DALRYMPLE, Sir Adolphus John (1784-1866), of High Mark, Wigtownshire and 5 Brunswick Terrace, Brighton, Suss.

Dalrymple, a half-pay army veteran who had been appointed an aide-de-camp to William IV, 22 July 1830, was the first resident of 5 Brunswick Terrace, a fashionable seafront development adjoining Brighton, where his regiment was based. From 1830 he was one of the new township’s commissioners.1A. Dale, Fashionable Brighton 1820-60 (1987), 137; M. Ray, ‘Who were the Brunswick town commissioners?’, Sussex Archaeological Collections, cxxvii (1989), 214. A staunch anti-Catholic Tory MP in the unreformed Commons, he had been ousted from his family’s Scottish pocket borough of Haddington burghs at the 1831 election, only to be seated on petition in time to oppose the details of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, drafted in part by his Whig brother-in-law Sir James Graham.2HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 845-6. The Scottish Reform Act curtailed his family’s electoral influence at Haddington and when four ‘reformers’ (including an ostensible ‘court’ candidate) offered for Brighton’s first election in 1832, Dalrymple, sensing an opportunity, stood as a ‘Peelite Conservative’. After a rowdy two-day contest he was defeated in fifth place, with a measly 32 votes.3The Times, 11, 12, 13 Dec. 1832. William IV’s dismissal of the Whigs and appointment of Peel as prime minister in late 1834 encouraged him to try again at the 1835 election, but owing to the vagaries of Sir Herbert Taylor, the king’s private secretary, his expectations of securing official crown backing were not fulfilled. He nevertheless took second place at the end of the first day’s poll, only to be nudged into third (and defeat) next day.4N. Gash, ‘The influence of the crown at Windsor and Brighton in the elections of 1832, 1835 and 1837’, EHR, liv. (1939), 659; idem., Politics in the Age of Peel (1953), 386; The Times, 9 Jan. 1835. Alarmed by his performance, the local radical press went on the offensive, demanding:

How comes it then that Sir A. Dalrymple, a Tory to the backbone, a Member of the old corrupt Parliaments, formerly a representative of a rotten borough, the enemy of all reforms, the supporter of all abuses, the apologist of that system of oppression, plunder and corruption that has so long existed; how comes it then that we find this gentleman polling more votes than either the sham or the real Radical?

A series of reports parodying Dalrymple’s speeches at local meetings ensued, in which he was accused of bribery and intimidation and credited with an income exceeding £50,000 per year.5Brighton Patriot, 24 Mar., 5. 12 May 1835.

Dalrymple featured regularly in court circulars as a dinner guest at Brighton Pavillion throughout 1835-6.6See, for example, The Times, 9, 17 Jan., 2 Feb. 1836. He was a founder member of Brighton Conservative Association, established that year, and at its annual dinner in May 1837 promised to offer again.7The Times, 24 May 1837. At the dissolution next month he duly came forward on ‘unchanged’ principles, citing his support for the new queen (although he disapproved of her Whig nominee and the crown’s interference) and ‘every salutory measure of reform consistent with the safety of the constitution’.8The Times, 24 May, 26 July 1837; Gash, ‘Politics in the Age of Peel’, 389. Aided by divisions among three rival reform candidates and a healthy crop of plumpers (which comprised a third of his tally), he was narrowly returned in second place, amidst allegations of bribery and treating.91837 Brighton pollbook, passim. He was one of a handful of MPs who personally completed one of Charles Dod’s questionnaires that year, in which he noted his descent from viscount Stair and styled himself a ‘Conservative’.10Yale Univ. Dod mss, vol. 1, f. 317.

