COBBETT, John Morgan (1800-1877), of Sumner Terrace, Brompton, Mdx.; later of Skeynes, Edenbridge, Kent

Overshadowed by his famous father – one of William Cobbett’s biographers concluded that ‘his sons tended to be rather pale copies of the original’ – Cobbett was a useful but politically divisive member for his father’s former constituency of Oldham.1J.W. Osborne, William Cobbett: his thought and times (1966), 238. Born in London, he was brought up there and on William’s Hampshire farm.2Place of birth from 1861 census; I. Dyck, ‘Cobbett, William’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. During part of his father’s imprisonment in Newgate (1810-12), Cobbett was taught French by an abbé in Holborn, and published an account of his later tour of France in 1825.3Dyck, ‘Cobbett, William’; E.I. Carlyle, William Cobbett (1904), 165; J.M. Cobbett, Letters from France (1825). This was not his first visit overseas, for in 1817-18 he had shared his father’s self-imposed exile in the United States, working on his Long Island farm.4Carlyle, William Cobbett, 199; A. Cobbett, Account of the family (1999), 43n.; A. Burton, William Cobbett: Englishman. A biography (1997), 166. In 1822 he became nominal publisher of the Political Register, and took charge of that side of William’s business.5G.D.H. Cole, The life of William Cobbett (1924), 246. Called to the bar in 1830, he practised on the Home circuit thereafter, but retained his publishing interests, editing the monthly Cobbett’s Magazine with his younger brother from 1833-4.6Cole, Life of William Cobbett, 391. The title was changed to The Shilling Magazine in 1834 at their father’s request, but appears to have ceased publication shortly thereafter.

Cobbett first attempted to join his father in the Commons in April 1833, offering as a Radical at Coventry, where William, who had contested the constituency in 1820, had been asked to suggest an opponent to Edward Ellice.7Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 13 Apr. 1833; Morning Chronicle, 15 Apr. 1833. As his oldest son (also William) was too far distant to obtain a reply in time, William Cobbett put John’s name forward, apparently without consulting him first. Taken ill en route to Coventry, Cobbett was nominated in absentia and polled only 89 votes.8The Times, 13 Apr. 1833. In 1835 Chichester’s Radicals solicited William’s last-minute advice on a candidate, but without time to consult his father, Cobbett offered, and was subsequently endorsed by William in glowing terms.9Cobbett’s Weekly Political Register, 3 Jan. 1835. William Cobbett described John and his brothers William and James as ‘well read in all the laws; well acquainted with the nations on the continent; excellent French scholars; but, of still greater value, born and brought up in the country’. Describing himself as a Radical Reformer, he advocated repeal of the poor law, malt duty and newspaper stamp duty, abolition of the standing army, revision of the pension list, the ballot, triennial parliaments and a ‘better regulated Suffrage’, reform of abuses in the Church (to which he was ‘warmly attached’) and abolition of church rates.10Hampshire Advertiser, 3 Jan. 1835; Hampshire Telegraph, 12 Jan. 1835. He polled a distant third behind the sitting members.

Cobbett feared that at Chichester ‘he had failed to conciliate many of the Dissenters… by the open manner [in] which he stated his determination to uphold the Church of England’, and his staunch Anglicanism proved problematic when he contested the vacancy at Oldham in July 1835 created by his father’s death.11Hampshire Telegraph, 12 Jan. 1835. Although their relationship had been strained during William’s last months when he was ‘going slightly mad’,12A. Weaver, John Fielden and the politics of popular radicalism 1832-1847 (1987), 126-7; Burton, William Cobbett, 250. Cobbett’s address made a bid for his father’s political inheritance: ‘there are no Political Principles on which I differ from him’. He favoured universal suffrage, annual parliaments and the ballot, and declared that ‘I do not know the practical man who would go further’ on church reform.13J.M. Cobbett, To the electors of Oldham (1835). Backed by William’s colleague, John Fielden, his candidature prompted criticism among some Oldham radicals about ‘hereditary succession’, particularly given his lukewarm stance on Dissenting grievances.14M. Winstanley, ‘Oldham radicalism and the origins of popular liberalism, 1830-52’, HJ, 36 (1993), 631; Weaver, John Fielden, 133-4. Disillusioned Nonconformists rallied behind Feargus O’Connor,15The Nonconformists had also mooted the candidature of John Ashton Yates, a Unitarian: HP Commons, 1832-68: ‘Oldham’. and Cobbett arrived in Oldham ‘to find radicals deserting all around him’.16Weaver, John Fielden, 133-4. Weaver provides details of the dispute between Fielden and O’Connor as to whether the former had misled the latter over his endorsement of Cobbett’s candidature. See also The Times, 7 July 1835. Although O’Connor soon withdrew from the poll, the Conservative candidate narrowly defeated Cobbett, prompting much acrimony amongst Oldham’s radicals.

