DOUGLAS, Sir Charles Eurwicke (1806-1887), of 27 Wilton Crescent , Middlesex

The illegitimate son of Charles Philip Yorke (1764-1834), who had held a number of ministerial offices during the French Wars, Douglas was successively a Reformer, Conservative, Peelite, Liberal and ‘Radical Reformer’ during the course of his political life.2‘Yorke, Charles Philip’, HP Commons 1790-1820, v. 665-74; Handbook of the Court, the peerage and the House of Commons (1862), 152. Yet apart from his votes as a ‘Free Trade Conservative’, 1847-52, his political career has received little analysis.3J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the party system (1972), 221-2, 226; Jones and Erickson, The Peelites, 227. However, just as important was his role as the ‘Liberation Society’ whip during his second spell in Parliament, helping to promote a number of Nonconformist causes.

Douglas was acknowledged by Yorke in his will, 27 Apr. 1827, as his ‘natural son’, to whom his estate was to revert after the death of his wife, and on Douglas’s marriage in 1832 his father settled £10,000 upon him.4Reports of cases heard and decided in the House of Lords on appeals and writs of error during the sessions of 1839 and 1840 (1842), vii. 795-8. However, after his father’s death in 1834, the existence of two codicils provided grounds for Yorke’s nephew and namesake, the 4th earl of Hardwicke, to successfully claim an equal share of the estate.5Ibid., 799-817.

Douglas had served as private secretary to the former prime minister Frederick John Robinson, 1st viscount Goderich, whose mother was a first cousin of his father, while Goderich was secretary of state for the colonies, Nov. 1830-Apr. 1833.6F. Boase, Modern English Biography (1892), i. 901. Robinson’s mother was the daughter of Philip Yorke, 2nd earl of Hardwicke, whose brother, Hon. Charles Yorke, was the father of Philip, 3rd earl of Hardwicke, whose half-brother was Charles Philip Yorke, father of Douglas. Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 942-4. In 1832 Douglas was knighted and appointed as king-at-arms of the Order of St. Michael and St. George, 1832-59.7Boase, Modern English Biography, i. 901.

Despite his presence in Grey’s ministry, Douglas’s patron Goderich was no Whig, but a Liberal Tory or Canningite, who resigned over Irish appropriation with Lord Edward Stanley and Sir James Graham in 1834, by which time he had been created 1st earl of Ripon, and, after a hiatus, joined Peel’s Conservative party.8‘Robinson, Hon. Frederick John’, HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 985-93 (at 992). When Douglas contested Warwick, standing on the ‘Castle interest’ of the earl of Warwick, at the 1837 general election it was as a Conservative. His industry impressed the Radical election agent Joseph Parkes, who commented that Douglas ‘never left his work an hour, & rose at 6 o’clock’ everyday. ‘That is the way to lick your adversary’, he added, after Douglas was returned in second place.9Joseph Parkes to Edward John Stanley, 24 Sept. 1837, MS Kingsland.

In his first Parliament, Douglas was a Conservative loyalist on most issues, but although he supported the new Poor Law, he unsuccessfully proposed that outdoor relief to the able-bodied be reconsidered, 16 Aug. 1838, and spoke in favour of abolishing the Commission, 21 July 1840.10Hansard, 16 Aug. 1838, vol. 44, cc. 1323-6; 21 July 1840, vol. 55, c. 863. Douglas divided against Villiers’ motions for repeal of the corn laws and was critical of the way in which free traders such as Joseph Hume had manipulated the 1840 select committee on import duties, of which he was a member, to produce a partial report based on selective evidence, 5 Apr. 1841.11PP 1840 (601), vol. 100, cc. 106-7; Hansard, 5 Apr. 1841, vol. 57, cc. 926-7, see also ibid., 14 May 1841, vol. 58, cc. 434-5. Yet it was notable that he offered no principled defence of agricultural protection either inside the House or at the general election later that year, when he was returned unopposed. Equally revealing had been his insistence, 18 Apr. 1839, that the Whigs needed to be ejected from office to make way for a Conservative government which could reform abuses more efficiently.12Hansard, 18 Apr. 1839, vol. 47, cc. 250-1.

Once his party was in power, Douglas offered no opposition to the renewal of the new Poor Law or the Commission, with the exception of supporting the abolition of assistant Commissioners, 27 June 1842. He defended Peel’s commercial reforms, 8 Feb. 1842, as alterations to the sliding scale established by past Tory governments and totally different from the low fixed duty on corn proposed by the Whigs.13Hansard, 5 May 1842, vol. 63, cc. 150-2. He resumed his attempt, begun in 1841, to secure compensation for those county officials who would lose fees from the incorporation of towns such as Birmingham, but was again unsuccessful.14Hansard, 3 May 1841, vol. 57, c. 1442; 7 May 1841, vol. 58, cc. 88-9; 19 July 1842, vol. 65, c. 342; 3 Aug. 1842, vol. 65, cc. 979-82; 6 Aug. 1842, vol. 65, cc. 1101-2. Douglas supported the Maynooth college bill, 28 Apr. 1845, arguing that it would remove the issue from ‘party religious contentions’, but the measure was unpopular with his constituents, and at the by-election occasioned by his appointment as commissioner of Greenwich hospital, 13 Aug. 1845, he was greeted with ‘a total lack of enthusiasm’, but was re-elected unopposed.15Hansard, 28 Apr. 1845, vol. 79, cc. 1389-92 (at 1390); The Times, 14 Aug. 1845.

