JEPHSON NORREYS, Charles Denham Orlando (1799-1888), of Mallow Castle, co. Cork

In November 1832, after six years as the representative of Mallow, Jephson was said to stand ‘at an equal distance from the two leading extremes into which Irish politicians are unhappily divided’. Having decisively rejected repeal in 1830, he attended a meeting of the Munster-Leinster Declarationists, who instead embraced reform of the Union and sought to establish ‘a moderate party’ in county Cork.1Belfast News-letter, 13 Nov. 1832; Freeman’s Journal, 8 Nov. 1832. The body committed itself to ‘a rational, moderate, independent, and constitutional’ method of returning ‘honest and trustworthy’ members to parliament at the approaching general election: Morning Chronicle, 10 Nov. 1832. He enjoyed a reputation as ‘an emancipator without restriction, and a reformer upon the most extensive scale’, and at the 1832 general election, when he offered again, argued for the abolition of Irish tithes, judging it as necessary for the peace of the country as it was ‘for the existence of the church establishment itself’.2Freeman’s Journal, 18 Sept., 8 Nov. 1832. He was, however, defeated by a repealer, before regaining the family seat on petition. Although Daniel O’Connell, with whom he had been on friendly terms since 1825, had cooperated with the petition, Jephson subsequently became a target for the repeal party, and faced allegations that he had persecuted a number of his tenants who had voted against him.3Belfast News-letter, 2 Dec. 1834; Hansard, 26 Feb. 1834, vol. 21, cc. 833-4; D. O’Connell to Jephson, 16 Apr. 1833; Rev. D.M. Collins to O’Connell, 2 June 1841, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 24, vii. 82-3; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 188.

In resuming what was to prove a very active parliamentary career, particularly with respect to select committee service, Jephson supported the Whig ministry in 1833-5 and was sincerely committed to reform, voting for the removal of Jewish disabilities, and supporting the right of parliament to dispose of surplus money arising from the sale of bishops’ lands, yet opposing a revision of pension list, and the abolition of impressment. Convinced that Ireland’s interests were intimately bound to those of England, he divided against repeal, but warned that if the agitation continued unchecked for a further year, he would join the repealers rather than live under a government ‘which could not maintain peace and law in the country’.4Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 184; The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 103; Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 89; Morning Chronicle, 24 May 1833; Hansard, 29 Apr. 1834, vol. 23, cc. 212-4. His political philosophy being to eliminate Irish grievances to the point where the desire for repeal would lose all force.5Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 184. In this period he served on inquiries into Irish manor courts and foundation hospitals, and the expenses of select committee witnesses: PP 1837 (494) xv. 1; PP 1837-38 (648) xvii. 1; PP 1837-38 (701) vii. 345; PP 1840 (555) xv. 259. Though O’Connell stated during a visit to Mallow in October 1839 that Jephson Norreys ‘votes very well’ in parliament, the latter repudiated repeal, and threatened to resign ‘if put to the test’.6Freeman’s Journal, 25 Oct. 1839; Morning Chronicle, 25 Oct. 1839. Having improved the spa at Mallow at his own expense and being regarded as ‘ever specially solicitous for the welfare of the town … and the prosperity and well-being of its inhabitants’, he was returned unopposed at the 1835 general election.7H. Heaney (ed.), A Scottish Whig in Ireland 1835-1838. The Irish Journals of Robert Graham of Redgorton (1999), 129-30 (3 July 1835); Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 253. Having joined protests against the great Protestant meeting at Dublin in 1837, he was re-elected unopposed at that year’s general election, and subsequently joined the informal coalition of repealers, Whigs and Liberals. However, having opposed the church and tithes bill, which he believed had failed to provide sufficiently for the recovery of arrears, in July 1836, he voted against the repeal of the malt tax in the following January.8Hansard, 1 July 1836, vol. 34, c. 1152; Bristol Mercury, 28 Jan. 1837. He thus combined ‘a degree of personal independence with an attitude of general cooperation with O’Connell’.9A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 71.