As well as publishing an edition of William’s writings, Cobbett and his brothers continued the Political Register after his death, but it collapsed in September 1835.17Carlyle, William Cobbett, 299; Weaver, John Fielden, 158-9. Fielden, who became ‘something of a surrogate father’,18B.R. Law, The Fieldens of Todmorden (1995), 97. reluctantly underwrote a replacement, the Champion, which Cobbett co-edited. First appearing in September 1836, it soon merged with the Weekly Herald and folded in May 1840.19Weaver, John Fielden, 158-9. In the meantime, Cobbett had stood again at Chichester in 1837, Oldham’s radicals having reunited on the understanding that he would not offer again there.20Winstanley, ‘Oldham radicalism’, 631. Despite polling more strongly than in 1835, he again lost, and declined to offer in 1841 unless he received a requisition from 300 voters.21Brighton Patriot, 11 July 1837; The Times, 14 June 1841. Cobbett’s platform at Chichester in 1837 was virtually identical to that of 1835, the key difference being that, as at the Oldham by-election, he supported annual parliaments. However, unlike at Oldham, he advocated household rather than universal suffrage.

The retirement of Fielden’s Radical colleague prompted Cobbett’s renewed candidature for Oldham in 1847. He was by then ‘known to be Fielden’s prospective son-in-law’, although he did not marry Mary Fielden until 1851,22Weaver, John Fielden, 269. Cobbett had formed an attachment to Mary by 1837: Ibid., 178. and Fielden’s insistence that ‘unless Mr. Cobbett is elected with me, I will not sit’ provoked charges of dictation.23Weaver, John Fielden, 270. This, together with Cobbett’s continued lack of support for Dissenting demands such as disestablishment, led to two other Radicals entering the field, although only William Johnson Fox went to the poll, in which he and the lone Conservative, John Duncuft, defeated Cobbett and ousted Fielden.24Ibid., 271. Despite the bitter local divisions he provoked, Cobbett – remembered by one local observer as ‘that terrible “incubus”... who disturbed the healthy action of this borough at every political turn, and darkened the prospects of real Reformers for a long period’ – offered again in 1852.25B. Grime, Memory sketches (1887), 91. The death of Fielden, a Unitarian, in 1849, gave Cobbett freer rein to cultivate ‘the tide of popular Protestantism flowing through the north-west’,26J. Vernon, Politics and the people. A study in English political culture c. 1815-1867 (1993), 179. and he also backed repeal of the malt tax.27Ibid., 219. He maintained his support for universal suffrage, annual parliaments and the ballot, and argued for restrictions on the moving power in factories to safeguard the 10 hour day for which Fielden had fought so hard.28Grime, Memory sketches, 106-7. In a tacit although unofficial alliance with the Conservative Duncuft, he topped the poll, leaving Fox third.29Ibid., 102. Although Cobbett and Duncuft had separate committees, these ‘acted in concert in all but minor matters’ (Ibid., 106), but neither candidate publicly supported the other. Cobbett’s ambivalent political stance led opponents to depict him as a political chameleon, half-green, half-blue.30Ibid., 104-5.

