DAVENPORT-BROMLEY (afterwards BROMLEY-DAVENPORT), William (1821-1884), of Baginton Hall, nr. Coventry, Warws.

A country gentleman who described himself as a ‘Liberal Conservative and a Conservative’, Davenport-Bromley (as he was known before December 1867) could boast an impressive parliamentary pedigree.1Birmingham Daily Post, 18 July 1865. His grandfather, Davies Davenport (1757-1837), of Capesthorne, Cheshire, had been a long-serving Whig representative for that county, and his uncle Edward Davies Davenport (1778-1847) was Whig MP for Shaftesbury, 1826-30.2‘Davenport, Davies’, ‘Davenport, Edward Davies’, HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 853-6, 856-62. His father, a cleric, and the younger son of Davies Davenport, had assumed the name of Bromley after inheriting estates from a great-aunt.3Burke’s landed gentry (1879), i. 429; E. Lord, ‘In love and war: episodes in the life of a country gentleman’, Archives, 20 (1993), 42-7 (at 43).

Eager to participate in the Crimean War, Davenport-Bromley travelled to the region despite holding no official commission, acting the part of an ‘amateur’ soldier and observer. However, his growing disillusionment with the war and its mismanagement led him to return to England in May 1855 after six months.4Lord, ‘In love and war’, 44-7. He succeeded his father in 1862 and the following year was named by local Tories as their preferred successor for Richard Spooner, veteran MP for North Warwickshire, who had announced that he would be retiring at the next general election.5The Times, 26 Nov. 1864. Spooner’s death in November 1864 hastened Davenport-Bromley’s return to Parliament, as despite rumours of a Liberal challenge and complaints of his poor Warwickshire connections, he was unchallenged at the subsequent by-election. Before his return, Davenport-Bromley had promised support for the repeal of malt duty, criticising Liberal governments which gave free trade to ‘to everybody and everything except the British farmer’.6Ibid., 14 Dec. 1864. However, he also distanced himself from his ultra-Protestant predecessor and hailed Palmerston as a ‘true Conservative’.7Ibid.

Davenport-Bromley made little mark in Parliament before the 1865 general election the following July, when he was elected in second place.8McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 302. His political views remained vague, though he did express a preference for a non-interventionist foreign policy, but unlike Palmerston, one that did not involve ‘bullying and bragging, without any intention of fighting’.9Birmingham Daily Post, 18 July 1865. For all his talk of Liberal Conservatism on the hustings, in Parliament Davenport-Bromley was a Conservative loyalist. He claimed that ‘the time had arrived when the lease granted in 1832 had to be renewed’, 26 Apr. 1866, but opposed the reform bill introduced by the Liberal government in that session.10Hansard, 26 Apr. 1866, vol. 182, c. 2136. In the committee stage of the representation of the people bill the following year, he resisted the suppression of small boroughs and enfranchising amendments. His small number of speeches often related to London, including sick wards in workhouses, the ‘great number of professional vagrants who have lately been attracted to the metropolis’, and the approach to the House of Commons, which he described as ‘if not atrocious, at all events disgraceful, and ludicrously inconvenient’.11Ibid., 26 June 1866, vol. 184, c. 683; 23 July 1866, vol. 184, cc. 1332-4 (first qu. at 1332); 22 Feb. 1867, vol. 185, cc. 888-90 (second qu. at 888). In 1867 he welcomed an artisans’ dwellings bill which he believed would end the practice of clearing the homes of the London poor to make way for railway lines without any consultation or compensation.12Ibid., 27 Mar. 1867, vol. 186, c. 699. He later expressed criticism of the Metropolitan Police for their harassment and harsh treatment of costermongers, ‘who were the camp followers of the poor, supplying them with food at the lowest possible rate’.13Ibid., 28 Nov. 1867, vol. 190, c. 412.

In late 1867 he succeeded his alcoholic first cousin to his grandfather’s Cheshire estates, including Capesthorne, and subsequently changed his name by royal licence to Bromley-Davenport.14Lord, ‘In love and war’, 43. He continued to represent North Warwickshire until his untimely death in 1884, when after being called out with the Staffordshire yeomanry to attend a disturbance in Lichfield, he suffered a heart attack.15The Times, 17, 20 June 1884. He was succeeded by his first son and namesake William Bromley-Davenport (1862-1949), Conservative MP for Macclesfield, 1886-1906.16M. Stenton and S. Lees, Who’s who of British Members of Parliament (1978), ii. 45. The family’s extensive papers, including William’s Crimean War diary and his letters to his wife, are held by John Rylands Library, University of Manchester.17Lord, ‘In love and war’, 42-7.