NEWDEGATE, Charles Newdigate (1816-1887), of Harefield Park, Uxbridge, Mdx. and Arbury Hall, nr. Nuneaton, Warws.

Described by Lord John Manners as ‘a most honest, excellent, mulish prig of a bigot’, Newdegate made his name as a protectionist in the 1840s, but was better known as a prominent ultra-Protestant, who had an increasingly distant relationship with the Conservative party leadership.1Lord John Manners to Benjamin Disraeli, 30 Dec. 1847, qu. in Benjamin Disraeli letters, ed. M.G. Wiebe et al (1989) iv. 329-30. He was a protectionist whip until March 1850, when, as Benjamin Disraeli later remarked, Newdegate ‘resigned his post and, as we now see, his prospects, the victim of jealousy and self-conceit, though rich, capable, and a gentleman’.2Qu. from a conversation recorded by Disraeli’s private secretary Montague Corry in 1876: W.F. Monypenny and G.E. Buckle, The life of Benjamin Disraeli, earl of Beaconsfield (1914), iii. 196. Thereafter, although he remained a protectionist, Newdegate was preoccupied with defending the ‘Protestant constitution’ from Catholic and Jewish claims, working in co-operation with his colleague and mentor, Richard Spooner, and other MPs attached to the National Club.3W.L. Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic in mid-Victorian England: Mr. Newdegate and the nuns (1982); M.C.N. Salbstein, The emancipation of the Jews in Britain (1982), 229-30; F. Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism in mid-Victorian Britain (1993), 158-9; J. Wolffe, The protestant crusade in Great Britain, 1829-1860 (1991), 214. Adopting the guise of an ‘independent member’, Newdegate occupied an increasingly isolated, yet often distinctive, political position in the 1860s, with one obituary describing him as ‘an opponent of change, strong in his attachment to the past, a zealous champion of impossible causes, and of political principles which everyone but himself had forgotten or ignored’.4The Times, 11 Apr. 1887. His rigid attachment to principle, unwillingness to trim in the interests of party and lack of personal ambition meant that his public career ‘never rose to be eminent, but … was long conspicuous, and always honourable’.5Ibid.

At a young age Newdegate had succeeded to the estates of his father and great-uncle in Middlesex and Warwickshire respectively. Newdegate was largely brought up by his mother, who, Disraeli later claimed, ‘spoilt him. She wanted to make a Pitt of him ... but she ... took the wrong way to do it, kept him at home and crammed him’.6Qu. from 1867: Disraeli letters, v. 133. However, his candidature was eagerly sought by Birmingham Conservatives when a vacancy arose for North Warwickshire in March 1843.7The Times, 27, 28 Feb. 1843; Morning Post, 25 Feb. 1843, 1 Mar. 1843. Returned unopposed at the nomination, one observer described him as ‘a fine young man … with a cheerful, open countenance, and a very winning manner’, who, ‘as a public speaker, seems to possess qualities of no very common kind’.8Morning Post, 11 Mar. 1843. Newdegate remained popular in the constituency and topped the poll whenever he was challenged.9McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 302.

He made his first mark in the 1844 session with a series of attacks on Sir Robert Peel’s bank charter bill.10Hansard, 20 May 1844, vol. 74, c. 1400; 13, 24 June 1844, vol. 75, cc. 824-34, 1319-22, 1323-4, 1326; 27 June 1844, vol. 76, cc. 64-5. Although influenced by the views of the ‘Birmingham school’, whose parliamentary representatives were Spooner and the Radical George Frederick Muntz, Newdegate offered a distinctively Conservative critique.11A. Gambles, Protection and politics: conservative economic discourse, 1815-1852 (1999), 136-40; Hansard, 13 June 1844, vol. 75, c. 830. He argued, 13 June 1844, that the bill would impose further restrictions on the monetary system, meaning that it would form too narrow a base to support the rest of the economy.12Ibid., 825-8. Although critical of the bill, Newdegate seems not to have objected to the 1819 Bank Act or the principle of convertibility (that notes be payable into gold), but instead favoured a relaxation of the limits on note issue, and at other times hinted at support for a bimetallic (gold and silver) currency.13Hansard, 24 June 1844, vol. 75, cc. 1319-24; 27 June 1844, vol. 76, cc. 64-5; 25 July 1845, vol. 82, c. 1116; 10 May 1847, vol. 92, cc. 609-13; 15 Dec. 1847, vol. 95, cc. 1140-1.