At Westminster, however, Cobbett generally voted with the Liberals, dividing against Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852, and rallying to Palmerston on Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857. He supported repeal of the ‘taxes on knowledge’, 14 Apr. 1853, and routinely divided for abolition of church rates and the ballot. However, he opposed removal of Jewish disabilities in 1853, believing that this should be dealt with by a reformed House representing popular opinion.31The Standard, 1 Sept. 1853. He voted in 83 out of 257 divisions during the 1853 session, when he was one of only four English members to oppose the Irish coercion bill, but was less assiduous in 1856, attending 47 out of 198 divisions.32Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; Freeman’s Journal, 5 Oct. 1853; J.P. Gassiott, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 10. Cobbett spoke on legal questions, such as the succession duty bill, 17 June 1853, but mustered only 9 votes when opposing the second reading of the criminal procedure bill, 8 June 1854. He also spoke and divided against ministers on the police bill, 10 Mar. 1856.

Taking on Fielden’s mantle, much of Cobbett’s attention was occupied with the factory question. He served on the council of the Association for the protection and enforcement of John Fielden’s Ten Hours Act, established in 1849 amidst concern that this legislation was being evaded by the relay system.33J.T. Ward, The factory movement 1830-1855 (1962), 367. In 1850 he was among those who advised Lord Ashley on an effective clause to prevent relays, and he regarded Ashley’s compromise on a 10½ hour day as a betrayal.34Ward, Factory movement, 378-90; J.W. Bready, Lord Shaftesbury and social-industrial progress (1926), 257, 258n. Cobbett successfully moved for leave to introduce a bill which would restore the Ten Hours Act, 5 July 1853. To prevent evasion (by means such as using two shifts of child labour), he proposed to stop the motive power in factories between 5:30 p.m. and 6 a.m. Although Cobbett presented numerous petitions in its support,35He presented 37 petitions on one day alone: The Times, 5 July 1853. his bill was withdrawn, 27 July 1853, after Palmerston introduced (and subsequently carried) an alternative measure restricting child labour.36Palmerston’s measure, the employment of children in factories bill, was introduced on 18 July and received the royal assent on 20 Aug. 1853: Ward, Factory movement, 397. An attempt to reintroduce it was defeated by 101 votes to 109, 15 Mar. 1855. He was ‘very violent’ in his criticism of Colonel Wilson Patten’s bill to amend the law on fencing off machinery, opposing the second reading in a grisly speech relating numerous accidents, 2 Apr. 1856, and again attacking the measure in emotive terms, 22 May 1856.37The Times, 3 Feb. 1857.

Cobbett also strove in the committee-rooms to improve working-class employment conditions, sitting on the 1853-4 inquiry into colliery accidents,38PP 1852-53 (691), xx. 5; PP 1852-53 (740), xx. 183; PP 1852-53 (820), xx. 282; PP 1854 (169), ix. 5; PP 1854 (258), ix. 66; 1854 (325), ix. 223. and the 1856 committee on masters and operatives which recommended reform of the law on industrial arbitration.39PP 1856 (343), xiii. 3. Having supported the payment of wages (hosiery) bill, 22 Mar. 1854, he pressed for legislation for the benefit of framework knitters when he sat on the relevant committee in 1855.40PP 1854-55 (421), xiv. 5. Cobbett put his name to a bill to amend the 1854 Sale of Beer Act (having been absent on the circuit when that measure passed).41PP 1854-55 (278), vi. 51-4; The Era, 19 Nov. 1854. He argued that its Sunday opening restrictions inconvenienced the public, 26 June 1855, and served on a committee which recommended reform.42PP 1854-55 (407), x. 323; PP 1854-55 (427), x. 506.

Re-elected in 1857, when he was opposed by Fox and another Liberal, Cobbett endorsed Palmerston’s foreign policy and highlighted his own efforts to promote factory legislation.43The Times, 30 Mar. 1857. He resumed his campaign at Westminster, sitting on the 1857 and 1858 committee on bleaching and dyeing works, which he chaired in the latter year.44PP 1857 sess. 2 (151), xi. 2; PP 1857 sess. 2 (211), xi. 262; PP 1857-58 (270), xi. 685. He had personally witnessed their lengthy working days on visits to English and Scottish works in 1853.45See his speech of 2 July 1856 relating these visits. Yet although Cobbett’s 1858 draft report recommended legislation on women’s and children’s working hours, this did not find favour, and the final report suggested that further voluntary reductions could be made.46Cobbett had to withdraw from the 1858 committee to sit on a private bill committee, while the two other supporters of reform, Isaac Butt and Charles Packe were also unable to attend, but he was asked as a matter of form to draft the report: Hansard, 21 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, c. 1000. Among the other subjects on which he spoke were the poor law and the industrial schools bill, unsuccessfully opposing the latter’s third reading because it gave excessive powers to magistrates, 21 July 1857.47For Cobbett’s interest in issues related to the poor law, see also The Times, 26 Oct. 1852, 17 Feb. 1853. He served on several other committees, including that on parliamentary oaths.48PP 1857 sess. 2 (253), ix. 480. Cobbett chaired the committee on the Huntingdonshire election petition, and sat on the committees on the billeting system and on the compensation claims of William Henry Barber, a solicitor transported for forgery but subsequently exculpated: The Times, 18 July 1857; PP 1857-58 (363), x. 3; PP 1857-58 (397), xii. 618.