Jephson was rewarded with a baronetcy at the coronation promotion, 30 June 1838, which he accepted only after some hesitation. That year he also assumed the additional surname of Norreys ‘to mark his descent and inheritance of the Mallow estate from Sir Thomas Norreys’.10Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 252; Morning Chronicle, 4 July 1838; T. Cadogan & J. Falvey, A Biographical Dictionary of Cork (2006), 148. The following year he and his wife were presented to Queen Victoria, and in 1851 they attended the royal ball: Freeman’s Journal, 9 Mar., 25 June 1839; The Times, 22 June 1839, 21 May 1851. He was now firmly identified with the Whig ministry, his baronetcy being said to have given him ‘solid reasons for voting black and white’ to keep it in office.11The Times, 31 Aug. 1838, quoting Blackwood’s Magazine. In 1839, perhaps unsettled by the persistence of repeal sentiments in his constituency, he stated ‘that he looked forward to the time as not very distant when his constituents would be willing to dispense with his services’, and allow him ‘to retire to private life’.12Freeman’s Journal, 25 Oct. 1839. However, during 1838-40, he spoke on the Cork sessions bill, the Irish poor law, and the Bank of Ireland, although his appointment to the joint stock bank committee was questioned, as, not being ‘a commercial man’, he was expected to know ‘little of banking affairs’.13PP 1837 (531) xiv. 1; PP 1837-38 (626) vii. 1; Freeman’s Journal, 22 May 1838. He nevertheless remained an active committee man.

Throughout the 1830s Jephson served on select committees concerning communications and infrastructure, and displayed an abiding interest in science and technology.14They related to Derry Bridge, the Dublin and Kingstown Ship Canal, the Shannon Navigation, civil list charges, the weights and measures bill, steam navigation to India, the sale of corn, crown land revenues, and medical education: PP 1833 (557) xvi. 367; PP 1833 (591) xvi. 451; PP 1834 (532) xvii. 141; PP 1833 (646) vii. 779; PP 1834 (464) xviii. 243; PP 1834 (478) xiv. 369; PP 1834 (517) vii. 1; PP 1834 (579) xv. 459; PP 1834 (602) xiii. 1. Since 1831 he had encouraged the development of road communication by steam carriage, claiming that it ‘would be of incalculable advantage to the country’. After serving on an inquiry into the business failure of the carriage’s manufacturer in 1834, he joined a deputation on behalf of its inventor, Goldsworthy Gurney, and introduced abortive bills in 1832 and 1836 for the regulation of tolls on road carriages.15HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 857-62; PP 1834 (483) xi. 223; Hansard, 29 Apr. 1834, vol. 23, c. 207; The Times, 18 Sept. 1832, 4 July 1834; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 215-6. Jephson continued to take an interest in technical matters, and in 1835-6 he sat on select committees on Irish public works and education, the Weights and Measures Act, arts and manufactures, and the Royal Dublin Society.16PP 1835 (329) xx. 145; PP 1835 (573) xx. 169; PP 1836 (586) xiii. 583; PP 1835 (292) xviii. 489; PP 1835 (598) v. 375; PP 1836 (568) ix. 1; PP 1836 (445) xii. 355. He was a promoter of scientific education, arguing in 1838 that ‘a false distinction had been attributed to the three learned professions’ of the theology, medicine and law, and supported the establishment of provincial colleges in Ireland.17Freeman’s Journal, 20 Nov. 1838. He had produced a detailed report on postal communications between England and Ireland in March 1832 and served on the relevant select committee in 1841-2.18Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 242-3; PP 1841 Session 1 (399) ix. 609; PP 1842 (373) ix. 343. He lobbied on behalf of the Cork and Bandon Railway in 1849, and in 1857 he raised questions on telegraphic communications with India.19Freeman’s Journal, 4 May 1849; Hansard, 16 Mar. 1857, vol. 144, c. 2366. He also had a keen interest in geology, and after 1840 displayed ‘more interest in the Ordnance Survey than any other Irishman not professionally connected with it’, serving on the relevant parliamentary inquiry in 1846.20J. H. Andrews, A Paper Landscape. The Ordnance Survey in Nineteenth-century Ireland (1975), 168; PP 1846 (664) xv. 73. In 1853, he chaired the select committee on the publication of a reduced map of Ireland: PP 1852-53 (921) xxxix. 393. For the select committees of 1846 and 1853, see Andrews, Paper Landscape, 204-6, 223-4, 240, 238-9, 258. He made several telling contributions to debate on the issue in 1857-8, and took a close interest in the ordnance survey of Scotland.21Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 142; Hansard, 22 June 1857, vol. 146, c. 141; 3 July 1857, vol. 146, c. 880; 13 July 1857, vol. 146, cc. 1373-4; 30 July 1858, vol. 151, c. 2367; 8 June 1857, vol. 145, c. 1348; 15 June 1857, vol. 145, cc. 1758; 18 June 1857, vol. 145, cc. 2047-53, 2074-5; 11 Aug. 1857, vol. 147, cc. 1465-6.

