PECHELL, George Richard (1789-1860), of Castle Goring, Worthing, Suss. and 27 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, Mdx.

Pechell, an independently-minded Whig, achieved an unassailable tenure at Brighton, despite an inauspicious start. Born into a distinguished military dynasty, he had followed his older brother Samuel into the navy at the age of fourteen and served in Nelson’s fleet at the blockade of Toulon before moving to the Mediterranean, where he saw ‘much active service’ and led the capture of Vigo in 1809. Aided by his connections and a well-deserved reputation for gallantry, in 1812 he secured his first command on the North American station, having briefly served under his brother on the flagship of their uncle Sir John Borlese Warren. His successes in destroying and capturing ‘a great variety of vessels’ ensured his promotion to commander in 1814, and he notched up further victories enforcing fishing treaties and combating piracy on the Halifax and Jamaica stations, often defying the odds. In 1822 he achieved post-rank and went on half-pay. His account of his perceptions of Haiti appeared two years later.1W. O’Byrne, Naval Biography (1848), ii. 886-7; Oxford DNB; Gent. Mag. (1860) ii. 214; A visit to the capital and chief ports of the isle of St. Domingo in 1821 (1824). In 1825 Pechell rented the Gothic-Palladian mansion of Castle Goring, near Worthing, Sussex, which had been built for the Shelleys. (In 1845 he purchased it from Mary Shelley). The following year he married the coheir of Lord Zouche (d. 1828). In 1830 he was appointed a gentleman usher of the privy chamber to the new king’s wife Queen Adelaide. His brother’s appointment as a lord of the admiralty by the incoming Grey ministry confirmed his family’s conversion to the Whigs (their father had supported Lord Liverpool), and in April 1831 Pechell became an equerry to the queen.

At the 1832 general election Pechell, the ‘possessor of an independent fortune’, came forward for the newly enfranchised town of Brighton as a ‘moderate reformer’, amidst widespread assumptions that like his brother, the royal nominee at Windsor, he was backed by the court. After a severe contest, in which he was ‘struck violently’ on the head, he was defeated by ‘two decided Radicals’.2The Times, 14 Nov. 1832; Morning Post, 10, 11, 12 Dec. 1832; N. Gash, ‘The influence of the crown at Windsor and Brighton in the elections of 1832, 1835, and 1837’, EHR liv. (1939), 658. Undeterred, he remained active locally and at the 1835 election that followed the appointment of Peel as prime minister, offered again as an ‘advocate for peace, reform and retrenchment’, having declined to follow other Whig courtiers and resign on the change of ministry. With his allegiance uncertain - as one commentator put it, ‘if he again professes to come forward on Whig principles, why does he hold office under the Tories?’ - the king’s secretary Sir Herbert Taylor arrived in Brighton and made it clear that Pechell would have to support the new government if he wanted to retain court backing and remain in the household.3Morning Chron. 29 Dec. 1834; 1 Jan. 1835. Pechell’s ambiguous election address, in which he trusted that the ‘principles I advocate will be carried into effect whatever men govern this country’, was widely ridiculed, but his eagerly anticipated questioning on the hustings failed to materialise after he fractured his leg. Aided by divisions among local Radicals, he was returned in absentia at the head of the poll, amidst allegations of ‘unconstitutional interference’ by the court and rumours that £20,000 had been put at his disposal.4Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 121; The Times, 9 Jan., Morning Post, 26 Jan. 1835; Gash, ‘Influence of the Crown’, 658-9; N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), 385-6. Commenting on his lucky escape over dinner a few days later, Lord Albemarle, an ex-courtier, remarked how Pechell’s broken leg had ‘served him in good stead’, to which the wit Horace Smith retorted that ‘it was the only leg he had to stand on’.5G. Thomas, Fifty years of my life (1876), ii. 316-7.

