HALFORD, Henry, 2nd bt. (1797-1868), of Wistow Hall, Newton Harcourt, Leics.

A Conservative squire, Halford was a staunch defender of the established Church, whose later parliamentary career was notable for his ‘zealous and persevering’ campaign to secure legislative redress for Leicestershire’s hosiery workers.1Gent. Mag. (1868), ii. 269-70 (at 270). Halford came from a medical family. His father Henry Vaughan (1766-1844), moved from Leicester to London in the 1790s, served as doctor to four consecutive monarchs, and was president of the Royal College of Physicians from 1820 until his death.2Leicester Chronicle, 18 Apr. 1863; The Times, 11 Mar. 1844; W. Munk, The life of Sir Henry Halford (1895), 1, 135-95. In 1809 Vaughan was created a baronet by George III, and in the same year changed his name to Halford in accordance with the will of his grandmother’s nephew, Sir Charles Halford, last baronet of Wistow, Leicestershire, whose estates he inherited in 1814.3Ibid., 46; VCH Leics., v. 336-45; W. White, History, gazetteer and directory of Leicestershire and Rutland (1863 edn.), 590-91.

In 1832, Henry Halford, the only son of the famous physician, was returned unopposed in a compromise with a Whig for the new constituency of South Leicestershire, where the family seat was situated. In Parliament, he defended Leicester’s Tory corporation from the attacks of reformers, supported currency reform and the repeal of malt duty, but opposed a low fixed duty on corn.4Dod’s parliamentary companion (1833), 119-20; Hansard, 3 May 1833, vol. 17, cc. 907-09; ibid., 6 Aug. 1833, vol. 20, c. 390. He served on two inquiries, on the vaccine board and medical education, in 1833 and 1834 respectively, to which his father gave evidence.5PP 1833 (753), xvi. 150, 165-78; 1834 (602), xiii. 2. In the latter year he also sat on James Silk Buckingham’s select committee on drunkenness, which proposed a battery of measures to combat intemperance.6PP 1834 (559), viii. 316-25.

Halford was returned unopposed at the 1835 and 1837 general elections, alongside another Conservative. At the former election he promised to defend ‘those great institutions on which depend the efficiency and freedom of our ancient form of government’, and he generally voted with his party in opposing further political reforms and the government’s Irish policy.7The Times, 17 Jan. 1835. For the rest of the decade, Halford regularly warned supporters at public meetings of the grave threat posed to the established Church and other institutions by the Whigs and O’Connell, who together would bring ‘revolution, anarchy, and bloodshed’ to the land.8Derby Mercury, 2 May 1838; see also ibid., 28 Dec. 1836, 15 Nov. 1837, 6 May 1840; The Times, 28 Jan. 1839. At one meeting, before launching another onslaught, he admitted that ‘he had sometimes been accused of having too much zeal in politics’.9Derby Mercury, 2 May 1838. Halford was also a protectionist, arguing in 1836 that free trade was ‘inapplicable to agriculture’.10Hansard, 15 Mar. 1836, vol. 32, c. 367. He was unconvinced of the merits of county constabularies, fearing the loss of local autonomy to central control.11Hansard, 18 June 1840, vol. 54, cc. 1271-5. Halford changed his mind over the poor law; the permanence and increased powers of the Commission led him to regret having ‘given no opposition’ to the 1834 bill.12Hansard, 26 Mar. 1841, vol. 57, c. 637. In 1840, he was rumoured to be the author of an anonymous pamphlet questioning Peel’s leadership, a claim he denied.13‘A Conservative Member’, Stanley or Peel!: Who shall lead us? (1840); Examiner, 21 Mar. 1841; The Times, 23 Mar. 1841. The gist of the polemic was that Peel’s past and present conduct had shown that he could not be trusted by Conservatives. The rumour was given some credence by the fact that the pamphlet was published in Leicester.

At the 1841 general election Halford topped the poll in a crushing victory over the Liberals, after which he and his colleague faced no further opposition.14McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 167. Having condemned the Whigs during the campaign as ‘the most feeble and false government that ever disgraced a country’, Halford gave general support to Peel’s new ministry, including the reintroduction of income tax and the revision of import duties in 1842.15The Times, 12 July 1841. In 1844 Halford succeeded to his father’s baronetcy and estate, but apparently inherited little money, as his father’s lifelong motto was ‘that it is better to live rich than to die rich’.16Munk, Sir Henry Halford, 275. Although he opposed further relief to Roman Catholics, he did approve of the bill to support the Catholic seminary at Maynooth, 18 Apr. 1845, 21 May 1845.