Cobbett, who continued to divide for the ballot, supported Locke King’s efforts to abolish the property qualification, acting as teller on his motion, 10 June 1857, and putting his name to his 1858 bill.49PP 1857-58 (56), iv. 110. However, reversing his previous endorsement of Palmerston, he divided against him on the conspiracy to murder bill, 9 and 18 Feb. 1858, and backed the second reading of the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, a vote he defended because it might have been made a good bill in committee.50The Times, 30 Apr. 1859. He supported disfranchisement of borough freeholders in counties (including his own county vote as a Brighton freeholder), arguing that town and county should be kept separate, but wished to see broader extension of the franchise to urban workers, 31 Mar. 1859.51During the debate on the reform bill, he declared that ‘from long habit and from instructions given to him in his early days—he did not call himself a man of the people or anything of the kind—but he had a strong desire to see those who laboured, whether at the loom or upon the land, in a better condition than he now found them’: Hansard, 31 Mar. 1859, vol. 153, c. 1191.

Cobbett’s vote on Derby’s reform bill had been decried at a public meeting which declared him ‘utterly unfit to represent radical Oldham’,52The Examiner, 9 Apr. 1859. and he again faced two Liberal opponents in 1859, when the Manchester Examiner complained that ‘he talks Chartism to the electors, but gives his vote and influence to the Tories’.53Manchester Examiner, cited in Birmingham Daily Post, 18 Apr. 1859. He only narrowly secured second place. Suspicions about Cobbett’s party loyalties appeared to be confirmed when he was only one of six English Liberals to divide with Derby’s ministry on the address, 10 June 1859, although he rallied to Palmerston on the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864.54Birmingham Daily Post, 13 June 1859. He divided against abolition of university tests, 1 June 1864, but still consistently backed abolition of church rates, the ballot and franchise extension. He opposed Sunday closing of public houses, 6 May 1864, and the permissive bill, 8 June 1864. Like his father, he opposed the malt duty, defending the working man’s right to his beer, which by the 1860s put him closer to many Conservatives than to the Liberals. He opposed abolition of paper duty, 12 Mar. 1860, because he felt that malt duty should be abolished first, and seconded Walter Barttelot’s (unsuccessful) motion that malt duty should be reduced before the sugar duties, 14 Apr. 1864.55Morning Chronicle, 23 Jan. 1861. Cobbett sat on the 1863 select committee on the malt duty: PP 1863 (460), vii. 456. Commenting on the latter performance, Sir John Trelawny praised Cobbett as ‘a very pleasant and skilful speaker. He speaks rarely – always courteously & to the point. Indulging in no personalities, he deals calmly with facts, & arguments. It is one of our model styles for the House – & deserves study.’56T. Jenkins (ed.), The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 271.

