RYDER, Dudley Francis Stuart, viscount Sandon (1831-1900), of Sandon Hall , Sandon , Staffordshire

Although he became an important figure in the Conservative party of the 1870s, during his first, unremarkable, spell in Parliament Sandon styled himself as a Liberal Conservative and gave general support to Palmerston’s ministry.1Dod’s parliamentary companion: 1857 new parliament (1857), 274. In doing so, he was following his family’s tradition of liberal toryism and wayward party allegiance. His grandfather Dudley Ryder (1762-1847), 1st earl of Harrowby, had held a number of ministerial appointments after succeeding to the peerage, including foreign secretary, 1804-5 and lord president of the council, 1812-27.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 75-8. During the constitutional crisis occasioned by the reform bill, he was leader of the ‘Waverer’ peers who unsuccessfully agitated for a compromise measure.3Ibid., 78; M. Brock, The great Reform Act (1973), 271-9. His father, Dudley Ryder (1798-1882), 2nd earl, known as viscount Sandon whilst MP for Tiverton 1819-31, and Liverpool 1831-47, was a Canningite before supporting Peel’s Conservative party in the 1830s.4HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 75; ibid., 1820-1832, vi. 1089-94. He supported the repeal of the corn laws, breaking with the bulk of his party, and after succeeding as 2nd earl, served as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster and lord privy seal in Palmerston’s first government before returning to the Conservative fold.5Ibid., 1093; H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Ryder, Dudley, second earl of Harrowby (1798-1882)’, www.oxforddnb.com.

After completing his education, Sandon toured the Middle East, with friends, including Henry Herbert, later 4th earl of Carnarvon.6H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Ryder, Dudley Francis Stuart, third earl of Harrowby (1831-1900)’, www.oxforddnb.com; Morning Post, 27 Mar. 1900. Standing as a Liberal Conservative on the interest of the local Whig nobility, Sandon was returned unopposed for Lichfield at a by-election, 30 May 1856, professing support for Palmerston and opposition to the ballot.7McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 173; The Times, 31 May 1856. After his return Sandon apparently said that ‘there were no longer any political parties, and that, therefore, he did not profess to belong to one’.8Morn. Chro., 2 June 1856. Sandon was appointed as private secretary to the colonial secretary Henry Labouchere. He declined to contest North Staffordshire at the 1857 general election, prompting the Whig grandee Lord Hatherton to snipe that ‘the constitution of Sandon’s character is too feminine for the rough work of an election contest; & he shirks from the task’.9Hatherton Journal, 6 Mar. 1857, Hatherton papers, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/F/5/26/71. Sandon stood his ground at Lichfield, however, and was returned unopposed after offering a forthright defence of Palmerston’s China policy, accusing the premier’s critics of exploiting the issue for ‘party purposes’.10The Times, 18 Mar. 1857. He also paid tribute to Palmerston for having ‘reinvigorated the wavering councils of England’ during the Crimean War.11Ibid. A fuller picture of Sandon’s political views, which does much to explain his later shift to the Conservative party, emerges from a letter to his patron Lord Lichfield, 6 Mar. 1857:

I should propose to stand on much the same ground as I did then [in the previous parliament] but I own I am at a loss what to put forward, beyond a general support for Lord Palmerston … I must frankly confess, that, should Lord J. Russell once more get at the head of the whig party & bring forward large measures of political change, I might very probably take part with the conservatives against him. At present however, with the belief that there is no real difference of principle between the great Parties of the country, & that the national interests could not be in safer hands than Lord Palmerston’s, I can cordially & in good confidence support the present government.12Lord Sandon to earl of Lichfield, 6 Mar. 1857, Anson papers, Staffs. RO, D615/P(P)/4/2/2.

Sandon was largely a silent member during his first spell in the Commons, his only spoken contribution was on the government of New Caledonia bill, 8 July 1858, and only then because he had served on a select committee on the issue.13Hansard, 8 July 1858, vol. 151, c. 1117; PP 1857 session 2 (224), xv. 2.

The illness and subsequent death of Sandon’s mother compelled his retirement at the 1859 general election.14Morning Post, 19 Apr. 1859. The following year Sandon contested Stafford at a by-election, professing an ‘independent political position’.15The Times, 23 July 1860. He could not endorse Palmerston’s government (which no longer included his father), but did not seek its overthrow unless another party could form ‘a distinct policy of their own which the support of the House … and the country will enable them to carry out’.16Ibid. He retired once it became clear that in this venal constituency he could ‘only expect to be your member by the use of means which the law forbids’.17The Times, 7 Aug. 1860; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 274.

In 1861 he married into the ‘high Tory aristocracy’ through his union with Mary, daughter of Brownlow Cecil, 2nd marquess of Exeter.18E.J. Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, democracy, and the Tory party (1968), 47. However, he declined his father-in-law’s offer of a seat at the family pocket borough of Stamford in 1866.19Ibid. Following in his father’s footsteps, Sandon was elected as a Conservative for Liverpool in 1868.20McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 181-2. With William Henry Smith and Richard Austen Cross, Sandon represented a new reform-minded urban Conservatism.21Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, democracy, and the Tory party, 44-50; see also R.T. Shannon, The age of Disraeli, 1868-1881: the rise of Tory democracy (1992), 188. A champion of popular education, Sandon served on the London school board 1870-2 and held ministerial office as vice-president of the committee of council on education 1874-8.22Feuchtwanger, Disraeli, democracy, and the Tory party, 44, 46. His 1876 Elementary Education Act sought to promote education whilst safeguarding denominational schools.23Ibid., 18-19, 47-8; Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 218-19. Sandon declined the Irish office and admiralty, but was appointed to the board of trade in April 1878, entering the cabinet after a delay.24The delay was because the earl of Beaconsfield (as Disraeli had become), the prime minister, liked to keep a balance between peers and commoners in his cabinet: Shannon, Age of Disraeli, 231. After succeding his father as 3rd earl in 1882, Harrowby served in Salisbury’s first ministry as lord privy seal 1885-6, but held no further ministerial office and ‘for the last 20 years of his life was better known to the world of religious activity than to that of public statesmanship’.25The Times, 27 Mar. 1900. A devout Evangelical, Harrowby was the patron of many religious charities including the British and Foreign Bible Society.26Ibid. As he had no heirs, on his death in March 1900 Harrowby was succeeded as 4th earl by his brother Henry Dudley Ryder, a banker, after whose death nine months later the title and estates passed to his son John Herbert Dudley Ryder (1864-1956), Conservative MP for Gravesend, 1898-1900.27Ibid.; Burke’s peerage (1949), 958-60.