 22 July 1858, vol. 151, cc. 1921-2, 1924; Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 60. During this time he also served on select committee inquiries into civil service superannuation, public monies, and committees of supply.39PP 1856 (337) ix. 1; PP 1856 (375) (375-I) xv.1, 855; PP 1857 session 1 (107) ii. 761; PP 1857 session 2 (279) ix. 495; PP 1857 session 2 (261) ix. 47. He believed that the English ‘paid in the shape of compensation and superannuation alone as much as would maintain the whole civil establishments of any other kingdom on the face of the earth’: Hansard, 22 July 1858, vol. 151, c. 1921.

Willoughby was particularly interested in savings bank institutions. In 1844 he was elected chairman of the representatives of a large number of these associations and led a deputation on the savings bank bill that May.40Fletcher, Parliamentary Portraits, 108; Standard, 19 June 1844. Thereafter he frequently presented petitions on behalf of depositors and pursued their interests in the Commons,41PP 1849 (21) xiv. 283 [78]; Hansard, 27 Apr. 1849, vol. 104, c. 961; 29 Aug. 1849, vol. 108, cc. 659-61; 29 Apr. 1850, vol. 110, cc. 912-3. recommending legislation to establish adequate regulation of the savings banks, moving for regular returns of investments.42Hansard, 17 Feb. 1852, vol. 119, c. 667; PP 1854 (70) lxiii. 5; PP 1854-55 (208) xxx. 631; PP 1861 (143) xxxv. 281; PP 1861 (143-I) xxxv. 297. In 1857 he brought to light a system that had grown up by which the treasury diverted funds received from the trustees of the savings banks for national expenditure, ‘and then quietly added [them] to the national debt, without the consent or cognisance of the House of Commons’.43Gent. Mag. (1865), i. 663. Being ‘haunted by visions of what is called “rigging” the market’, he was ‘ominously suspicious’ of William Gladstone, and described the practice of allowing the chancellor of the exchequer ‘to tamper’ with these funds as ‘most monstrous and unconstitutional’.44York Herald, 13 Apr. 1861; Morning Post, 12 May 1857; Hansard, 24 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, c. 1293-4, 1296; 11 May 1857, vol. 145, cc. 113-7, 136-6. Willoughby’s ‘facts and figures were irrefragable’, and, having sat on the relevant select committee in 1858, he was instrumental in the defeat of Gladstone’s savings banks bill, 20 July 1860, the chancellor’s ‘first defeat on a measure of finance’ in the Commons.45PP 1857-58 (441) xvi. 1; The Times, 26 Oct. 1858; Hansard, 20 July 1860, vol. 159, cc. 2226-7; PP 1860 (160) vi. 79; R. Jenkins, Gladstone (1995), 228. Equally critical of Gladstone’s subsequent proposals, Willoughby introduced his own bill to amend the security and management of savings banks in 1862 and the following April brought in another measure to consolidate and amend the existing laws, which bore fruit in the Savings Bank Investment Act of 1863.46PP 1862 (35) v. 113; PP 1863 (183) iv. 129; Hansard, 13 Apr. 1863, vol. 170, c. 120. In spite of their frequent clashes, the often scornful chancellor was ‘always respectful, and even deferential’ to Sir Henry: Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865.