Pleading ill-health, Pechell absented himself from the test of party strength on the speakership vote, 19 Feb., but voted with ministers on the address, 26 Feb. 1835, prompting a stream of abuse in Brighton’s radical press, which accused him of dishonestly obtaining his seat and acting with the so-called Derby Dilly.6See Brighton Patriot, 17 Mar., 14 Apr., 19 May, 3 Nov. 1835. He had indeed been listed in that faction by its leader Lord Stanley, 23 Feb., but broke with most of them and defied the court’s express wishes by rallying to the Whigs over Irish Church appropriation, 2 Apr.7R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative Party (1978), 373. See also A. Hawkins, The Forgotten Prime Minister (2007), i. 175. A royal letter threatening him with dismissal was dispatched two days later, only to be hastily recovered by Peel, who feared the consequences if its contents became public. As a result, as Norman Gash has noted, Pechell continued in the ‘anomalous position of a royal servant who opposed the royal ministers’ until Peel’s resignation, 18 Apr. 1835.8Gash, ‘Influence of the Crown’, 661; idem, Politics in the Age of Peel, 387-8.

Thereafter Pechell, a steady attender, generally supported the Whigs on most major issues, including those relating to the Irish Church and Irish municipal reform, but was never afraid to chart ‘an independent course’.9O’Byrne, Naval Biography, ii. 887; Hawkins, Forgotten Prime Minister, i. 187. See also M. Taylor, The Decline of British Radicalism, 1847-1860 (1995), 79. 83. A fairly regular speaker, whose contributions were short and to the point, Pechell is known to have intervened in debate at least 683 times during his 25 year stint in the Commons. Naval, maritime and fishing matters predominated, but he was also a fierce critic of centralisation and the burdens of taxation and church rates. In his maiden speech, 9 Mar. 1835, he welcomed a bill restricting the actions which could be brought against newspaper proprietors. That summer he initiated a campaign for a reform of the tithe on turnips (and brought in an abortive bill to that effect), citing the ‘monstrous and vexatious system’ of enforcing tithes by clergymen, which had landed a relative in the court of exchequer ‘on account of a small demand’, 3 June 1835. He rebuffed Radical criticism of the naval supplies, 4 Mar. 1836, demanded improvements to the voting rights of compound ratepayers, 29 Apr. 1836, and spoke and divided for the provision of a ladies’ gallery in the new House of Commons chamber, 3 May 1836. Defending the probity of the London and Brighton Railway committee, of which he was a member, he refuted claims of having any personal interest, 18 July 1836. That year, in what became a recurrent refrain, he highlighted French infringements of oyster-bed and mackerel fishing rights in the English channel and introduced a bill to improve the regulation and protection of the channel fisheries, which passed the Commons, 24 June 1836. It never became law, but his related campaign for a three-mile limit around the coast for the exclusive use of English fishermen eventually formed the basis of various conventions.10CJ, xci. 206, 548; O’Byrne, Naval Biography, ii. 887. Acting with the retrenching Radicals, he spoke and was a minority teller for repeal of the window tax, 4 May 1837.

Following the death of William IV, Pechell was gazetted as a groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria in July 1837. However, for reasons which are unclear, ‘his sense of duty to the queen dowager induced him to decline’ the position.11O’Byrne, Naval Biography, ii. 887; Gent. Mag. (1860), ii. 214; The Times, 30 June 1860. (In a rare oversight, Gash surmised that Pechell’s ‘position must have been enormously strengthened at the beginning of the election campaign by his appointment as groom-in-waiting’.)12Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel, 389; idem, ‘The influence of the Crown’, 661. Pechell presumably had ambitions elsewhere, for at the dissolution he offered again for Brighton, having, according to The Times, assured the Whigs that with the backing of the court he could deliver both seats (and one at Shoreham), in return for some form of preferment. Hampered by his equivocal stance on the new poor law, which he insisted should not be imposed on Brighton, however, to his ‘mortification’ he was returned alongside a local Tory.13The Times, 11 Aug. 1837. He voted for the removal of Jewish disabilities, 4 Dec. 1837, spoke and voted in favour of the secret ballot, 15 Feb. 1838, and continued to speak out against the electoral obstacles facing compound householders. On 22 Feb. 1838, in what became a habitual theme against successive ministries, he defended the autonomy of the Brighton Union and other poor relief unions that operated outside the 1834 poor law legislation. Convinced that the ‘only objection to them was to be found in the jealousy of the poor law commissioners, who regarded them as so many blanks, or rather blots, in their map’, 29 Jan. 1841, he campaigned steadily against the destruction of the old Gilbert unions, securing returns into their efficiency and highlighting cases of interference with their operation. He was also part of the (predominantly Tory) group that discredited the commissioners themselves, prompting their eventual dismissal and replacement by a poor law board.

