DUGDALE, William Stratford (1800-1871), of Merevale Hall, near Atherstone , Warwickshire; Blyth Hall , near Coleshill , Warwickshire

A Conservative country gentleman, Dugdale’s parliamentary career was abruptly terminated by his unexpected support for repeal of the corn laws in 1846. His staunchly protectionist constituency repudiated him the following year and he did not seek a return to the Commons, and for this reason he has received little coverage in the standard works on the Peelites.1He is listed as a ‘Free Trade Conservative’ in W.D. Jones and A.B. Erickson, The Peelites, 1846-1857 (1972), 227, but is not mentioned in J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the party system (1972). Rather unfairly described by the Morning Chronicle as ‘a useless Tory member’ in 1835, Dugdale did not possess the phenomenal energy of other North Warwickshire MPs such as Charles Newdegate or Richard Spooner, but was nonetheless a good deal more active than his counterparts in the southern division of the county.2Morn. Chron., 6 Jan. 1835.

His grandfather, Richard Geast, a London barrister, had assumed the name of Dugdale by royal licence on inheriting the estates of the ancient Warwickshire family in 1799 and his father, Dugdale Stratford Dugdale (?1773-1836), represented Warwickshire, 1802-31. Dugdale senior, however, supported parliamentary reform, unlike his son who opposed the Grey ministry’s reform bills whilst MP for Shaftesbury, 1830-31 and Bramber, 1831-2.3Burke’s landed gentry (1879), i. 486-7; ‘Dugdale, Dugdale Stratford’, ‘Dugdale, William Stratford’, HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 965-8, 968.

Dugdale offered as a Tory for the new constituency of North Warwickshire at the 1832 general election, and after a close contest, he was surprisingly returned in second place. Dugdale’s nomination speech had been mostly inaudible due to the ‘groans and yells’ from the crowd and on the hustings he was denounced by a prominent local Dissenter and by Joseph Parkes, the Radical election agent. Thomas Attwood, newly elected Radical MP for Birmingham, added the dismissive comment that ‘a mere gentleman was not what the times required’.4The Times, 20 Dec. 1832.

In Parliament, Dugdale voted against currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, despite having alluded to an ‘extended currency’ during his campaign.5Ibid. He endorsed the Irish coercion bill, 13 Mar. 1833, but opposed the Whigs’ Irish church temporalities bill, 6 May 1833.6Hansard, 13 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 581. The following year he drew attention to the ‘pitiable distress’ of the Coventry riband weavers, which he argued was ‘the consequence of the free trade system which had of late years been adopted in this country’, 19 June 1834.7Hansard, 19 June 1834, vol. 24, c. 573. Accordingly, Dugdale seconded Lytton Bulwer’s bill to prohibit foreign ribands, maintaining that ‘the duty of every Government [is] to attend to the interests of their own trade and commerce before those of any other country’.8Ibid., 573-4. In the same session Dugdale voted in the minorities for repeal of malt duty and agricultural relief, 21, 27 Feb. 1834, and supported Althorp’s plan to replace church rates with a central grant derived from the land tax, 21 Apr. 1834.

Described as a ‘high Conservative’, Dugdale was returned in second place at the 1835 general election, behind a moderate Reformer, with whom he was in tacit alliance.9The Times, 5 Jan. 1835. He divided with his party in the major divisions of the 1835 session, and thereafter continued to oppose further political reforms and the Whigs’ Irish policy. Although he rarely spoke, he found the time to snipe at a petition from Birmingham Radicals calling for reform of the House of Lords, and enumerated some of the dubious methods used to obtain signatures, 16 Feb. 1836.10Hansard, 16 Feb. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 441-3. Dugdale was more expressive out of doors, telling local supporters in January 1837 that when he was young he had been inculcated with the belief that British constitution was a ‘model of perfection’. Consequently, he asserted that any political reforms would be detrimental, and argued that those Radicals who professed to revere the ‘people’ would prove to be tyrannical and despotic rulers should they ever achieve the measures they sought. With 300 MPs in the Commons, a majority in the Lords and a ‘Protestant King’, Dugdale contended that Conservatives were well-placed to obstruct them.11The Standard, 27 Jan. 1837.

Dugdale won an easy victory at the 1837 general election, but rumours the following year that he was to retire due to ill-health proved to be unfounded.12Morning Post, 11 Aug. 1837; Joseph Parkes to E.J. Stanley, 19 Dec. 1838, MS Kingsland. In 1839, he chaired the committee on the London to Birmingham railway bill and divided against Villiers’s anti-corn law motions, 19 Feb. 1839, 18 Mar. 1839, and against any further grant to the Catholic college at Maynooth, 23 June 1840.13PP 1839 (242), xiii. 331.

Dugdale criticised the Whigs’ proposed low fixed duty on corn, contending that it would lower wages, at the 1841 general election, when he was returned unopposed.14The Times, 7 July 1841. The following year, however, he supported Peel’s tariff revisions as well as the reintroduction of income tax. He continued to divide against Villiers’s anti-corn law motions, although he was notably absent from local protectionist meetings in 1844 and 1845.15The Times, 25 Jan. 1844, 30 Dec. 1845. Unlike other North Warwickshire MPs, Dugdale seems to have had few paternalist sympathies and usually voted with the leadership against radical revision of the new poor law and a ten hour day in factories. However, Dugdale’s staunch Protestantism trumped his usual party loyalty on the 1845 Maynooth college bill, which he opposed. The following year he supported the repeal of the corn laws and gave the fullest explanation of the reasons for his change of mind in a speech to local agriculturalists, 3 Feb. 1846. Arguing that the increased revenues and prosperity since the 1842 budget had vindicated Peel’s policy, he warned that he could not promise to vote against further relaxations in protective duties. He did ‘not like that part relating to the corn laws’, but as protection was being withdrawn from other trades, he did not think that agriculture could be exempted.16The Standard, 4 Feb. 1846. His decision to vote for repeal may also have been influenced by a sense of loyalty to Peel, who was a neighbour.17A few years previously Peel had offered to sell Dugdale, as the neighbouring landlord, an outlying portion of his estate, which was inconvenient for him to manage. Dugdale politely declined: Sir Robert Peel to William Stratford Dugdale, 20 Dec. 1844, Add. 40608, f. 431; Dugdale to Peel, 22 Dec. 1844, ibid., f. 433.

Dugdale ignored a requisition from constituents calling on him to retire, Mar. 1846, but apart from defending his former colleague Sir John Eardley Wilmot’s conduct as a governor of Van Diemen’s Land, 7 June 1847, and opposing the factories bill of the same year, he did little in the remainder of his time in Parliament.18Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 19 Mar. 1846; Hansard, 7 June 1847, vol. 93, c. 205. At the general election later that year Dugdale resigned when it became clear that he would be challenged by a protectionist, although Newdegate, his colleague, and Spooner, his successor, disingenuously denied that they had conspired to oust him.19Daily News, 7 Aug. 1847; The Standard, 9 Aug. 1847; The Times, 11 Aug. 1847. In a terse farewell address he declared that ‘I retire with the conviction that I have conscientiously discharged the important trust committed to my hands’.20The Times, 9 Aug. 1847. Dugdale did not seek a return to Parliament, focusing instead on his estate and country pursuits. In 1849 he suffered a serious accident when his son accidentally discharged a gun into ‘the face and head of his father’.21The Standard, 19 Jan. 1849. However, Dugdale survived and on his death in 1871 he was succeeded by his eldest son William Stratford Dugdale (1828-82).22Burke’s landed gentry (1886), i. 546-7.