Although Willoughby was remembered as ‘an exceedingly industrious and active member’ and ‘constant in his attendance at the House’, his presence in the division lobby could be intermittent.47Fletcher, Parliamentary Portraits, 106; Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Mar. 1865. In 1849 he participated in 73 out of 219 divisions, 52 of 257 in 1853, and 60 of 198 in 1856: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849; Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot & J.A. Roebuck, 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), 22. There were ‘few subjects, however, upon which he did not occasionally touch’ as a speaker, usually contenting himself ‘to direct a wayward debate into a useful course, and correct misstated facts, rather than to throw new ideas into the discussion’.48Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Mar. 1865. He devoted special attention to Indian finances,49Hansard, 18 July 1853, vol. 129, cc. 424-5. He later pressed for a limitation on military expenditure, arguing that its army ‘ought to be a local force, maintained out of the revenues of that country’: Hansard, 5 Feb. 1858, vol. 148, cc. 800-1; 8 Feb. 1858, vol. 148, c. 933; 4 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, cc. 1379-80; 10 Aug. 1859, vol. 155, c. 1314. and took an active role in debates on the government of India bill in July 1853, arguing that, given the great diversity of that country’s population and the attendant ‘hatred and jealousy’ amongst its religious groups, it would be impossible ‘to maintain British power in India through native agency’.50Morning Post, 24 Mar. 1865; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1865. He and Sir James Elphinstone had been ‘through the culpable indifference or the heroic endurance of the House … suffered to take the questions of Indian finance and Indian military organisation under their especial and most loquacious protection’: Morning Post, 8 Aug. 1860. In February 1854 he criticised the government for failing to act promptly to avoid conflict in the east, arguing that, if its intention to resist Russian aggression ‘had been clearly made known at first, it would have had more effect upon the Emperor of that country than all the despatches in all the blue books put together’. He initially criticised the ministry for launching ‘an aggressive war’ with few allies, and supported the Turkish loan as being the best means to pursue their objective. He supported Roebuck’s motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the war, 29 Jan. 1855, which led to the fall of Aberdeen’s ministry, but opposed his subsequent motion of censure against Palmerston’s cabinet, 19 July 1855.51Hansard, 22 Feb. 1854, vol. 130, cc. 1117-8; 23 July 1855, vol. 139, cc. 1292-3. By then he ‘felt it his duty to give the government his unflinching support, not from love of war, but from a desire to get out of it as quickly as possible’: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 31 Jan. 1857. He did, however, divide in favour of the motion blaming the government for the fall of Kars, 29 Apr. 1856. At Evesham in January 1857, he called for a prompt end to income tax on ‘the war basis’ and strenuously resisted its continuation in 1858, regarding it as ‘a breach of faith’. He agreed to bring forward local representations on the subject, and unsuccessfully opposed an increase in the tax in March 1860.52Hansard, 23 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 1207-11; Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 111; Fletcher, Parliamentary Portraits, 108. Taxpayers in Worcester had complained that papers ‘containing statements of their private affairs’, sent in to the commissioners had ‘found their way into the grocers’ shops, and they found their pats of butter wrapped up therein’: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 31 Jan. 1857. He remained, however, opposed to a tax on landed property, arguing that it would reduce the capacity of proprietors to provide employment.53Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 31 Jan. 1857.

At the 1857 general election Willoughby defended the independent path he had taken in the Commons, and gave qualified support for the ballot and ‘an extended system of education’. He declared himself a supporter of Palmerston, in spite of having criticised the ministry’s conduct towards China, and supported Cobden’s motion of censure on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.54Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 28 Mar. 1857. As an advocate of ‘a peace policy’, he questioned the cost of the Anglo-Persian War, and later criticised the military expedition against China to enforce the treaty of Tientsin.55Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16 Apr. 1859; Hansard, 23 July 1857, vol. 147, cc. 300-1; Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 136. He protested against entering ‘into hostilities with 300,000,000 of half-civilized people, to whom we ought rather to set an example than launch against them all the inventions and appliances of modern warfare’: Hansard, 25 Jan. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 119-21. Although he supported Palmerston over the conspiracy to murder question, 9, 19 Feb. 1858, upon the subsequent formation of a Conservative ministry he was named as one of several ‘independent members’ who were ‘resolved to support Lord Derby’.56Belfast News-letter, 3 Mar. 1858. He was said to have been ‘eagerly panting for the sweets of office’ in 1850, and it was thought that the Conservatives ‘would gladly have given him’ a position in 1858, had he been ‘disposed to accept its responsibility’: Freeman’s Journal, 18 Apr. 1850; Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865. Having supported Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, he advocated an extension of ‘the elective franchise through the corporate franchise’ but condemned ‘the policy of representation by population’,57If such a plan were to be adopted, he argued, then ‘London itself would return as many members as Scotland’: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 30 Apr. 1859. and successfully defended Evesham’s ‘corporate right’ to return two members.58Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1863), 312; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16, 30 Apr. 1859. Having declined an invitation to stand for Birmingham, he was re-elected for Evesham in 1859 as an ‘independent Conservative’, acknowledging the abolition of church rates as a just settlement of a long-standing controversy.59Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16, 23, 30 Apr. 1859. He voted for their abolition at least six times between 1856 and 1862. Unconvinced by the Liberals’ Italian policy, he joined the Conservatives in opposing the address, 10 June 1859.60While critical of the ‘ecclesiastical tyranny’ in the south of Europe, he questioned whether Italy would be improved by war: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 30 Apr. 1859.