Cobbett’s speaking prowess assisted Joseph Crook’s successful attempt to curb working hours in bleaching and dyeworks in 1860, when his description of harsh working conditions ‘so excited the House’ that it overcame efforts to impede the bill by appointing yet another select committee, 9 May 1860.57Jenkins, Trelawny diaries, 122-3. Algernon Egerton, MP for South Lancashire, cited Cobbett’s advocacy as the reason he voted for this measure: Morning Chronicle, 23 Jan. 1861. His support for the 10½ hour day prompted a contribution on the lace factories bill, 24 July 1861, but his request for an inquiry into excessive working hours among railway drivers received short shrift from Milner Gibson, 22 July 1862. Alongside these contributions to factory reform, Cobbett’s personal legislative achievement included an act to pay salaries rather than fees to coroners, to prevent cost-cutting magistrates disallowing their expenses and discouraging the holding of inquests. Rival ministerial proposals did not embody the principle of salaries. Cobbett’s measure passed its second reading, 18 July 1860, and received royal assent as the final measure of that session.58Morning Chronicle, 23 Jan. 1861. Cobbett’s initial bill was the coroners (no. 2) bill (PP 1860 (53), ii. 565ff.), which received its first reading, 27 Feb. 1860, and was referred to a select committee, on which Cobbett served, at the second reading stage, 7 Mar. 1860: PP 1860 (193), xxii. 262. His successful measure, introduced following the select committee, was the coroners (no. 3) bill: PP 1860 (271), ii. 577ff. A hard-working parliamentarian, he also put his name to various unsuccessful bills proposing reform of court procedures,59Among the other measures to which Cobbett put his name were a bill to amend the procedure for trials relating to felony and misdemeanour (1860), a bill on county courts procedure (1862), and a bill for the better administration of justice in Sussex (1865). and chaired the inquiries on the Beverley and Carlisle election petitions, the pilotage order confirmation bill, and the master and servant question.60PP 1859 sess. 2 (187), iii. 108; PP 1860 (126), xi. 34; PP 1865 (370), viii. 4. Cobbett had been due to move for the last named committee, but was absent due to ill health: The Times, 26 Apr. 1866. In addition, Cobbett sat on the committee on the irremovable poor in 1859, but was discharged from attendance when it met again the following session, and was appointed to the select committee on the offences against the person bill, but did not attend any of its sittings: PP 1859 sess. 2 (146), vii. 4; PP 1860 (520), xvii. 2; PP 1861 (240), xiv. 240. He successfully moved for the prosecution of two individuals involved with bribery at Beverley, 2 Feb. 1860.

Cobbett’s political fluidity led the Preston Guardian to describe him as ‘a sort of hybrid politician’, and although he had yet to formally adopt the Conservative label, at the 1865 election he campaigned jointly with the Conservative candidate.61Preston Guardian, 17 June 1865, 24 June 1865. (One of his Liberal opponents complained that ‘they could not tell what kind of a man they were fighting’.62Caledonian Mercury, 21 Apr. 1865.) Although Cobbett derived much support from the drink trade and Oldham’s rural hinterland, which he cultivated through a rustic image, wearing knee breeches and a green shooting jacket, and ‘projecting himself as a landed gentleman dedicated to protecting “Old England’s” pastoral way of life’, he failed to secure re-election.63Winstanley, ‘Oldham radicalism’, 641; Vernon, Politics and the people, 260. He offered again in 1868, this time officially as a Conservative, but was unable to oust the incumbent Liberals.64Vernon, Politics and the people, 171. Described by Disraeli in 1872 as ‘an invaluable member of Parliament, whom he hoped to see elected again’, he returned to Westminster that year on a vacancy at Oldham.65Cobbett was absent from this contest due to ill health: The Times, 4 June 1872. Known for ‘his eccentric combination of rather decided Conservatism with extreme Liberal views’,66Hampshire Telegraph, 19 Mar. 1881. he was less active than previously, but was nevertheless re-elected in 1874, and died in harness in February 1877 at his sister’s house in South Kensington.67The Times, 15 Feb. 1877; E.I. Carlyle, William Cobbett (1904), 299. His personal estate was sworn under £16,000. He left his household effects to his wife, his Brighton house to his daughter, annuities to his sisters, and his remaining property to his sons, John Fielden Cobbett, a barrister, and William Morgan Cobbett, a land agent, neither of whom sought to enter Parliament.68Birmingham Daily Post, 13 Apr. 1877; Walford’s County Families (1888), 215; The Times, 27 May 1915. Cobbett’s correspondence with the Fielden family is located at the John Rylands Library, Manchester University, and other correspondence is held at the British Library and the West Sussex Record Office.69http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/searches/subjectView.asp?ID=P32616; http://archives.li.man.ac.uk/ead/html/gb133fdn-p1.shtml#id3057576