MOWBRAY (formerly CORNISH), John Robert (1815-1899), of Warennes Wood, Mortimer, Reading, Berks.

Returned to the Commons as a Conservative on no fewer than thirteen occasions, Mowbray was a dedicated parliamentarian. Though he addressed the House only occasionally – at most half-a-dozen times a year – he was very conscientious in his attendance, sitting through hundreds of hours of debates each session. A committee man, who often quoted the advice of Sir Robert Peel, ‘Stick to committees’,1E. M. Mowbray (ed.), Seventy Years at Westminster, with Other Letters and Notes of the late Rt. Hon. Sir John Mowbray, Bart., MP (1900), 281. he began his parliamentary career as a supporter of Peel and Gladstone, but later became a great admirer of Disraeli, deploring the ‘Old Man’s’ disestablishment of the Irish Church in 1869 and later attempts to pass Irish Home Rule. Perhaps because he was not a front line politician, Mowbray’s autobiographical volume Seventy Years at Westminster (1900) is overlooked, but offers a very interesting commentary on the personalities and events of the second half of the nineteenth century.2Ibid. Most of the material had already been published in Blackwood’s Magazine.

Though Mowbray was a very rich man, having married into considerable wealth and assumed the name of his father-in-law George Isaac Mowbray by royal licence in 1847, his own origins were less elevated. He was born John Cornish, the only son of a rising Exeter architect and builder, who in 1852-3 became mayor of his city.3http://www.exetermemories.co.uk/EM/exetersmayors.html. Mowbray’s grandfather, Robert Cornish, was surveyor to Exeter cathedral, 1800-38: http://www.britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/en-419601-white-ensign-club-exeter. His father was a strong Tory and in his teens, Mowbray read John Bull and signed a petition against Catholic emancipation.4Mowbray, Seventy years at Westminster, 6. His interest in politics grew keener at Westminster school, which he attended between 1829 and 1832. Pupils from the school were allowed to enter both Houses of Parliament and Mowbray took full advantage of this privilege. As an awe-struck young man he listened to the speeches of all the leading parliamentary figures of the day and sat enthralled with another boy, ‘our pockets … filled with food’, during the second reading of the reform bill in the House of Lords in April 1832.5Ibid., 25. Mowbray visited one of the MPs for Exeter, Lewis Buck, for political conversations, and filled his letters home with news of what he heard and saw. ‘When Lord Brougham came forward’, he wrote of the coronation of William IV, ‘cheers were given for him, but they were drowned in hisses and groans. The Chancellor did not appear well-pleased, as he showed by the twitches of his nose and his distortions of countenance’.6Ibid., 15.

From Westminster Mowbray went up to Christ Church, Oxford, obtaining a second class BA in 1837 and an MA in 1839. Strongly attached to Oxford, he would regularly return, and later in life, when he was an MP for the University, secured a number of honorary academic conferments. As president of the Oxford Union in 1836, Mowbray admitted spending more of his time debating than studying; he told his mother that he was regarded as ‘a promising speaker’.7Ibid., 40. Called to the Bar in 1841, after attending the Inner Temple, Mowbray practised on the western circuit, but he was not enthusiastic about this work and, after his marriage, was able to contemplate a parliamentary career.8Ibid., 67. With the support of the Londonderry family, who were major landholders in county Durham, he was returned as one of the MPs for Durham at a by-election in June 1853.

When the corn laws were repealed in 1846, Mowbray had believed that ‘the game was up’ and remained loyal to Peel; he returned to Oxford in 1847 and 1852 to actively support Gladstone against protectionist candidates in the representation of the University.9Ibid., 80. By the time of his return for Durham, however, Mowbray was no longer identifying himself as a Peelite; that year he abstained in the election for the University and by 1859 was actively campaigning to turn Gladstone out, an ambition which was achieved in 1865.10Ibid., 191-205; R. Shannon, Gladstone (1982), i. 545. He instead transferred his allegiance to Disraeli, a politician of ‘marvellous genius and … foresight’, who became ‘a frank, kind and cordial friend … always ready to converse with any member of his party, in this respect being very different from Mr Gladstone’.11Mowbray, Seventy years at Westminster, 336-7.