During 1859-60 he sat on select committees on packet and telegraph contracts, and miscellaneous expenditure.61PP 1859 session 2 (180) vi. 1; PP 1860 (328) xiv. 1; PP 1860 (407) (407-I) xiv. 525, 605; PP 1860 (431) (431-I) xiv. 637, 769; PP 1860 (483) (483-I) ix. 473, 713. He objected to ‘throwing away the paper duty’, arguing that in spite of being ‘productive of inconvenience’, it was ‘a growing revenue’ which might help to reduce the current deficit.62Hansard, 23 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 1208. In 1861 he became a member of the newly-established public accounts committee and later chaired some its sessions.63PP 1861 (329) xi. 1; PP 1861 (367) xi. 95; PP 1861 (418) xi. 123; PP 1861 (448) xi. 177; PP 1861 (468) (468-I) xi. 205, 233; PP 1862 (220) xi. 173; PP 1862 (414) xi. 203; PP 1863 (309) vii. 477; PP 1864 (494) viii. 327. In 1862 he moved successfully for the preparation of guidelines for committees of supply, but in 1865 would conclude that the committee’s ‘powers and usefulness were extremely limited’.64Birmingham Daily Post, 21 Feb. 1862; Hansard, 20 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, c. 455; R. Shannon, Gladstone, 1809-1865 (1984), 480. A keen advocate of retrenchment, he was one of only four Conservatives to vote in the minority for Stansfield’s motion for the reduction of national expenditure, 3 June 1862.65Freeman’s Journal, 6 June 1862. The motion was defeated 65-367: Hansard, 3 June 1862, vol. 167, cc. 382-5. He was particularly eager to curtail the ‘enormous expenses incurred on dockyards, harbours of refuge, &c.’, and had been selected to serve on the commission to inquire into the control and management of the royal naval dockyards in August 1860.66Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 July 1852; The Times, 20 Nov. 1860; PP 1861 [2790] xxvi. 1. Over the next four years, and with similar aims in mind, he sat on select committees on the board of admiralty, the inland revenue and customs establishment, income and property tax, the ecclesiastical commission, naval promotion and retirement, and the revision of standing orders.67PP 1861 (438) v. 1; PP 1862 (370) (370-I) xii. 131, 385; PP 1863 (424) vi. 303; PP 1862 (467) xi. 219; PP 1863 (457) vi. 43; PP 1863 (501) x. 71; PP 1864 (510) (510-I) x. 747, 863.

Willoughby’s ‘zealous participation’ in debates was undiminished when in 1864 he argued that the amount of taxation and expenditure during the previous five years had been ‘wholly unprecedented’ in the country’s history, thus making it appear that ‘the chief object of an Englishman was to pay taxes’.68Fletcher, Parliamentary Portraits, 109; Hansard, 11 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 473-6. Turning his attention to colonial expenditure, he argued that Britain’s best chance of extricating itself from its ‘perplexing’ relationship with New Zealand would be ‘the establishment of something like a dictatorship’, which might ‘conciliate the feeling of the two races’ of New Zealand, and thus prevent the destruction of the Maori.69Hansard, 13 June 1864, vol. 175, c. 1696; 14 July 1864, vol. 176, cc. 1483-4; Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 275. He had been questioning the likely recovery of sums lent to the New Zealand Company since 1852: Hansard, 4 June 1852, vol. 122, cc. 64-5. In his final contribution to debate, 20 Mar. 1865, he warned the House against indulging in language which might antagonise the United States.70Hansard, 20 Mar. 1865, vol. 177, cc. 1931-2; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 25 Mar. 1865. Having laboured for some time under angina pectoris, he died suddenly at his lodgings in London five days later. Known to all as ‘old Willoughby’, he had gained a reputation for honesty, independence and courtesy.71One of the Commons’ ‘solid, honest, thoughtful men’, he was ‘felt by all to be a genuine type of an English gentleman of a school’ that was ‘rapidly passing away’: Caledonian Mercury, 25 Mar. 1865; Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865. He was remembered as ‘a guard of the public exchequer’ who had ‘served his constituents with fidelity and earnestness; giving up his time to a class of subjects which legislators usually avoid’, and it was said that few deaths would leave ‘a more palpable blank in our Parliament’.72Bury and Norwich Post, 28 Mar. 1865. He was one of four ‘active & useful men’ who had died in ‘rapid succession’ (the others being Cobden, Gregson, and Wentworth Butler), and his regular ‘corner seat in the third bench below the gangway’ was kept vacant on the night of his death: Jenkins, Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 319; Belfast News-letter, 28 Mar. 1865. He was buried in the family plot at Marsh Baldon church and succeeded by his brother, John Pollard Willoughby, MP for Leominster (1857-8) and a member of the Indian Council. He left estate valued at £180,000 and directed that his personal estate should be invested in landed property 73The Times, 24 Mar. 1865; Gent. Mag. (1865), i. 663; Gent. Mag. (1866), ii. 690-1; HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 831.