GALLWEY, Sir William Payne, 2nd bt. (1807/8-1881), of Thirkleby Park, Thirsk, Yorks.; 3 Halkin Street West, London; later of 2 Buckingham Gate, London

Sir William Payne Gallwey was a former army officer, who had sold his commission and retired in 1842.2London Gazette, 3 June 1842. His father, William Payne, had also pursued a military career, serving in the Peninsula, notably at the battle of Talavera (1809), and rising to the rank of general.3Gent. Mag. (May 1831), i, 466. William Payne had been created 1st baronet in 1812, taking the additional surname of Gallwey in 1814, in accordance with the will of his maternal uncle, Tobias Wall Gallwey of St. Kitts.4Debrett’s Baronetage (1840), 224-5. The Paynes were wealthy West Indian planters; the MP’s grandfather, Ralph Payne, had served as chief justice and governor of St. Kitts, while his uncle, also Ralph Payne (1st baron Lavington) had been governor of the Leeward Islands, and had represented the West India interest in the Commons for a total of fifteen years between 1768 and 1799.5W.P. Courtney, ‘Ralph Payne’, Oxford DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]; HP Commons 1754-1790, iii, 253-4. Another uncle, John Willett Payne. served as MP for Huntingdon from 1787-1796. Gallwey’s own entry into Parliament as MP for Thirsk came four years after his marriage to the daughter of Sir Robert Frankland, whose family wielded a strong (although not wholly unchallenged) influence over Thirsk’s electoral representation. After issuing an address ‘on Protectionist, Protestant, and moderate Conservative principles’, Gallwey was returned unopposed at a by-election in March 1851.6Leeds Mercury, 15 Mar. 1851. He did not face a contest until 1868, when he was returned with a majority of 26; a subsequent petition against his return was withdrawn.7Bristol Mercury, 19 Dec. 1868. In an effort to strengthen his electoral position, he allegedly constructed fifty cottages – known locally as ‘Bribery-Row’ – but was only narrowly re-elected in 1874.8Northern Echo, 3 Mar. 1873, 2 Nov. 1874. Despite a rumour in 1876 that he would retire at the end of the session on health grounds, he continued to serve until 1880.9Northern Echo, 27 July 1876.

Given his background, it was fitting that Gallwey’s first known Commons speech, in 1855, was on the subject of pensions for officers who had served in the Crimea.10Hansard, 2 Aug. 1855, vol. 139, cc.1633-4. Gallwey had voted in the House before this date, with his votes reflecting Reynolds’s Newspaper’s classification of him as a Derbyite.11Reynolds’s Newspaper, 8 Aug. 1852. He opposed the ballot, 30 Mar. 1852, and the £10 county franchise, 19 Feb. 1857, but supported the Derby ministry’s Reform Bill, 31 Mar. 1859. During the debates on the 1867 Reform Bill he was among 173 MPs who supported Robert Lowe’s (failed) clause on cumulative voting to improve minority representation, 5 July.12Cumulative voting enabled electors in three-member constituencies to cast more than one of their three votes for a single candidate, which was conceived as a measure to protect minority representation. He served on the committee on the Maidstone election petition in 1857.13PP 1857 sess. 2 (186), vii. 9. His votes on religious questions were in keeping with his Protestant sympathies, dividing against the removal of Jewish disabilities, 11 Mar. 1853, the Maynooth grant, 19 Feb. 1857, and the abolition of church rates, 14 May 1862. On the latter question, however, he was favourable if combined with ‘equitable compensation’ for the church.14Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, 1857, 196. The Northern Echo recollected that ‘while Lord Palmerston held the reins, Sir William managed to balance himself so evenly that few knew whether he was least of a Conservative or least of a Liberal’.15Northern Echo, 14 Nov. 1870. In 1857, Dod’s Parliamentary Companion switched from labelling Gallwey as a Conservative to describing him as a Liberal-Conservative, who had given ‘an independent support’ to Palmerston’s government.16Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, 1857, 196. However, although Gallwey voted with Palmerston on the Conspiracy to Murder Bill, 19 Feb. 1858, he voted against him in the votes of censure on both Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, and Schleswig-Holstein, 8 July 1864.

