VESEY, Hon. Thomas (1803-1875), of Abbey Leix, Queen’s co. and 78 Pall Mall, London

The descendant of a Norman family which had lost its land and titles in the late sixteenth century, but had resettled and acquired an estate at Abbey Leix from the 1^st duke of Ormond in the 1690s, Vesey was born at Merrion Square, Dublin in 1803 and received a second class degree in mathematics from Oxford university in 1825.1G.E.C., Complete Peerage, iv. 307. His grandfather, the 1^st viscount de Vesci, had opposed the Act of Union in the Irish House of Lords and his father, John Vesey (1771-1855), sat for Maryborough (1796-7) in the Irish parliament.2P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 42. His great-grandfather, Sir John Denny Vesey (1709-61), was MP for Newtownards, 1727-50, governor of Queen’s County from 1746, and baron Knapton from 1750. His maternal grandfather, Sir Arthur Brooke, was MP for Fermanagh (1761-83) and Maryborough (1783-5): E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800, (2002), vi. 472, iii. 275-6. The 2^nd viscount de Vesci was considered to be ‘an exemplary resident landlord’ and was appointed lord lieutenant of Queen’s County in 1831 and elected a representative Irish peer in 1839.3Morning Post, 3 Feb. 1835.

Aided by his father’s influence, Vesey was returned for Queen’s County in 1835, ‘unpledged’ but as a supporter of ‘Sir Robert Peel’s government’, defeating the sitting repeal member. He promised, somewhat vaguely, ‘to promote the welfare of Ireland’ by supporting measures designed to ‘secure the prosperity, tranquillity, and improvement’ of the country, ‘and of the Queen’s County in particular’.4Dod MS iii. 1103; Standard, 14 Aug. 1837; Parliamentary Test Book 1835, 163. He was, however, committed to seeking a settlement of the tithe question ‘by taking the impost off the poor occupier’ and placing it on ‘the rich’, and largely Anglican landlords.5Hansard, 21 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, c. 800; Standard, 14 Aug. 1837. According to ‘local tradition’, he ‘was in favour of repeal, but would not support the repeal party’. However, no evidence to support this assertion has yet been found: Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 42. He supported the Conservative ministry on the election of a speaker and the address, voted to protect the rights of corporate freemen, and divided in favour of Peel’s motion on the Irish Church bill. He opposed the repeal of the malt tax, and voted against Lord John Russell’s motion on Irish Church temporalities.6Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 172. He rarely spoke in the House, but in August 1835 addressed the question of parliamentary elections in Ireland, arguing against charging ‘the various expenses incident upon a contested election’ to the already overburdened counties. He also defended the country’s assistant barristers against allegations that they had demonstrated bias in the compilation of the electoral registers.7Hansard, 19, 20 Aug. 1835, vol. 30, cc. 703, 769. Having voted against the Melbourne ministry on the address, 4 Feb. 1836, he opposed the Irish municipal reform bill, 28 Mar., and divided against the government motion on the Irish church and tithes, 3 June, having ‘zealously and unremittingly’ attended every previous division on the subject.8Standard, 14 Aug. 1837. Vesey strongly criticised the Whigs for staying the progress of Peel’s tithe reform bill, with the ‘vague and impractical resolution embodied in the appropriation clause’, which, coupled with their mismanagement of subsequent bills, prevented further progress on the issue. He served on select committees on the Royal Dublin Society and Irish county cess in 1836, and Irish turnpike roads and manor courts in 1837.9PP 1836 (445) xii. 355; PP 1836 (527) xii. 1; PP 1837 (484) xx. 397; PP 1837 (494) xv. 1. That year he defended his father’s refusal to recommend Robert Cassidy (the Catholic radical Vesey had defeated in 1835) for the commission of the peace, and accused the Whig ministry of abusing its powers of patronage.10Hansard, 21 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 795-801. Vesey pointed out that Cassidy’s appointment by the Irish lord chancellor ignored the fact that he was connected with his brother’s distillery and should therefore have been disqualified: Bristol Mercury, 3 Sept. 1836. An opponent of the Irish municipal corporations bill, he supported the Conservative plan to ‘abolish the corporations; and thereby do away with all excuse for party feud’.11Hansard, 21 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, c. 800. In January 1837 he participated in the ‘Great Protestant Meeting’ in Dublin, when he proposed a resolution against the ‘persecution’ of Protestant clergymen in Ireland. He attended Sir Robert Peel’s parliamentary banquet on 18 February.12Freeman’s Journal, 25 Jan. 1837; Morning Post, 20 Feb. 1837. Shortly afterwards he refuted a claim by William Smith O’Brien that Ireland was on the brink of ‘civil war’, arguing that by providing ‘the poor Irish peasant’ with ‘equitable provision, such as will relieve him from penury and want’, and ‘a practicable and well administered system of Poor-laws’, he would ‘take an interest in the stability of the state’.13Hansard, 21 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, c. 800. An opponent of the ballot, 23 June 1836, (also voting against the measure in 1837, 1842 and 1850), he divided against Clay’s motion on the corn laws, 16 Mar. 1837. By now regarded as a staunch Conservative, he was defeated at the 1837 general election by a Whig.