By now, Halford was increasingly preoccupied with the distress of Leicestershire’s framework knitters.17The best introduction to the issue is S. Chapman, Hosiery and knitwear: four centuries of small-scale industry in Britain, c.1589-2000 (2002), 111-17. A consistent supporter of factory legislation, in 1845 he secured the passage of the Masters and Workmen Act which introduced ‘tickets of work’ into the hosiery industry, providing a record of the agreed price between manufacturer and worker in the event of a dispute.18PP 1845 (505), iv. 353-60; 8 & 9 Vict., c. 77. Although he opposed the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, Halford was more concerned about Peel’s plan to slash the import duty on cotton hosiery from 20% to 10%.19Hansard, 13 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 1035-36. The following year Halford introduced a new hosiery bill, his 1845 Act having become a dead letter due to an adverse legal judgement.20PP 1847 (175), v. 707-16; Hansard, 9 Mar. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 1103-06; ibid., 21 Apr. 1847, vol. 91, c. 1120; ibid., 5, 13 May 1847, vol. 92, cc. 404-12, 791, 793; Sir H. Halford, A plea for the framework-knitters, with a view to the amelioration of their condition and the correction of practices in the trade by which they are injured and oppressed (1847), 34. He expressed his views most fully in his pamphlet, A plea for the framework knitters (1847), in which he blamed declining prices and wages on practices peculiar to the East Midlands hosiery trade.21Ibid., 1-33, (Manufacturers distributed work amongst as many workers as possible in order to maximise the rent they charged for use of the frames.22Ibid., 12-22. In addition, the use of middlemen, who often partly paid the knitters in shoddy goods, and other deductions, meant that the workmen did not receive ‘fair remuneration’.23Ibid., 10, 14-15, 22 (at 10).) The system was an anomaly and the bills Halford introduced over the next decade proposed to abolish middlemen, truck payment and the frame rent, which would remove the impediments to the free operation of the laws of supply and demand.24PP 1847 (175), v. 707-16; Halford, A plea, 13, 33-39. However, Halford’s case rested on a humanitarian rather than an intellectual basis, and in the concluding pages, he took aim at political economists in the Commons, declaring that ‘there cannot be a grosser evasion of responsibility, or a greater or more dangerous outrage on the Creator … than to postpone or neglect any improvement that can be made, on the ground of abstract laws’.25Ibid., 90. The opposition of laissez-faire minded MPs denied the bill a second reading.26Hansard, 9 June 1847, vol. 93, cc. 279-80. The bill’s progress was halted when the House voted 77-58 that the second reading be put off for six months.

Halford was returned unopposed at the 1847 general election, although a challenge had been mooted by some local Conservatives unhappy with his Maynooth vote.27The Times, 30 July 1847, 5 Aug. 1847. He told electors that ‘he should not rest satisfied till something had been done to ameliorate the wretched state of the workmen, and till that system was changed which was nothing better than a robbery of … [their] fair wages’.28The Times, 5 Aug. 1847. In 1848, he unsuccessfully moved for a select committee on the distress of the framework knitters.29Hansard, 29 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 1101-13. The motion was defeated 51-85: ibid., 1113-14. On other issues, Halford remained steadfast in his Anglicanism, opposing the removal of Jewish disabilities, further Roman Catholic relief and the abolition of church rates. He supported relief for agriculture, especially through the repeal of malt duty.30Farmer’s Magazine (1849), xix. 310. In 1850 Halford served on the inquiry on prison discipline, which recommended a uniform system and that inmates be held in separate cells.31PP 1850 (632), xvii. 2, 5-6.

At the 1852 general election, when he was returned unopposed, Halford abandoned agricultural protection, but placated local farmers with his support for reform of the county rates and the repeal of malt duty.32The Times, 16 July 1852. In 1853, supported by his colleague Charles William Packe, and Leicester’s radical MP Sir Joshua Walmsley, Halford introduced a new hosiery bill, but it was halted by Joseph Hume’s wrecking motion.33Hansard, 4 May 1853, vol. 126, cc. 1079-1117. The following year Halford’s bill passed its second reading and was referred to a select committee.34Hansard, 1, 22 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, cc. 169-70, 1211-28; PP 1854 (33), v. 529-32; 1854 (382), xvi. 4. The inquiry ran over two sessions, and Halford’s 1855 report, which was adopted by a single vote, recommended the abolition of stoppages (such as the frame rent) and truck payment in the hosiery industry.35PP 1854-55 (382), xvi. 4-5, 11-13, 14-15. However, his measure of the same year was defeated at the first reading, after the opposition of the home secretary, Sir George Grey.36Hansard, 8 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, cc. 250-61. Thereafter, he made no further legislative proposals, but did serve on the 1856 inquiry into the French boards of arbitration, which he had expressed admiration for in his 1847 pamphlet. His draft report, which recommended that such a body be set up in the hosiery districts as an experiment, was rejected.37PP 1856 (343), xiii. 2, 10, 16; Halford, A plea, 57-63.

Halford retired at the 1857 general election. In the 1830s Halford, who was fluent in French, German and the classics, and read works of political philosophy, economics and history in the original language, had regularly compared the Whigs to the Girondins, and in his later years began a history of the French Revolution.38Gent. Mag. (1868), ii. 270; The Times, 22 Dec. 1836; Derby Mercury, 28 Dec. 1836. It was unfinished at the time of his death in 1868, when he was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry St. John Halford (1828-97), 3rd baronet, a rower and marksman of some repute, high sheriff of Leicestershire in 1872 and chairman of the county council, 1889-93. Following his death and that of his clergyman brother John Frederick Halford (1830-1897), 4th baronet, in quick succession, the title became extinct and Wistow passed to Thomas Francis Fremantle, 2nd Baron Cottesloe, MP for Buckinghamshire, 1876-85.39F. Boase, Modern English Biography, Supplement (1912), ii. 539-40; Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1907), 775; J. A. Doyle, rev. J. Lock, ‘Halford, Henry St. John (1828-97)’, www.oxforddnb.com; Leicester Chronicle, 30 May 1868, 9 Jan. 1897, 17 Apr. 1897; VCH Leics., v. 336-45. Halford’s son-in-law Albert Pell was Conservative MP for South Leicestershire, 1868-85.40A. Pell, Reminiscences of Albert Pell, sometime MP for South Leicestershire, ed. and intro. T. Mackay (1908), 139-40; The Times, 26 May 1868.