An interest in architecture was manifested in Jephson’s designs for the Elizabethan-style mansion he began on his estate at Mallow, before financial constraints curtailed the work in 1836.22Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 239-40. That year he argued that the final design of the new Houses of Parliament should not be adopted before the public had examined both the successful and unsuccessful plans.23Hansard, 17 Feb. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 501-2, and see W.J. Rorabaugh, ‘Politics and the Architectural Competition for the Houses of Parliament, 1834-1837’, Victorian Studies, xvii. 155-75. The following year he assisted with an investigation into the losses suffered by parliamentary officers as a result of the 1834 fire.24PP 1837 (493) xiii. 71; PP 1837-38 (8) xxiii. 379. During 1850-3, he contributed to committees on the design of the House of Commons and later corresponded with Charles Barry on the proposed extension to the Palace of Westminster.25PP 1850 (650) (650-II) xv. 125, 131; PP 1852 (243) xvi. 1; PP 1852 (402) xvi. 5; PP 1852-53 (570) xxxiv. 297; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 240-1. He moved for the plans to be laid before the House, and described Charles West Cope’s frescos for the House of Lords as ‘disgraceful to the present state of art in this country’; Hansard, 16 Apr. 1855, vol. 137, cc. 1489-90. He also concerned himself with the construction of new government offices, arguing in 1858 that the British Museum should be rendered ‘of greater interest and advantage to the public … especially that portion of it that was connected with works of science and art’.26Hansard, 10 Aug. 1857, vol. 147, c. 1304; 12 July 1858, vol. 151, c. 1266.

Jephson Norreys’s chief political interest in this period was, however, electoral reform. He had supported a wide extension of the franchise in 1832, and frequently advocated the ballot, arguing that, rather than destroying patrician influence, it ‘would afford protection to the landlord and the electors in his interest against any system of intimidation’. In August 1835 he called for the registries to ‘be purified’, and introduced a bill in 1837 for improving the polling of county electors in Ireland.27HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 857-62; Hansard, 7 Mar. 1837, vol. 37, c. 39; 20 Aug. 1835, vol. 30, c. 774; PP 1837 (299) iii. 211. He ‘ridiculed the absurdity of the finality of reform’, and in March 1839 assisted William Smith O’Brien and Thomas Wyse with an Irish registration bill. This measure was, however, opposed by O’Connell and did not progress beyond its first reading.28Freeman’s Journal, 25 Oct. 1839; Morning Chronicle, 25 Oct. 1839; PP 1839 (119) iii. 423; D. O’Connell to William Smith O’Brien, 5 Apr. 1839, O’Connell Correspondence, vi. 228-9. The following year he signed a requisition against Lord Stanley’s Irish registration bill calling for equality of institutions and franchise with England and Scotland, and made an important intervention in the debate on the bill before going on to address the issues of the qualification, registration, and bribery of Irish electors. That August he assisted Sir Robert Ferguson and Frederick Lucas with an abortive bill to simplify the qualification of electors in Ireland, and in 1841 attended the two most significant reform meetings in Dublin.29Hansard, 11 June 1840, vol. 54, c. 1078; Letters of Benjamin Disraeli, 1838-41, 275; PP 1840 (572) ii. 459; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 243; Freeman’s Journal, 15 Aug. 1840, 8 Jan. 1841; Morning Chronicle, 17 Sept. 1841.