Vesey, a keen yachtsman, married the daughter of the earl of Pembroke, and sister of Sidney Herbert in 1839.14Standard, 25 Aug. 1836; Morning Post, 20 Aug. 1839; Freeman’s Journal, 11, 19, 21 Sept. 1839. He was returned unopposed for Queen’s County in 1841, being against ‘an alteration of the duties under which Ireland has prospered’, and described by opponents as an ‘abolitionist of Maynooth College’.15Standard, 12 July 1841; Morning Chronicle, 13 July 1841; Freeman’s Journal, 14 July 1841. He did not, however, vote in any of the divisions on Maynooth College in 1842-5. He voted for the re-introduction of income tax, 31 May 1842, and sat on the Southampton election committee that year. In supporting the Irish arms bill of 1843, he drew upon his experience as a local magistrate to comment upon crime in rural Ireland, and pointed out the necessity of a measure to prevent persons ‘hiring strangers to commit outrages and crimes’.16PP 1842 (457) viii. 467; Hansard, 29 June 1843, vol. 70, cc. 460-2. He divided against Smith O’Brien’s motion for a committee to consider Irish grievances, 12 July 1843, and paired in opposition to Lord John Russell’s motion for a committee on the state of Ireland, 1 Feb. 1844. That year he served on select committees on Irish union workhouses and the townland valuation of Ireland.17PP 1844 (441) xiv. 495; PP 1844 (513) vii. 459. A determined protectionist, he had consistently opposed Villiers’s motions for a committee to consider the corn laws, 11 July 1842, 15 May 1843, 26 June 1844.18Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1846. However, having ‘contented’ himself with voting in the minority on the first division on the corn law repeal bill, 27 Feb. 1846, he failed to divide on its second and third readings.19The Times, 19 May 1846. He nevertheless praised Peel ‘for his measures for the relief of Ireland’, and supported the prime minister’s ill-fated Irish coercion bill as necessary to combat the ‘nefarious associations’ which, he argued, had established ‘an organized and powerful imperium in imperio’ in some parts of Ireland.20Morning Post, 26 Jan. 146; Hansard, 25 June 1846, vol. 87, cc. 972-3. Regarding the famine, he argued for the provision of financial assistance to destitute Irish emigrants to Canada, and defended the performance of most Irish landlords in providing employment and poor relief during the crisis. As a poor law guardian, he denounced the poor relief (Ireland) bill as a ‘dangerous experiment’, arguing that ‘the proposed out-door relief test for the able-bodied poor … would impoverish the landed proprietors of Ireland’, and ‘would considerably increase the pauperism of that country’.21Hansard, 12 Mar. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 1241-2; 15 Mar. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 1381-3.