The following year, Newdegate again distinguished himself by his hostility to the Maynooth college bill, contending that what its opponents objected to was ‘nothing more nor less than the Roman Catholic doctrine’.14Hansard, 15 Apr. 1845, vol. 79, cc. 712-18 (at 717). His attack on Watson’s Catholic relief bill, 9 July 1845, was notable for its denunciation of the Jesuits as ‘a sect which embraced in its institution the most dangerous and worst elements of a secret society’.15Hansard, 9 July 1845, vol. 82, cc. 286-7. Having voiced lukewarm support for Peel’s 1842 sliding scale in his hustings speech, Newdegate firmly opposed the repeal of the corn laws in 1846 and was one of the backbenchers who assisted Lord George Bentinck as leader of the parliamentary resistance.16The Times, 11 Mar. 1843; A. Hawkins, The forgotten prime minister: the 14th earl of Derby (2007), i. 309; R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative party, 1830-1867 (1978), 213. Defining protection as ‘not implying prohibition, but the regulation of trade’, 20 Feb. 1846, Newdegate argued that the duty of government was to secure the ‘peace, happiness, and welfare of the people’, not the bogus cheapness promised by free traders.17Hansard, 20 Feb. 1846, vol. 83, cc. 1293 (first qu.), 1283 (second qu.). One of the leading parliamentary critics of the activities of the Anti-Corn Law League, particularly their attempts to interfere with county electorates, Newdegate secured a select committee to investigate the registration of voters in 1846.18Hansard, 14 Aug. 1843, vol. 71, c. 671-3; 27 Feb. 1845, vol. 78, cc. 111-13; 3 June 1845, vol. 80, c. 1419; 27 Jan. 1846, vol. 83, cc. 323-4; 3, 10 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 502-7, 928-9; PP 1846 (451), viii. 183. However, he reserved his bitterest criticism for Peel, who, he contended, had capitulated to the League’s pressure and deceived his Tory supporters, causing a loss of confidence in public men.19Hansard, 27 Jan. 1846, vol. 83, c. 323; 20 Feb. 1846, vol. 83, cc. 1285-6, 1293-4; 12 May 1846, vol. 86, cc. 423-4, 429-32. ‘Such conduct’, he declared, ‘was not the conduct of a constitutional Minister’.20Hansard, 20 Feb. 1846, vol. 83, c. 1294.

As whips from 1847, Newdegate and Charles Beresford owed their primary allegiance to Lord Stanley, the protectionist chief in the Lords. Not only were they unwilling to compromise their staunch anti-Catholicism, but, as Manners noted, 13 Dec. 1847, they actively ‘worked for a Religious cry, and determined to merge, perhaps, … Protection in Protestantism’.21Lord John Manners, Journal, 13 Dec. 1847, Belvoir Castle, qu. in Disraeli letters, iv. 328-9. The militant opposition of Newdegate and other ultra-Protestants to the removal of Jewish disabilities in December 1847 forced out Bentinck, who had supported the measure.22Hansard, 17 Dec. 1847, vol. 95, cc. 1365-70 (Newdegate’s speech); H. Chung, ‘From a protectionist party to a Church party, 1846-48: identity crisis of the Conservative party and the Jew bill of 1847’, Albion, 36 (2004), 256-78; Hawkins, Forgotten prime minister, i. 339-41; Stewart, Conservative party, 214; Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 241-2. The whips managed the leaderless parliamentary party during the 1848 session, whilst at the same time, as prominent members of the Protestant faction based around the National Club, they vigorously opposed concessions to Catholics.23Stewart, Conservative party, 233; Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 232-9. After Disraeli’s elevation to the leadership (nominally as part of a triumvirate with John Charles Herries and the marquis of Granby), Newdegate communicated his unpopularity amongst MPs to Stanley, Dec. 1848:

I have been warned repeatedly not to trust Disraeli, while I see nothing in his public conduct to justify the want of confidence so many seem to feel. This I conclude is attributable to some circumstances of his earlier life, with which I am not familiar, but have little doubt you are. I can scarcely help believing there must be some foundation for so general an opinion as I have alluded to, and it makes me very uneasy.24Monypenny and Buckle, Life of Disraeli, iii. 120-1.