The following year, Douglas supported the repeal of the corn laws, and with the acquiescence of the earl of Warwick, was returned unopposed at the 1847 general election.16Sir Charles Douglas, letters, 27 Jan. 1846, 30 June 1847, Warwickshire County Record Office, CR 556/442, qu. by D. Paterson, ‘Tory political influence in nineteenth-century Warwick’, Warwickshire History, 3 (1977-8), 197-207 (at 199). He was thereafter silent, but voted with the Peelites on most major issues, such as repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, although his support for Russell’s ecclesiastical titles bill, 25 Mar. 1851, was a rare point of agreement with his erstwhile colleagues.17Conacher, The Peelites, 222, 226. He also served on the 1851 select committee on church rates, which proved to be of future, if not immediate, significance.18PP 1851 (541), xi. 2. By 28 March 1852, William Gladstone could write that Douglas had long since joined the ranks of the Liberals.19William Gladstone, memo, Add. 44778, ff. 30-1, qu. in Conacher, The Peelites, 105; date given in J. Morley, Life of Gladstone (1903), i. 419.

As his free trade views were no longer tolerated at Warwick he retired at the 1852 general election, but unsuccessfully sought a return as a Liberal at the 1853 Durham city by-election.20Paterson, ‘Tory political influence’, 199-202; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 100; The Times, 23 June 1853; Daily News, 27 June 1853. Speaking at Thirsk, where he got a ‘flattering reception’ before the 1857 general election, although he withdrew before the nomination, Douglas offered an overview of his career, arguing that he had always supported moderate reform.21Leeds Mercury, 10 Mar. 1857; York Herald, 14 Mar. 1857. He briefly reappeared at Warwick as a Palmerstonian Liberal at the same election but soon withdrew.22The Times, 19 Mar. 1857. Two years later, after a tempestuous campaign aided by Radical and Conservative votes, Douglas, standing as a Liberal, was returned for Banbury at the general election, defeating the incumbent, another Liberal, whose supporters thought the knight ‘a regular placeman’.23McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 13; The Times, 2 May 1859; Edward Cobb to William Munton, 26 Apr. 1859, qu. in A Victorian MP, 133; B. Trinder, Victorian Banbury, 122, 125.

Back at Westminster, Douglas offered general support for Palmerston’s leadership while supporting political reforms such as the ballot, seconding Henry Berkeley’s annual motion on the issue, 23 Apr. 1861.24Hansard, 23 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, cc. 995-1003. However, his most important contribution was as the ‘whip’ of the Liberation Society, the leading Nonconformist pressure group.25J.P. Ellens, Religious routes to Gladstonian liberalism: the church rates conflict in England and Wales, 1832-1868 (1994), 205, 254; D.M. Thompson, ‘The Liberation Society, 184-1868’, in P. Hollis (ed.), Pressure from without (1974), 210-38 (at 221). As a surviving member of the 1851 select committee, he had been asked to second Sir John Trelawny’s church rates abolition bill, 8 Feb. 1860, and, in the baronet’s words, spoke ‘well & judiciously’, contending that the question could only be settled on the voluntary principle.26Hansard, 8 Feb. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 643-7; The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865, ed. T. Jenkins, Camden Society, 4th ser., xl. 96. It was an argument he often repeated, not least when successfully blocking the compromise bills of the Conservative Charles Newdegate, who described Douglas as a ‘political weathercock’, in 1863, 1864, and 1865.27Hansard, 6 May 1863, vol. 170, cc. 1263-4, 1274; 27 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 1715-16, 1725-7; 10 May 1865, vol. 179, cc. 89-90, 97-8 (Newdegate’s qu. at 74). He introduced the abolition bill in Trelawny’s absence, 1 Feb. 1862, and was regularly consulted by the baronet on parliamentary tactics.28Hansard, 11 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 166, 167; Trelawny diaries, 195, 199, 225, 228, 242 (25 Mar., 28 Apr. 1862; 19 Feb., 4 Mar., 23 Apr. 1863). He also promoted other Nonconformist measures, sponsoring the 1862 burials and endowed schools bills, whilst Trelawny found him ‘very useful’ in the debate on his affirmations bill, 11 Mar. 1863, as Douglas used his notes ‘with great skill & readiness’ to make points which had not yet been put.29Trelawny diaries, 232; Hansard, 11 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 1301-2. The affirmations bill was defeated however. The burials bill proposed changing the law so that ministers of any denomination could perform a burial service in a parish churchyard providing they got prior permission, whilst the endowed schools bill sought to make schools of royal foundation (including leading public schools) non-denominational: PP 1862 (42), i. 159-62; 1862 (1167), i. 45-8.

Unsurprisingly, Banbury’s Conservatives were unimpressed with Douglas’s strong association with political Nonconformity and when he reluctantly stood again at the 1865 general election with the backing of the Liberation Society which was keen to secure his re-election, he was beaten into third place by a Conservative, and the rival he had ousted in 1859 regained the seat.30McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 13; Trinder, ‘Introduction’, p. xxxviii; idem, Victorian Banbury, 125-6; D.A. Hamer, The politics of electoral pressure (1977), 144. Douglas does not appear to have sought a return to Parliament thereafter and on his death in 1887 he was succeeded by his only son Greville Charles Yorke Douglas (1844-1933), a lawyer.31Al. Cant., pt. II, ii. 325; The Times, 18, 21 Feb. 1933; J. Foster, Men-at-the-bar (2nd edn., 1885), 128.