He was returned unopposed again for Queen’s County in 1847, having expressed some sympathy for land reform, while being opposed to fixity of tenure.22Freeman’s Journal, 9 Aug. 1847; B. Walker, ‘Politicians, Elections and Catastrophe: The General Election of 1847’, Irish Political Studies, 22:1 (2007), 1-34 [24]. He opposed the Catholic relief bill, 24 Feb. 1847, but did not participate in the divisions on the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland in April 1848.23Freeman’s Journal, 12 May 1848. He was a moderate attender, participating in 59 of the 219 divisions in 1849. He voted against the repeal of the Navigation Acts, 12 Mar. 1849, and that year also served on the select committee on the Irish courts of chancery and exchequer.24Hampshire Telegraph and Sussex Chronicle, 20 Oct. 1849; PP 1849 (438) viii. 439; PP 1849 (494) viii. 645. The following year he voted against the Irish franchise bill, objecting to a clause under which every man possessing a qualification was to be placed upon the register ‘whether he wished it or not’, and opposed Palmerston’s foreign policy, 28 June 1850.25Hansard, 18 Mar. 1850, vol. 109, c. 1079. He argued that ‘the agitation and heartburnings’ attending Irish elections meant that many qualified voters ‘would prefer not being upon the register, that they might avoid the annoyance to which they were liable to be subjected at elections’. During 1850-1 he was a persistent critic of the Irish medical charities bills, and resisted encroachments by the poor law guardians on the provision of medical assistance, a duty hitherto performed by voluntary bodies.26Hansard, 25 July 1850, vol. 113, c. 221; 1 Apr. 1851, vol. 115, c. 897. In common with other Irish members, he believed that the law governing land valuation in Ireland required amendment, arguing that the current system had obstructed the construction of Irish railways.27Hansard, 23 June 1851, vol. 117, c. 1118. However, he only supported the Irish valuation bill in May 1852 on the understanding that it would not operate in his own county, the power to substitute townland for tenement valuation having already been adopted there under an Act of 1846: Hansard, 27 May 1852, vol. 121, cc. 1210-1. He sat on the select committee on income and property tax in 1851-2,28PP 1851 (563) x. 339; PP 1852 (354) ix. 1; PP 1852 (510) ix. 463. and supported the Whig government’s response to the ‘Papal Aggression’ in May 1851. In April 1852 he backed Lord Derby’s ministry on the militia bill, and opposed Locke King’s motion to extend the English county franchise.29Freeman’s Journal, 12 May 1851, 29, 30 Apr. 1852. However, having supported the divisive ecclesiastical titles bill, and with Catholic voters threatening to bring forward two independent candidates for the Queen’s County, he retired at the 1852 general election, throwing his influence behind his fellow Conservative member Sir Charles Coote.30Standard, 17 Mar. 1852; Freeman’s Journal, 20 July 1852. He offered no reason for his retirement, and was incorrectly identified in at least one English newspaper as a ‘Peelite’: Freeman’s Journal, 6 Apr., 20 July 1852; Newcastle Courant, 9 Apr. 1852.

Vesey succeeded his father as 3^rd viscount de Vesci in October 1855, and was elected an Irish representative peer in January 1857.31Daily News, 15 Jan. 1857. He held jointly with the earl of Longford a very valuable property in County Dublin (420 acres at an annual valuation of £31,713) which encompassed a part of the township of Kingstown, as well as 15,069 acres in Queen’s County, 818 acres in County Cork, and 646 acres in Kent: J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 129; G.E.C., Complete Peerage, iv. 308. It was a position he held until his death, although he made very few contributions to debate. In his last public act he nominated Francis Plunkett Dunne as a Conservative Home Rule candidate at the 1874 general election. He died suddenly after a brief illness at Carlton House Terrace, London, in December 1875 and was buried in the church at Abbey Leix.32Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 43; Morning Post, 24 Dec. 1875. He was succeeded by his son John Robert William (1844-1903), a lieutenant-colonel of the Coldstream Guards, who was created baron de Vesci of Abbey Leix in the peerage of the United Kingdom in November 1884.33G.E.C., Complete Peerage, iv. 307-8. A Liberal, he joined the opposition to Gladstone’s home rule bill in 1886. Vesey’s daughters, Frances and Beatrice, married the 4th marquess of Bath and Lord Richard Grosvenor, MP for Flintshire (1861-86) respectively: The Times, 24 Dec. 1875. A collection of the 3^rd viscount’s papers is held in the National Library of Ireland.34NLI Collection List 89: MSS 38,963-39,059.