Much to Disraeli’s relief, Newdegate resigned as whip in March 1850.25Ibid., 246. He also declined Derby’s offer of the vice-presidency of the Indian board of control in February 1852, because of his scepticism about the new prime minister’s commitment to protection and Protestantism.26Hawkins, Forgotten prime minister (2008), ii. 15. However, Disraeli continued to appreciate Newdegate’s abilities, even if he disapproved of his political direction, as illustrated by a letter to Derby, 1 Sept. 1852, on possible candidates for the chairmanship of ways and means:

They are all incompetent, except Newdegate, & he wd. have the worst chance of all … It is his own fault for tying himself up with such a Socrates [Spooner], for he has many excellent qualities for public life, & is a spirited fellow; but between his mother & Birmingham, the Alcibiades of Warwickshire has been spoiled.27Disraeli to Lord Derby, 1 Sept. 1852, qu. in Disraeli letters, vi. 133. Alcibiades was an Athenian general and politician during the Peloponnesian War.

Between 1849 and 1852, Newdegate published regular critiques of the board of trade’s statistics, which he believed obscured the trade imbalances caused by free trade, especially the export of gold.28C.N. Newdegate, Letter to the right hon. H. Labouchere (1849); idem, A second letter to the right hon. H. Labouchere (1849); idem, A third letter to the right hon. H. Labouchere (1851); A fourth letter to the right hon. H. Labouchere (1851); idem, A letter to the right hon. J.W. Henley (1852). The Morning Chronicle sarcastically commented that Newdegate ‘is emphatically a man with one idea, and that the wrong one’.29Morn. Chro., 26 June 1852. However, as Anna Gambles has argued, Newdegate’s meticulously compiled alternative trade statistics were an attempt to develop a protectionist empiricism which coolly spelled out the practical defects of free trade.30Gambles, Politics and protection, 210-12. Despite his continued advocacy of protection, ultra-Protestantism was increasingly the mainspring of Newdegate’s political activity. Session after session in the 1850s he opposed the admission of Jews to Parliament and lent support to Spooner’s campaign to repeal the Maynooth College Act.31Hansard, 19 Feb. 1849, vol. 102, cc. 927-9; 11 Mar. 1853, vol. 125, cc. 114-17; 25 May 1854, vol. 133, cc. 925-33; 15 May 1857, vol. 145, cc. 336-7; 15 June 1857, vol. 145, cc. 1851-4; 21 July 1857, vol. 147, cc. 160-5; 22 Mar. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 490-516; 16 July 1858, vol. 151, cc. 1614-20 (Jewish emancipation); 11 May 1852, vol. 121, cc. 557-62; 3 July 1854, vol. 134, cc. 1043-52; 15 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, cc. 1088-93; 29 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 1998-9 (Maynooth). He believed that ‘our Protestant faith was our only security for our liberties’, and so staunchly resisted further breaches in the Protestant constitution, which he claimed ‘could not be maintained unless the Parliament continued [to be] Christian’, 10 Dec. 1857.32Hansard, 11 June 1849, vol. 105, c. 1394 (first qu.); 10 Dec. 1857, vol. 148, c. 486 (second qu.).

