THORNHILL, William Pole (1806-1876), of Stanton Hall, Stanton-in-Peak, Derbyshire

A ‘warm encourager of all manly exercises’, Thornhill was a Liberal country gentleman whose parliamentary career was a good deal less colourful than the flamboyant by-election campaign which secured his return in 1853.2Derby Mercury, 16 Feb. 1876. Of ancient Derbyshire lineage, the Thornhill family acquired the Stanton estate and Hall through his great-grandfather’s marriage to the Bache heiress in the late seventeenth century.3Derby Mercury, 3 Aug. 1853; S. Bagshaw, History, gazetteer and directory of Derbyshire (1846), 562. On the death of his grandfather Bache Thornhill (1747-1830), who had been high sheriff in 1776, Thornhill succeeded to the family estates and became lord of the manors of Birchover, Elton, Gratton, and Stanton, all in the Youlgreve parish of High Peak.4Burke’s landed gentry (1847), ii. 1392; Bagshaw, History, 561-62. In 1831 he was one of the signatories to a letter calling for a county meeting to be held in favour of reform, and after the passing of the Reform Act in 1832 he built a square tower in honour of Earl Grey at Stanton Moor, which still stands today.5Derby Mercury, 16 Mar. 1831; http://www.follytowers.com/earlgrey.html. One of the leading reformers in North Derbyshire, he nominated Liberal candidates at the 1835 and 1852 elections, and served as high sheriff in 1836, but otherwise concentrated on improving his estates. He was made a vice-president of Derby Agricultural Society in 1832, and paid for a new church to be built at Stanton in 1837.6Derby Mercury, 3 Oct. 1832, 14 Jan. 1835, 28 June 1837, 21 July 1852; The Farmer’s Magazine (1852), 3rd ser., i. 248.

In 1853, the long-serving member for North Derbyshire, William Evans, flattering Thornhill as the ‘most influential’ Liberal in the constituency, asked him whether he would have any objection to Evans making way for his son. Although Thornhill replied that he had ‘not the slightest wish to be in Parliament’, Evans’s unexpected resignation and the hastily announced candidature of his son infuriated local Liberals, and after unsuccessfully attempting to secure young Evans’s withdrawal, Thornhill came forward as a candidate.7Derby Mercury, 20 July 1853. Declining to canvass, he stood for retrenchment, free trade in land, and law reform, in an appeal to those electors angered by the arrogance of his opponents.8Daily News, 22 July 1853; Derby Mercury, 27 July 1853. After defeating his rival by almost 500 votes, he joined a formidable procession to the declaration, at which many displayed his crimson colours, and jubilantly told electors that they had ‘vindicated your independence’, before mounting a ‘very spirited grey horse’ and leading his supporters out of Bakewell.9Ibid.

At Parliament his belief in ‘giving a sound moral and religious education to the people at large’ led him to vote for the abolition of the newspaper stamp, and he supported the abolition of church rates until he changed his mind in 1861.10Dod’s parliamentary companion (1854), 279; House of Commons Division Lists, 1854 session, 23 May 1854; ibid., 1854-55 session, 26 Mar. 1855, 16 May 1855; ibid,. 1856 session, 5 Mar. 1856; ibid., 1857-58 session, 17 Feb. 1858; ibid., 1859 session 1, 15 Mar. 1859; ibid., 1861 session, 27 Feb. 1861, 19 June 1861. He was among the MPs who attended a meeting of government supporters at Lord John Russell’s London home in July 1854, but voted for Roebuck’s motion which brought down Aberdeen’s coalition ministry, 29 Jan. 1855. Thereafter he was a ‘general supporter’ of Palmerston, to whom he declared allegiance at both the 1857 and 1859 elections, and was returned unopposed on both occasions.11Derby Mercury, 8 Apr. 1857. He approved of extending the franchise whilst remaining hostile to the ballot.12House of Commons Division Lists, 1854 session, 13 June 1854; ibid., 1854-55 session, 22 May 1855; ibid., 1857 session 1, 19 Feb. 1857; ibid., 1857-58 session, 8 June 1858; ibid., 1861 session, 13 Mar. 1861, 23 Apr. 1861; ibid., 1864 session, 13 Apr. 1864, 21 June 1864; Derby Mercury, 16 June 1858. A silent member who does not appear to have served on any committees, Thornhill added little to his parliamentary career in the 1860s. Suffering from ill-health and having long denied reports of retirement, it was accurately reported in August 1864 that he would not allow himself to be nominated again, and he stepped down at the 1865 election.13Derby Mercury, 19 Nov. 1862, 31 Aug. 1864.

A keen sportsman, he was Master of Fox Hounds for the North Warwickshire hunt, and later established the High Peak Harriers.14Derby Mercury, 20 Feb. 1833, 16 Feb. 1876. He was also an active freemason at Scarsdale Lodge and was made a Master Mason in 1859.15Derby Mercury, 9 Sept. 1857, 9 Nov. 1859. Thornhill had no children, and on his death at Brighton in 1876, he was succeeded first by his spinster sister Helen (d. 1880) and then by his younger sister Emma and her heirs.16Burke’s landed gentry (1886), ii. 1809-10; ibid., (1906), 1665; ibid., (1952), 2504-2505.