In 1840 Jephson Norreys was publicly rebuked by John Dillon Croker, a local ‘Tory’ and an erstwhile backer, for ‘avowing himself partial to a change in the corn-laws’. Having seen off a Conservative challenge at Mallow in 1841, he voted against their abolition during 1842-5, before finally dividing for repeal in 1846.30Morning Chronicle, 3 Nov. 1840; Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1846. In 1842-3, he served on select committees on the Bonded Corn Grinding Act, and Irish fisheries and medical charities, and contributed to debates on the state of Ireland, and Irish measures regarding landlord-tenant relations, municipal corporations and the poor law.31PP 1842 (333) xiv. 1; PP 1842 (403) xiv. 393; PP 1843 (412) x. 1. Having resisted calls from the repealers of Mallow to absent himself from parliament in order to devote more time ‘to working for Ireland at home’, he attracted criticism for displaying a whiggish concern for the safety of his property prior to the great repeal meeting at Mallow, and then declined to chair the subsequent banquet for O’Connell in June 1843.32Freeman’s Journal, 26 Apr., 14 June 1843; The Times, 27 Apr. 1843; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 252; Morning Post, 16 June 1843. During 1844-6 he sat on select committees on Irish townland valuations, the revision of standing orders, and private bills.33PP 1844 (513) vii. 459; PP 1845 (570) xiii. 663; PP 1846 (556) xii. 1.

By the end of 1845, however, the popular party in Mallow were dissatisfied with Jephson Norreys and resolved to ‘fling him off’ at the next election.34Freeman’s Journal, 17 Dec. 1845. Yet, in 1843 he had gone further than most Whig-Liberals in stressing the imperative necessity of land reform, advocating ‘a compulsory and comprehensive waste-lands reclamation scheme’ which was designed to provide extra means and security to the rural population. He had also seconded Sharman Crawford’s land bill later in the session and, having contributed to the debate on the Irish poor law bill in 1838, pressed for a general inquiry into its operation in March 1845.35P. Gray, Famine, Land and Politics. British Government and Irish Society, 1843-1850 (1999), 52; Hansard, 7 July 1843, vol. 70, c. 778; 19 Mar. 1845, vol. 78, c. 1154. As a member of the board of guardians of Mallow Union, he gave evidence to the Lords committee on the measure, 3 Mar. 1846, and was instrumental in pressing through an amendment to the law governing rateable property in Ireland. That year Norreys spent time in Paris, where he attended a meeting of British subjects to congratulate King Louis Phillipe on his recent escape from assassination.36The Times, 25 Apr. 1846. When the famine struck Ireland in 1847, he encouraged the gentry to plough up ‘their lawns and parks’ for corn production, and issued a public letter to Lord John Russell concerning his Irish land improvement bill, which argued for the development of the country’s resources through the removal of the ‘semi-feudal covenants under which a large portion of Ireland is held’.37The Times, 12 Mar 1847; PP 1846 (694) (694-II) (694-III) xi Pt. I. 1, xi Pt. II. 1; 697 [223-43]; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 243, Morning Chronicle, 8 Mar. 1847. On 30 June he drew attention to allegations of misconduct made by the relief commissioners against some relief committees, which he felt impugned ‘the national honour’, and called for the commissioners’ proceedings to be laid upon the table of the House.38Freeman’s Journal, 3, 6 July 1847; Hansard, 30 June 1847, vol. 93, cc. 1059-61. At the same time, with a high proportion of town tenants and rural tenants with larger than average holdings on his estate, he was one of the few landlords in the south to largely escape the effects of the famine, recovering 90% of his rents after 1846.39J.S. Donnelly, The Great Irish Potato Famine (2001), 136-8. He was thus better placed to defeat a repeal challenge at the 1847 general election, and subsequently supported the government’s opposition to a select committee inquiry into the effects of the dissolution of the Irish parliament.40Daily News, 9 Dec. 1847.