Newdegate’s defence of the Protestant constitution rested on a belief in the supremacy of English law and allegiance to the sovereign and was as much political as religious. Thus Newdegate’s real complaint about ‘Papal aggression’ was that politicians and the public had focused on the Pope’s claims to spiritual authority. Much more significant, he argued, 20 Mar. 1851, was that cardinal Wiseman had been sent as a cardinal legate to extend the Papacy’s temporal power.33Hansard, 20 Mar. 1851, vol. 115, cc. 233-4; Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 70-1. Newdegate’s incessant denunciations of the Jesuits and anxieties about convents and monasteries, which he demanded be investigated, centred on his belief that they effectively operated outside English law.34Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 71; Hansard, 14 May 1851, vol. 116, cc. 964-5; 10 May 1853, vol. 127, cc. 103-8 (convents); 11 Mar. 1846, vol. 84, cc. 928-9; 6 May 1846, vol. 86, c. 156; 24 June 1846, vol. 87, cc. 934-5; 24 Feb. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 488-9; 20 Mar. 1851, vol. 115, cc. 254-5 (Jesuits). Underlying these views was the general question of whether Catholic canon law was compatible with English law, and, as he believed that Judaism was a civil code as well as a religion, the same principle influenced his opposition to Jewish emancipation.35Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 176-7; Hansard, 11 June 1849, vol. 105, cc. 1388-91 (Jewish question); 18 May 1854, vol. 133, c. 548 (canon law). This perspective raised further questions about allegiance, which led Newdegate to claim regularly that Irish Roman Catholic MPs were elected ‘nominally by their constituents, but really by the priesthood, and that priesthood [by] the agents of a foreign power’.36Hansard, 18 May 1854, vol. 133, c. 548. On this theme see also ibid., 27 Mar. 1849, vol. 103, c. 1424; 3 July 1854, vol. 134, cc. 1048-50. He also seems to have regarded Protestant supporters of Catholic claims as little more than stooges for the Pope, acting as ‘nothing more nor less than agents in the hands of those who were the advocates of the supremacy of the Church of Rome’, 12 July 1854.37Hansard, 12 May 1854, vol. 134, c. 114. The ultra-Protestants’ strategy foundered on the unwillingness of Dissenters to subordinate their own claims and suppress attacks on the established church in the wider interests of an anti-Catholic alliance with Anglicans.38Wolffe, Protestant crusade, 247-54. Always perplexed by Dissenters’ support for Catholic demands, when the Congregationalist Edward Miall moved to investigate Irish church temporalities, 27 May 1856, Newdegate remarked, ‘there are some Nonconformists whose Protestantism I cannot understand’.39Hansard, 27 May 1856, vol. 142, c. 741.

A regular attender, Newdegate often spoke up to seventy times a session, and, influenced by Spooner, developed a ‘solemn, pompous & bigoted’ style.40‘The House of Commons in 1857’, Gent. Mag. (1857), i. 19-28 (at 27); qu. in The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865, ed. T. Jenkins, Camden Society, 4th ser., xl (1990), 40 (10 May 1858). Having not received much of a hearing when he first entered Parliament, Newdegate’s doggedness and diligence paid off, as Sir John Trelawny, his opponent on many religious issues, noted in 1865:

How he has improved! Recollecting his reception on many occasions some 20 years ago, I shd. scarcely have believed he could ever have obtained the ear of the House. But time and perseverance, with honesty of purpose & courage, effect much in Parliament as elsewhere.41Ibid., 309 (3 Mar. 1865).

His solemn voice meant that his speeches had a serious air, but one Irish MP wondered whether, ‘notwithstanding the extreme gravity of the hon. Member’s demeanour’, Newdegate actually believed the ‘ridiculous’ conspiracy theories he alleged about Jesuits and convents.42Hansard, 13 Mar. 1865, vol. 177, c. 1642.

By the early 1860s Newdegate had taken his ‘place below the gangway as an independent member’, and preferred to describe himself as ‘a Tory of the Pittite school’ or an ‘old Whig’ in his public speeches.43Birmingham Daily Post, 27 Nov. 1863 (second qu.), 25 Nov. 1864 (first and third qus.). His views on party were trenchantly expounded in 1862: ‘Party had no value with him but as it expressed principles which would maintain intact the constitution of the country, and preserve her influence and authority at home and abroad’.44Hansard, 1 Aug. 1862, vol. 168, c. 1143. He did not spare the Conservative leaders when he felt they departed from the principles of the protectionist and Protestant party of the late 1840s.45Ibid., 1142-3. A speech ‘on Disraeli’s church policy & principles was equally severe & effective’ and apparently made his erstwhile leader ‘wince’.46Trelawny diaries, 242 (23 Apr. 1863). Disraeli, Newdegate declared, had ‘never understood the Church except as a wealthy corporation beside the State’ and gave its supporters ‘no credit for believing that she is the depository of religious truth’, 20 Apr. 1863.47Hansard, 20 Apr. 1863, vol. 170, c. 437. Later that year Newdegate was apparently one of the MPs who plotted to replace Disraeli with Jonathan Peel.48Hawkins, Forgotten prime minister, ii. 285-6.