It was usually on ecclesiastical or university matters that Mowbray contributed to debate. He began well: his objection to the treatment of the University of Durham under the provisions of the charitable trusts bill was upheld, 8 Aug. 1853. ‘I came home at 4am not a little elated’, Mowbray informed his wife, ‘because it was good fun to beat the ministers, who had behaved in a mean, shabby way, and it will be a feather in my cap at Durham’.12Ibid., 88. Having found his feet, Mowbray began to speak with reasonable regularity. He took a great interest in Gladstone’s 1854 Oxford University bill, intervening on seven occasions; supported the Colonial Clergy Disabilities Act, 20 Mar. 1854; objected to the centralising nature of the ‘unwise’ episcopal and capitular estates bill, 29 Mar. 1854; and called for compromise over the church rates bill, 29 Mar. 1855. He watched with great interest as Lord John Russell, ‘affected by deep emotion’, abandoned his reform bill in 1854 and, during a controversy over a loan to Turkey in 1855, Mowbray ‘strolled down from the Carlton after dinner… listened to the debate and voted against the government’.13Ibid., 91, 97. At the end of the Crimean War, fireworks lit up the skies above Parliament; he shared the general satisfaction, but was frustrated by his inability to discover which government department had paid for the fireworks, 12 June 1857.

Mowbray expressed clear opinions about the leading statesmen of the 1850s and 1860s. He might have profoundly disagreed with John Bright, but he admired the speeches he made during the Crimean War. He liked Palmerston, but did not consider him much of a debater and, in February 1858, worried that ‘a radical Reform Bill … is just the course such a reckless gamester as Pam is likely to adopt’.14Ibid., 133. He found Lord John Russell courteous and friendly, but no match for Disraeli. In February 1858 he wrote, ‘Johnny has made a mess of it again, having made a dull but violent speech and carried few people with him … Dizzy made an excellent speech, very effective and very statesmanlike’. The following month he added, ‘Johnny tried to be vicious, but Dizzy gave him a regular overthrow’.15Ibid., 134, 143. It was Disraeli, on the steps of the Carlton Club, who informed Mowbray in February 1858 that Derby wished him to become judge advocate general and join the privy council.16Ibid., 136. Mowbray’s political patron, Lady Londonderry, initially objected to the appointment, but, aware of his strong desire to take up the post, and after pressure from Derby, she relented.17Ibid., 141-2. In his new government post, Mowbray supervised court martials. He was very pleased when, a few months after taking office, he was presented with a silver spoon for having taken part in the largest number of divisions that year.18Ibid., 158.

Out of office after Palmerston’s accession to office in June 1859, Mowbray remained busy, often chairing committees on private bills. He found this work very congenial; never a factional politician, he enjoyed working with MPs of whatever political hue (later in his career having cordial relations with Labour members). Not that he always got his own way: at one committee meeting for the qualifications for office bill in March 1865, ‘Bright entered the room late … &, with a few telling interrogatives, to which no consistent or tenable reply was forthcoming, reduced Mowbray to absolute silence’.19T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny 1858-1865 (1990), 310-11. He continued to contribute occasionally to debates, and called for the ecclesiastical commission bill to be recast, 6 June 1860. A pragmatic Conservative, Mowbray had by now become an advocate of some extension of the franchise. He did not believe, however, that the Liberal reform bill of 1866 was well-conceived, arguing, in a speech full of facts and figures, that there had been insufficient research into the towns that needed additional MPs, 17 July 1866. Satisfied with Disraeli’s Reform Act of 1867, he remained a staunch opponent of secret voting, telling the House when Berkeley submitted a resolution for the ballot, 17 July 1866, that elections, like their own debates, should be open expressions of opinion and that voters should not be permitted ‘to skulk away’.

Only in 1853 had Mowbray faced a contest at Durham; at every subsequent election he was returned unopposed. In 1868, however, his connection with Durham came to an end. At the general election of that year he was returned, after the Liberal politician Sir Roundell Palmer had withdrawn, as one of the MPs for the University of Oxford, alongside his old friend Gathorne Hardy. The bells of Christ Church rang out to celebrate his return, apparently, Mowbray was informed, as they had for Sir Robert Inglis, the famed ultra-Tory MP for the University, 1829-54.20Mowbray, Seventy years at Westminster, 248.

Mowbray remained in the House until his death. He was, to use his own phrase, ‘a thorough House of Commons man’21Ibid., 297., though he also found time for preaching, walking and foreign travel. A loyal party member, he became prominently involved in the Primrose League and in April 1883 organized an address of support from 200 Conservative MPs for his old friend, the beleaguered Sir Stafford Northcote.22Ibid., 293-5. In his later years he greatly admired Herbert Asquith, Sir Edward Grey and particularly Lord Curzon, often remarking of the latter, ‘They must take him into the cabinet’.23Ibid., Seventy years at Westminster, 325. The year before his death Mowbray became Father of the House.24http://www.parliament.uk/documents/commons-information-office/m03.pdf He died at his London home in April 1899, leaving estate valued at £188,128 11s.25A. F. Pollard, rev. H. C. G. Matthew, ‘Mowbray , Sir John Robert’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. He was succeeded by his eldest son Robert Gray Cornish Mowbray (1850-1916), Conservative MP for Prestwich, 1886-95, and for Brixton, 1900-1906.