In what became another long-running cause, on 5 Apr. 1838 Pechell challenged Lord Brougham’s claims that British naval officers policing the slave trade had held back from seizing vessels until they were laden, in order to obtain more head-money. An active champion of the naval forces engaged in the suppression of the trade, he was later able to claim the credit for improving the conditions and remuneration of those serving off the coast of West Africa, 22 Feb. 1848, and for securing the deployment of gun boats against the slavers of Brazil and Cuba, 12 Apr. 1858. On 16 July 1840 he objected to the county constabulary bill, citing the additional cost to towns such as Brighton that already had a police force. He attended various constituency meetings on this issue and against the new poor law, which he pledged to give his ‘determined and continuous opposition’, and happily shared a platform with local Chartists on the matter in February 1841.14The Times, 24 Apr. 1840, 16 Feb. 1841.

Pechell was returned in first place for Brighton with cross-party support at the general elections of 1841 and 1847 (by when the court interest had all but evaporated), and again in 1852, 1857 and 1859. He took issue with the poor law amendment bill of 1844 and the ‘inhumane’ Poor Law Removal Act requiring non-resident paupers to seek relief in their parish of origin, against which he was in a minority of five, 13 July 1847. He was in the Protestant minorities against the Maynooth grant, 24, 28 Apr., 2, 21 May 1845 - later explaining that he had objected to its funds coming from the exchequer rather than Church revenues - but was back in the Liberal fold for repeal of the corn laws the following year.15Hants. Telegraph, 31 July 1847. Resuming his attacks on the ‘hateful rate paying clauses of the Reform Act’ that disadvantaged compound householders, 23 Feb. 1847, he urged their complete repeal, 2 Apr. 1851. On 26 Feb. 1850 he suggested that county courts assume jurisdiction over the recovery of debts up to £50, a measure he had previously tried to initiate in 1835. He spoke against abolishing any portion of grog rations to sailors, 11 Mar. 1850.

By now Pechell, who had succeeded to his brother’s baronetcy and taken the additional name of Brooke in 1849, had become increasingly concerned at the ‘centralising tendencies’ of the Russell ministry’s 1848 Public Health Act. He was especially critical of Chadwick’s board of health, which he doggedly pursued for interfering in non-corporate towns like Brighton against the wishes of local inhabitants. Welcoming an amendment bill, 21 Feb. 1855, he observed that he ‘had shortened his life by the battles he had had to fight with former governments over this’. Taking up similar cudgels against the police constabulary bill the following year, he mused:

He had hoped that he should this year have had a quiet session, and that he should not again have had occasion to lift up his voice against the principle of centralisation. He had come into the House just as the New Poor Law had walked out of it; and ... never a session had passed without his having been compelled to resist some inroad or other upon the constitution. The present measure was another of those attempts.16Hansard, 10 Mar. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 2155-6.

However, he apparently sympathised with a controversial local campaign to adopt the 1835 municipal corporations act in Brighton, and replace its old-fashioned town commission with a town council elected on a wider (male) franchise. He successfully moved for copies of the initial inquiry refusing corporate status, 17 Mar. 1853, and after the town commissioners failed to surrender all their powers in 1854, took the lead in steering through legislation giving the newly appointed council total control, in the form of the 1855 Brighton Commissioners Transfer Act.17Morning Chron. 18 May 1855; The New Encyclopedia of Brighton, ed. R. Collis (2010), 88. He welcomed a bill to prevent voters being conveyed to polls at the expense of candidates, 18 Apr. 1860. In his last known spoken intervention, 8 June 1860, he asked ministers whether the navy serving in China could expect ‘the same extra pay and allowances enjoyed by the army in India’.

Pechell died in harness at his London home three weeks later ‘after a short illness’. Predeceased by his only son Captain William Henry Cecil Pechell, who had been killed in the trenches before Sebastopol in 1855, the baronetcy and family estates were inherited by his cousin George Samuel Pechell (1819-97), another soldier. Castle Goring, however, passed to his daughter Adelaide Harriet and remains in the hands of her descendants.18The Times, 30 June 1860.