Newdegate’s detachment from the party leadership was also reflected in the distinctive position he held on a number of other policies. For anti-Catholic reasons, Newdegate supported Palmerston’s encouragement of Italian nationalism, which he believed would weaken the Pope’s temporal power in the peninsula.49Hansard, 2 Aug. 1861, vol. 164, cc. 1866-7; Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Nov. 1864. He warned against intervening on behalf of Poland in 1863, as it was not large enough to ‘constitute a free state’ and an independent Poland would be dominated by Jesuits and Ultramontane doctrines.50Hansard, 27 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 892-3 (qu. at 893); 20 July 1863, vol. 172, cc. 1126-7. The following year he urged the government to protect Denmark against Prussia, arguing that history had shown that its defence was both feasible and vital to safeguard Britain’s strategic interests.51Hansard, 4 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 157-8; 19 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 1341-4; 6 May 1864, vol. 175, cc. 166-7; 4 July 1864, vol. 176, cc. 777-85. However, he reluctantly withdrew his amendment that Britain commit to defending Denmark, 8 July 1864, as ‘almost the whole House would have gone into one lobby’ against him.52Trelawny diaries, 299 (8 July 1864). Hansard recorded that only ‘two or three voices’, including Newdegate, expressed support for his amendment when the Speaker took the sense of the House: 8 July 1864, vol. 176, cc. 1299-1300.

In 1861 Newdegate noted that ‘it was a growing practice for the House to expect the government of the day to introduce almost all legislation of importance’.53Hansard, 7 Feb. 1861, vol. 161, c. 170. As an independent member Newdegate was alarmed by the government’s attempts to avoid scrutiny of its financial policy by bundling alterations of income tax, customs duties and the abolition of paper duty into one bill and moved unsuccessfully that they be separated, 27 May 1861.54Hansard, 16 May 1861, vol. 162, cc. 2155-65; 27 May 1861, vol. 163, cc. 68-83, 92. Complaining that the Commons was reduced to a ‘mere skeleton after one o’clock’, which allowed the executive to push legislation through with little examination, Newdegate unsuccessfully proposed that the House set limits on its hours, 16 July 1860, and made the same suggestion to the select committee on public business the following year.55Hansard, 16 July 1860, vol. 159, cc. 1953-5 (qu. at 1955), 1963; PP 1861 (173), xi. 448-9, 452. Concerned with the quality of information available to parliamentarians, Newdegate thought that a digest of important statistics should be circulated to MPs before the start of the session, as in France and the United States, rather than relying on ad hoc returns moved for by members.56Hansard, 23 July 1857, vol. 147, cc. 297-8; 9 July 1861, vol. 164, c. 644. Unless the Commons became more effective in its oversight of public expenditure and the executive, predicted Newdegate, demands for sweeping democratic reforms would grow.57Hansard, 11 Mar. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 1345-6.

Not that Newdegate was opposed to parliamentary reform, and throughout the debates of the late 1850s and 1860s he took a distinctive stance on the issue. As his constituency included Birmingham and Coventry, which he believed gave him an ‘independent power’, unlike most Conservatives, Newdegate opposed the attempt to strip urban freeholders of their county votes in 1859, although he supported the rest of Derby’s reform bill.58Hansard, 4 Apr. 1862, vol. 153, cc. 1328-9; qu. from The Times, 12 Aug. 1865. Newdegate’s main concern was that on the basis of population and gross rental value, the counties exceeded the boroughs and yet they had only half the seats.59The Standard, 6 Dec. 1853; Hansard, 28 Feb. 1859, vol. 152, cc. 1014-15; 1 Mar. 1860, vol. 156, c. 2068; 11 June 1860, vol. 159, cc. 244-5; 30 May 1867, vol. 187, cc. 1405-6, 1408-11. Too much attention was focused on the borough franchise, argued Newdegate and not enough on redistribution.60Hansard, 26 Apr. 1866, vol. 183, cc. 62-5; 30 May 1867, vol. 187, c. 1406. He therefore supported Grosvenor’s successful attempt to block the 1866 Liberal reform bill without redistribution.61Hansard, 26 Apr. 1866, vol. 183, cc. 62-5. In the debates on the 1867 representation of the people bill, Newdegate, unlike many Conservatives, had no objection to granting extra seats to the larger boroughs, including Birmingham, providing that measures were introduced to secure minority representation.62Hansard, 17 June 1867, vol. 187, c. 1952-3. He also approved of the suppression of small boroughs as he believed that a lower franchise would make corruption endemic in such places.63Hansard, 30 May 1867, vol. 187, cc. 1406-8.