Having gained the reputation as ‘a most independent and upright public man, with very fair talents for business’, he was active during 1847-9 on yet more select committees.41Daily News, 11 Aug. 1847. He sat on inquiries into the Irish juvenile offenders bill, public business, and the Irish poor laws: PP 1847-48 (462) iii. 509; PP 1847-48 (644) xvi. 139; PP 1849 (58) xv Pt. I. 1. He also took an interest in foreign matters, and during 1848-50 served the committee of the Italian Refugee Fund and signed a memorial in favour of the national aspirations of Hungary. He also paid tribute to Britain’s ‘independent’ foreign policy, attending a dinner given by Lord Palmerston and supporting the foreign secretary at the fall of the Russell ministry in February 1852.42Northern Star, 8 Sept. 1849; The Examiner, 8 Dec. 1848; The Times, 24 June 1850; Morning Chronicle, 15 Mar. 1852.

In the early 1850s Jephson Norreys experienced increasing difficulty in obtaining his rents, and so opposed the Irish valuation bill of 1851.43Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 239, 243. Having long been beset with financial problems concerning his inheritance, he made repeated applications for a government post.44HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 857-62. Norreys had an elder half-brother in the United States, and, there being doubts over the legality of his mother’s marriage, the family fortune was divided at his father’s death in 1813, although the ruling was not acted upon until 1836. However, although ‘possessed of a certain charm of manner’, and capable of the ‘industry, ability, and integrity’ which ought to have fitted him for the post of Irish chief secretary, his occasional irascibility and tactlessness deprived him of the chance of political office.45Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 197, 253. He nevertheless adhered to the Whigs, supporting the Irish franchise bill in 1850 and backing the government’s position on the ecclesiastical titles question, though he was later to support the Act’s repeal.46Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 287; J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 179; Freeman’s Journal, 17 Feb., 12 May, 2 June 1851. However, having formerly opposed tenant-right, he ‘suddenly and quite unexpectedly’ seconded Sharman Crawford’s tenant-right bill in April 1852, possibly for opportunistic reasons as his return for Mallow then stood ‘on the edge of a razor’.47Freeman’s Journal, 22 Aug. 1851; 1 May 1852. Following the fall of the Derby ministry he attended a meeting of Irish Liberal MPs to consider their future conduct as a party, 13 Dec. 1852. One of only two members to dissent from the minority adhering to the decisions of the majority, he continued to insist upon his independence and occasionally opposed the Aberdeen ministry.48Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 156. Though he voted for the budget in May 1853, he subsequently charged Gladstone with having misled the Irish members over the consolidated annuities question. By the mid-1850s, however, he was firmly within the Liberal fold, being in favour of free trade and an extension of the suffrage.49Hansard, 18 Mar. 1857, vol. 144, c. 2425; Morning Chronicle, 6 Aug. 1853; Adams’s Parliamentary Handbook (3rd edn., 1854), 210; Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 181.

