COLLINS, William (1792-1859), of Warwick, Warwickshire

A Warwick woolstapler, in 1838 Collins was accurately described by his friend Joseph Parkes as ‘a Radical … [and] a good friend of the Gov[ernmen]t’.1Joseph Parkes to Edward John Stanley, 19 Aug. 1838, MS Kingsland. Collins attained local prominence in the 1820s as one of the leaders of Warwick’s independent party opposed to the ‘Castle interest’ of the Tory earl of Warwick, who controlled the corporation, and successfully campaigned for the election of his father-in-law, John Tomes, at the 1826 by-election.2‘Warwick’, HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 140-5; ‘Tomes, John’, ibid., vii. 463-5. Tomes was defeated by the earl’s brother at the 1832 general election, but with Parkes’s aid, Collins and the independent party successfully petitioned against his return, although his father-in-law was not reinstated. The subsequent campaign to amalgamate Warwick with the unrepresented town of Leamington, which would have weakened the Castle interest, was blocked by the Lords.3Joseph Parkes to Edward Ellice, sen., 25 Apr. 1833, Brougham MSS, UCL; CJ, lxxxviii. 357, 396; PP 1833 (295), xi. 199; Hansard, 5 Aug. 1834, vol. 25, cc. 938-9; LJ, lxvi. 926. Collins served as the first mayor of Warwick after municipal reform in 1835, and when a vacancy arose in March 1837, offered for the seat, promising to uphold the ‘independence of the borough’ and the ‘rights, privileges and liberties of the people’.4The Times, 29 Mar. 1837. He defeated his Conservative opponent and at the general election shortly afterwards he was re-elected in first place, with a Conservative securing second, having been unwilling and unable to stand aside for his Whig colleague, for as Parkes noted, ‘100 Rads would have bolted & our party [would] have been broken up’.5Parkes to Stanley, 24 Sept. 1837, MS Kingland.

Although he was described as a ‘Whig’ by Holland after his election, Dod’s description of Collins as a ‘Radical Reformer’ was justified by his silent support for the ballot, the immediate abolition of slave apprenticeships and the repeal of the corn laws, and he was one of the small minority of MPs to divide in favour of the first Chartist petition, 12 July 1839.6The Holland House diaries, 1831-1840, ed. A.D. Kriegel (1977), 359 (26 Mar. 1837); Dod’s parliamentary companion (1838), 95.

Collins supported the Whigs in the vote of confidence, 4 June 1841, and was returned unopposed at the subsequent general election. His votes in the following Parliament, particularly in favour of radical political reform, have led him to be categorised as a ‘popular Radical’ by the historian David Nicholls.7D. Nicholls, ‘Friends of the people: parliamentary supporters of popular radicalism, 1832-1849’, Labour History Review, 62 (1997), 127-46 (at 135). He repeatedly cast votes in favour of substantial modification of the Poor Laws and for redressing Irish grievances, including reform of the Irish church. Collins broke his silence in 1842, with two brief contributions to debate, the second defending Warwick’s magistrates from the charge of partiality made by his Conservative colleague.8Hansard, 21 Apr. 1842, vol. 62, c. 982; 5 May 1842, vol. 63, c. 188. Although he supported the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, he was elected in first place for his protectionist constituency in 1847. He continued to support the extension of political reform, free trade and religious liberty, although he divided in favour of Russell’s 1851 ecclesiastical titles bill, 14 Feb. 1851, 25 Mar. 1851, and in the same year he made a few brief and inconsequential contributions to committee stage debates.9Hansard, 30 July 1851, vol. 118, cc. 1759-60; 1 Aug. 1851, vol. 118, c. 1808, 1810.

Collins retired at the 1852 general election, rather than fight another Conservative challenge.10The Standard, 2 July 1852; D. Paterson, ‘Tory political influence in nineteenth-century Warwick’, Warwickshire History, 3 (1977-8), 197-207 (at 199-202). On his death seven years later a local newspaper described him as ‘one who, on no occasion, whether in Parliament or out of it, ever flinched from the maintenance of those principles of civil and religious liberty, which he held when he first embarked in public life’. They added that he was ‘an honest and straightforward man, a firm friend, and a generous enemy’.11Warwick Advertiser, qu. in Bury and Norwich Post, 1 Mar. 1859. He was succeeded by his son Thomas.12Ibid.; Gent. Mag. (1859), i. 439.