PEASE, Henry (1807-1881), of 7 Manchester Buildings, Westminster, Mdx. and Pierremont, Darlington, co. Durham.

Pease, ‘by birth, education, and by conviction ... was a thorough Liberal, ever earnest in political reform’.1‘Henry Pease: a memoir’, Northern Echo, 31 May 1881. He was the youngest son of Edward Pease, the Quaker industrialist who had been the driving force behind the Darlington to Stockton railway.2A.F. Pollard and C. Fell-Smith, ‘Pease, Edward (1767-1858)’, rev. M.W. Kirby, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. His elder brother, Joseph, owner of extensive collieries and iron foundries in Teesside, and MP for Durham South, 1832-41, was the first Quaker to sit in the Commons.3Joseph Pease: a memoir (1872), reprinted from the Northern Echo, 9 Feb. 1872. Originally apprenticed as a tanner in Darlington’s leather trade, on coming of age Pease took an active part in the management of Britain’s first railway line, and thereafter became a director of numerous railway projects.4Northern Echo, 31 May 1881; M.W. Kirby, Men of business and politics: the rise and fall of the Quaker Pease dynasty of north-east England, 1700-1943 (1984), 26, 38. His crowning achievement was the South Durham and Lancashire Union railway, opened in 1861, which connected Teesside with the Lake District by crossing Stainmore in the Pennines, the summit of which was 1,374 feet above sea level.5J. Wall, First in the world: the Stockton and Darlington railway (2001), 132-6.

A devout Quaker, Pease was noted for ‘the austerity of his character’ and his ‘habitual reserve’.6Northern Echo, 31 May 1881. When approached to replace his brother Joseph as MP for Durham South in 1841, he told his daughter that it was easy to decline the offer, because ‘the Divine arm will be more seen by me in this thing if in his ordering’.7M.H. Pease, Henry Pease: a short story of his life (1897), 78. He first came to national prominence in February 1854 when, as part of a three-man deputation from the Society of Friends, he visited Russia to urge emperor Nicholas to abstain from the imminent Crimean war.8E. Isichei, Victorian Quakers (1970), 192. Although they were received politely, their efforts came to nothing, and the deputation was roundly criticised in the national press, and subsequently ridiculed by Alexander William Kinglake in his Invasion of the Crimea (1863), who described their mission as ‘sheer nothingness’.9The Times, 21 Feb. 1854; A.W. Kinglake, The invasion of the Crimea: its origins and an account of its progress down to the death of Lord Raglan (1863), 415. Cf. M.E. Hirst, Quakers in peace and war: an account of their principles and practice (1923), 258; Isichei, Victorian Quakers, 192-3.

At the 1857 general election Pease offered for Durham South. Although supported by a numerously signed requisition from the constituency’s electors, his campaign was fraught with difficulty from the outset as he had committed himself against the Chinese war, over which Palmerston had appealed to the country.10Daily News, 21 Mar. 1857; Pease, Henry Pease, 79-81. Attacked on this issue by his opponents, he insisted that while ‘he did not like this murdering war business’, he would never call for the abandonment of ‘our armies and navies’, and would support Palmerston’s government on all other questions.11Northern Echo, 31 May 1881. Backed by the votes of his family’s expanded commercial estates, he withstood the national tide of jingoism and headed the poll.12T.J. Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975), 63.

A frequent attender who, like his brother, affirmed instead of taking the oath, Pease divided against the industrial schools bill, 8 July 1857, a surprising vote, given that he was a strenuous advocate of state-funded education for the poor.13Northern Echo, 31 May 1881. He was opposed to a clause allowing child vagrants to be remanded in custody priory to being sent to school, as it ‘trenched so closely on civil and religious liberty’, 17 June 1857, and he unsuccessfully pressed for children to be discharged from industrial schools at the age of 12 rather than 15, believing that ‘they might be expected to assist in the maintenance of themselves and the family remaining at home’, 8 July 1857. Although implacably opposed to all connections between church and state, he voted for the Maynooth grant, 21 May 1857, believing that as long as the Irish church was endowed it should remain, and he backed church rate abolition, 17 Feb. 1858. On all other major issues he followed Liberal ministers into the division lobby, and voted for Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, the defeat of which precipitated the collapse of his first administration. He divided against the short-lived Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.

Pease was re-elected without opposition at the 1859 general election, and thereafter loyally supported Palmerston’s second administration on most major questions. ‘A pleasant speaker, though not eloquent’, he found his feet in his second parliament, making expert interventions in education debates.14Cassell’s family magazine (1885), viii. 619-20. He successfully moved for a delay in the second reading of Charles Adderley’s education bill, arguing that its main clause, to make the employment of a child under the age of twelve without a certificate of education illegal, would ‘operate most unkindly and harshly towards the poor’, 17 July 1860. A zealous advocate of retrenchment in public expenditure, he consistently defended Gladstone’s budgets, 26 Mar. 1860, 25 Apr. 1861, 3 Apr. 1862, but on the education estimates, he called for greater grants ‘to defray the charge for public education’ as it ‘would be the cheapest thing in the world ... for it tended to diminish crime, and reduce the expenses of the convict establishments’, 1 July 1862. He sat on the 1861 select committee on the education of destitute children, assiduously questioning witnesses, particularly on the issue of funding for industrial schools.15PP 1861 (460), vii. 395, 460.

Pease was also a consistent advocate of franchise extension. He believed that as the government ‘drew upon the working classes to carry on their wars, and a heavy burden of taxation had been imposed on them, ... why should they not have a great share in returning representatives to parliament?’, 7 June 1860, and in a speech that was praised by Sir John Trelawny, he backed the county franchise bill, insisting that ‘the strength of the House depended upon its being a full, free and hearty representation of the views and opinions of the country’, 13 Apr. 1864. He divided in minorities for the borough franchise bill, 10 Apr. 1861 and 8 May 1865, and voted for the ballot, 20 Mar. 1860.16The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 ed. by T.A. Jenkins (1992), 270.

Pease’s attendance became less frequent in the 1864 and 1865 sessions, and ‘he often suffered from severe nervous headaches’ and ‘the late hours and the heated atmosphere of the House did not suit his health’.17Pease, Henry Pease, 83. It was therefore ‘a great relief to him’ when parliament was dissolved in 1865, and he was able to relinquish his seat to his nephew, Joseph Whitwell Pease.18Ibid. Released from the strains of national politics, Pease focused his energies on the local government of Darlington, where he was elected its first mayor in 1867, and thereafter continuously sat on the council as an alderman.19Northern Echo, 31 May 1881. In 1871 he was elected to the town’s first school board.20Ibid. He remained attentive to international conflict, and became president of the Peace Society in 1872. Following Gladstone’s resolutions on the Bulgarian atrocities, however, he confirmed to a crowded meeting in Darlington that he would sign a petition calling for military intervention.21Ibid. His decision to back Gladstone prompted one obituarist to suggest that, despite his Quakerism, ‘he was too practical to be an idealist’.22Ibid.

Pease died in February 1881, while attending the annual meeting of the Society of Friends. He left estate valued at £426,128, 6s. 4d.23England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 21 July 1881. He was succeeded by his only son from his first marriage, Henry Fell Pease, Liberal MP for Cleveland, 1885-1896. His papers and correspondence are located at Hull City Archives, and a selection of his letters to various political figures are held at the British Library, London.24Hull City Archives, DFP/3223-3278; BL Add MSS. 39106, f. 47; 78156, f. 32; 44783, f. 34; 44785, f. 146.