In spite of the deaths of his wife in December 1853, his mother in May 1854, and his barrister son John Aubrey in September 1856, Jephson Norreys lost none of his appetite for parliamentary work.50Morning Chronicle, 19 Dec. 1853; The Times, 23 May 1854, 29 Sept. 1856. He served on only one select committee in this period, that on supply in 1857, but contributed 46 times to debate in that year, taking a particular interest in the divorce and matrimonial causes bill, and making repeated attempts to reform Irish local government. Despite having once argued for local control over the Irish constabulary, he had long disliked the Irish grand jury system, which he regarded as ‘so bad’ as to be ‘impossible to improve’.51He had served on the select committee on county cess in 1836: Hansard, 23 Mar. 1836, vol. 32, cc. 521-2; PP 1836 (527) xii. 1. From 1855, therefore, he introduced a series of unsuccessful grand jury bills, which were designed to relieve these bodies of their fiscal duties and place the administration of local affairs with elected councils.52Hansard, 20 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, cc. 903-13; 24 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, c. 1444; 23 July 1856, vol. 143, cc. 1274-5; 23 June 1857, vol. 146, cc. 251-4; 14 July 1857, vol. 146, c. 1504; PP 1854-55 (221) iii. 13; PP 1856 (110) iv. 15; PP 1857 Session 1 (31) i. 135; PP 1857 Session 2 (261) ix. 147; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 188, 194. He also thought that many of the private bills which came before the relevant parliamentary committee ‘might be more satisfactorily and more economically transacted by county boards’, and his last action in parliament was to move for a select committee to consider whether rate-payers ought to participate in the financial management of the Irish counties, 6 Apr. 1859.53Hansard, 27 July 1858, vol. 151, cc. 2171-2; 7 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, c. 1528.

During 1857-8 Jephson Norreys spoke frequently on questions of supply and the army and civil service estimates, pressing Palmerston for an inquiry into the manner in which the estimates were examined.54 Hansard, 19 June 1857, vol. 146, cc. 58-9; 24 Aug. 1857, vol. 147, c. 2070. He also suggested an amendment to standing orders that might allow members ‘who attended the whole of the evening’ to be ‘secured in their seats to the end of the sitting’: Hansard, 27 July 1858, vol. 151, cc. 2171-2. Regarding parliamentary reform, he fought for the survival of small boroughs like his own, preferring an extension of boundaries to disenfranchisement, and, as one of the ‘Liberal deserters to Tory ranks’, voted for Derby’s reform bill in April 1859.55Hansard, 4 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, cc. 1334-5; 6 Apr. 1859, vol. 153, c. 1434; Examiner, 2 Apr. 1859. Having been abandoned by his election agent, he fell victim to a coalition of left and right at Mallow, and was defeated by a Conservative at the ensuing general election. Wounded by the experience, he never recovered his political influence.56Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 183.

Instead Jephson Norrey, regarded by the people of Mallow as the embodiment of ‘the old-world haute noblesse’, turned his attention to his estate and his interest in archaeology.57Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 245, 253. He published a number of articles on archaeology, see Freeman’s Journal, 22 May 1890. Though he proposed William Johnson, later the Liberal attorney-general for Ireland, for Mallow in 1880, he was disenchanted by Gladstone’s adoption of home rule.58Freeman’s Journal, 17 May 1880. Not long before his death he reminisced that his object had always been ‘to connect Ireland as closely as possible to England – so that they should be but one country’, and lamented the adoption of ‘a measure which must necessarily lead to a separation of the Empire’.59Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 254. He died suddenly at the Queen’s Hotel, Queenstown in July 1888, and was buried in Mallow.60The Times, 12 July 1888; Cadogan & Falvey, Biographical Dictionary of Cork, 148. His two sons having predeceased him, the baronetcy became extinct and his heavily mortgaged estates passed to his eldest daughter Catherine Louisa McEwen (1827-1911).61Burke’s Irish Family Records (1976), 635; Jephson, Anglo-Irish Misc., 255. His eldest son, Denham William (1821-88), had died just two months earlier.