Despite his contribution on a wide range of subjects, the defence of Protestantism and the established church remained Newdegate’s central concern in the 1860s, and he was a regular, and sometimes eccentric presence in religious debates. During a convoluted speech by William Gladstone, Trelawny noted that:

Newdegate’s face of ineffable contempt … was a subject of some amusement. He kept tossing his head aside with a jerk, assuming the contortions of a man taking physic, & accompanying his movements with an ironical ‘hear hear’ in tones like those of an old raven. Yet, he is a good & genuine man, anxious to do his duty. All honour to him!64Trelawny diaries, 228 (4 Mar. 1863).

In 1864 and 1865 Newdegate sought to rally anti-Catholics by unsuccessfully proposing an investigation of convents and monasteries.65Hansard, 8 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 633-47; 3 Mar. 1865, vol. 177, cc. 1046-64. He opposed the various oaths bills of the decade, which sought to dismantle what remained of the structure of Catholic disabilities.66Wallis, Popular anti-Catholicism, 158-9, 163-8; Hansard, 18 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 469-71; 4 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 1045-7; 13 Feb. 1865, vol. 177, cc. 210-12; 21 Mar. 1865, vol. 179, cc. 41-5; 30 May 1865, vol. 179, cc. 1051-68; 28 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 1241-51. More constructively, he sought a compromise settlement for the church rates issue, but his complicated proposal to commute the rate and establish an alternative system of revenue garnered little support in the House.67Hansard, 28 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1422-60; 6 Mar. 1861, vol. 161, cc. 1491-1504, 1514-15; 9 July 1862, vol. 168, cc. 98-112; 6 May 1863, vol. 170, cc. 1247-3, 1272-3; 27 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 1726-7; 1 Aug. 1866, vol. 184, c. 1885; 20 Mar. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 250-67; J.P. Ellens, Religious routes to Gladstonian liberalism: the church rate conflict in England and Wales, 1832-1868 (1994), 207, 235. After Spooner’s death in 1864, Newdegate was increasingly isolated in his espousal of ultra-Protestantism. His opposition to Sir George Grey’s bill to amend the parliamentary oath ended in humiliation when his wrecking amendment secured just five supporters, 8 Mar. 1866.68Hansard, 8 Mar. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 1727-34, 1736. The bill proposed substituting a declaration against the supremacy of the Pope with a simple declaration of allegiance to the sovereign. Despite his fondness for conspiracy theories involving the Jesuits, even Newdegate seems to have tired of the reckless allegations made by George Hampden Whalley, Spooner’s successor as the leading opponent of Maynooth, that the British government was in league with the Pope, and disowned him, 26 July 1866, for making their cause ‘appear ridiculous’.69Hansard, 26 July 1866, vol. 184, cc. 1581-7 (at 1587). A few months earlier Newdegate had rebuked Whalley by saying that ‘he knew no Member who, whether from accident or incapacity, did so much disservice to the cause he advocated’: ibid., 8 May 1866, vol. 183, cc. 640-1. Unable to ‘catch the Speaker’s eye’ in the debate on Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, 3 Apr. 1868, thereafter Newdegate offered steadfast opposition to disestablishment.70Hansard, 27 Apr. 1868, vol. 191, c. 1421 (qu.); 5 June 1868, vol. 192, cc. 1197-1203, 1211.

Newdegate’s campaign against convents, the subject of a 1982 study by Walter Arnstein, continued into the 1870s, and in the following decade he sought to prevent the admission of the atheist MP Charles Bradlaugh.71Arnstein, Protestant versus Catholic, passim; J. Wolffe, ‘Newdegate, Charles Newdigate (1816-1887)’, www.oxforddnb.com. The redivision of Newdegate’s constituency in 1885 offered a convenient excuse for his retirement, and he was made a privy councillor in February 1886, and died barely a year later.72Ibid.; The Times, 11 Apr. 1887. A lifelong bachelor, Newdegate was succeeded by his second cousin Sir Edward Newdegate Newdigate, but his will contained a stipulation that Roman Catholics be excluded in perpetuity from inheriting the estates.73Wolffe, ‘Newdegate’; Burke’s landed gentry (1894), ii. 1475. His kinsman Francis Alexander Newdigate-Newdegate (1862-1936) was Conservative MP for Nuneaton, 1892-1906, and Tamworth, 1909-17.74Ibid., 1474-5; M. Stenton and S. Lees, Who’s who of British Members of Parliament (1978), ii. 266.