The Northern Echo was scathing about Gallwey’s speaking abilities: ‘although he has heard the burning words of Mr Gladstone, the polished satire of Mr Disraeli, the sustained eloquence of John Bright, and the incisive epigrams of Mr Lowe, he has never acquired the art of public speaking’.17Northern Echo, 6 Oct. 1874. He was most active as a parliamentary speaker in the 1860s, taking an interest in an eclectic range of issues, including questions on underwater telegraphic cables, night poaching and the Ceylon railroad; the latter may have stemmed from his brother Philip’s military service there.18Hansard, 28 July 1859, vol. 155 c.540; 28 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, c.858; 9 June 1863, vol. 171, c.572; 30 June 1862, vol. 167, c.1213; 20 July 1860, vol. 159, cc.2273-5; 8 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, c.1630; PP 1851 (36) viii, pt.I. 723. He was praised by Punch in 1865 for his efforts – thwarted by the railway interest – to improve railway safety by compelling railway companies to provide some method of communication between passengers and guards.19Punch, 20 May 1865; Hansard, 9 May 1865, vol. 179, cc.60-3, 71-2.

Gallwey displayed a sustained interest in the workings of the Westminster Improvement Commission, complaining in 1860 that its neglect of its duties had left Victoria Street ‘the receptacle of all the filth in the neighbourhood, and the resort of the vice and degradation of that dense population’.20Hansard, 20 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, cc.1577-9. See also Hansard, 1 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, cc.1198-202; 2 May 1861, vol. 162, cc.1373; 12 May 1865, vol. 179, cc.206-8. In 1862, in what Sir John Trelawny criticised as ‘a stupid proceeding’, he moved for a Select Committee to investigate the actions of the First Commissioner of Works, William Cowper, after he apparently rescinded the appointment of Sir Edwin Pearson – Gallwey’s preferred candidate – to the chairmanship of the Commission.21T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 203. Cowper’s defence was that the letter offering the post to Pearson was not technically an appointment. Gallwey’s motion was defeated by 11 votes, but Palmerston reassured him that he had ‘vindicated the character of his friend from any imputation that might have been cast upon it’.22Hansard, 16 May 1862, vol. 166, cc.1794-821. His concern for metropolitan improvement led to Gallwey’s appointment to the Select Committee on Metropolitan Government (1866-7) which considered the operations and funding of the Metropolitan Board of Works.23PP 1866 (186) xiii. 171ff.; PP 1867 (135) xii. 431ff. Gallwey also served on the Select Committees on the London (City) Corporation Gas Bill (1866) and on County Financial Arrangements (1868).24PP 1866 (270) xiii. 63ff.; PP 1867-8 (421) ix. 1ff. The latter followed his failed attempt to introduce a Bill to establish County Financial Boards in England and Wales, on the principle that ‘there should be local representation wherever there was local taxation’.25Hansard, 6 Mar. 1868, vol. 190, cc.1206-7.

After the Second Reform Act, Gallwey continued to attend and vote, although he rarely spoke in debate. His Irish Protestant family sympathies (being the grandson of the 1st earl of Dunraven) led him to oppose Gladstone’s Irish policies; he voted against the second reading of the Irish Church Bill, 23 Mar. 1869.26Northern Echo, 14 Nov. 1870. Having retired from politics in 1880, Gallwey died at Thirkleby Park on 19 December 1881 after ‘sustaining severe internal injuries’ when he ‘fell with his body on to a turnip’ while out shooting.27Northern Echo, 20 Dec. 1881. He was succeeded as 3rd baronet by his son, Ralph, a former army lieutenant, and left his real and personal estate to his wife; the value of his personal estate exceeded £9,000.28The Times, 20 Dec. 1881; Northern Echo, 20 May 1882. In 1882 his widow was granted a royal licence to use the name Payne Frankland instead of Payne Gallwey, in accordance with her mother’s will.29Burke’s Peerage Baronetage and Knightage (1890), 574.