A regular presence in the division lobbies (and an assidious one from 1837-8), Dalrymple voted with the Conservative opposition to the Melbourne ministry on most major issues, including Irish municipal reform, revision of the corn laws, the new poor law and colonial matters. He occasionally rallied to government on the civil list.11For example on 19 Dec. 1837. A more prominent speaker in the reformed Commons, given to periodic interventions on matters of military protocol, on 13 Dec. 1837 he welcomed plans to alter the Reform Act’s deadline of 20 July for the payment of rates by borough electors. Describing the difficulties that this had created in Brighton, 5 Feb. 1838, he noted how ‘many persons were frequently away from home’ between 5 April and 20 July and unable to pay their taxes, and ‘on their return very frequently found themselves disfranchised’. Another objection was that ‘it made the collector of poor-rates a political person, for he had the power on the 15th or 16th of July of going round to his political friends, telling them that their taxes must be paid before the 20th, or they would be disfranchised’, and of postponing ‘his call upon his opponents, who being ignorant of what was required, lost their votes’. On 12 June 1839 he protested that the ministry’s electors’ removal bill would ‘legalise outvoters’ by enabling electors who had changed their address to retain their qualifications for a limited period. He brought up Brighton petitions against implementing a national system of education not founded on scriptures, 7 Mar., 5, 12 June, and against the appointment of Catholic chaplains to gaols, 24 Apr. 1839. On 30 Jan. 1840 he condemned his Liberal colleague Captain Pechell’s conduct towards one Rev. James Anderson of Brighton, whose comments about ‘threats to the establishment’ had been misconstrued by Pechell as anti-Catholic, prompting ‘an unmerited’ and ‘as unwarrantable an attack, as had ever been made by one man on another’.

Dalrymple spoke steadily against Russell’s poor law amendment bill that year and attended a ‘Great Conservative Demonstration’ at Lewes on the issue (and its ensuing dinner) in April 1840.12The Times, 24 Apr. 1840. On 16 July 1840 he moved and was a minority teller to exempt populous towns with their own police force from the government’s constabulary bill, citing the impact on rates in towns governed by a commission, such as Brighton. On similar grounds he spoke and was in the minority for Pechell’s motion against their parochial assessments bill, 29 July 1840. In February 1841 he and Pechell shared a platform with local Chartists at a Brighton meeting against the new poor law and its proposed extension to places governed by local acts.13The Times, 16 Feb. 1841. He again joined Pechell (in the ministerial majority) for additional supplies towards the monarch’s naval expenditure, 1 Mar. 1841. On 8 Mar. 1841 he rejected complaints about the conduct of the 11th hussars, who were quartered in Brighton. In his last known speech, 25 May 1841, he defended the legality of church rates and the character of a counter-petition supporting a recent levy in Brighton, regretting that ministers ‘had not carried the measure which Lord Grey’s administration proposed in 1834 for settling the question’. He of course voted with Peel (and his realigned brother-in-law Graham) on the crucial confidence motion which brought down the Melbourne ministry, 4 June 1841.

At the ensuing election he was ‘considered quite safe’ by the press, who surmised that his ‘manly and determined opposition to the poor law’ had ‘procured for him the warmest support among the constituency’ and ‘many of the Chartists’.14The Times, 1, 11, 17, 18 June 1841. His defeat in third place, far behind two Liberals, was therefore unexpected and attributed by some local observers to ‘Palace influence’, possibly motivated by the monarch’s antipathy to Peel.15The Times, 2 July 1841. He was abroad when a vacancy arose the following year, for which the Conservatives adopted another candidate rather than ‘waiting to ascertain’ his wishes, and is not known to have sought a return to the Commons.16Hants. Advertiser, 19 Mar. 1842. Dalrymple, who retired as an aide-de-camp in 1841, was promoted major-general, 23 Nov. 1841, and full general in 1861. He died childless at Delrowe House, near Watford, 3 Mar. 1866, having been predeceased in 1858 by his wife, with whom he is commemorated in Aldenham church. His estates passed to the sons of his late sisters, Charlotte, wife of vice-admiral Sir John Chambers White, and Frances, wife of Colonel Edward Fanshaw.17Gent. Mag. (1866), i. 745; The Times, 12 Mar. 1866. On 28 July 1926 the Dalrymple baronetcy was revived for his great-nephew, Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Godfrey Dalrymple Dalrymple White (1886-1954), Unionist MP for Southport, 1910-13.