SIBTHORP, Charles de Laet Waldo (1783-1855), of Canwick Hall, nr. Lincoln, Lincs. and 46 Eaton Square, London.

With his guarded attitude to change and hostility to the onward march of reform, Sibthorp was widely known in his day.1S. Roberts & M. Acton (ed.), The parliamentary career of Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp, 1826-1855: Ultra-Tory opposition to reform in nineteenth century Britain (2010). He was repeatedly lampooned in Punch – there are some 345 references to him in the periodical.2R. D. Altick, Punch. The lively youth of a British institution 1841-51 (1997), 322-7. For Charles Dickens’ satirical portrait of Sibthorp, see Sketches of Boz (1836), 165-6. Though, with his unkempt whiskers and Regency style of dress, Sibthorp played up to his press image, he certainly did not see his contributions to political debate as comical. He was utterly sincere in his support for agricultural protection and the established church and believed that in subjecting ministers to independent scrutiny on issues such as finance and secrecy he was offering a vital public service. Metropolitan journalists poked fun at him, but he was repeatedly re-elected in Lincoln, often at the head of the poll. In his own city Sibthorp was seen as a man of honesty, independence and candour.

Sibthorp was the fourth member of his family to represent Lincoln in the House of Commons; none of the others managed Sibthorp’s political longevity, though his great-uncle, Coningsby, was returned on three occasions (1733, 1746 and 1760). The Sibthorps had achieved advancement by marrying into property, evolving from yeoman farmers into gentry. By 1800 the family owned about 11,000 acres of estates in five counties, but based itself principally in Canwick, one-and-a-half miles south of Lincoln.3Roberts & Acton, Sibthorp, 5-6. After his election to Parliament in 1826 Sibthorp spent only short periods at Canwick Hall, preferring to remain in London, where he acquired a house in Eaton Square. Though Sibthorp regularly visited auctions and collected porcelain, paintings and furniture, he declared that ‘he did not like reading at all and hated it when at Oxford’.4Hansard, 13 Mar. 1850, vol. 109, c. 839. Sibthorp’s father Humphrey had been colonel of the South Lincoln militia, serving in Ireland in the late 1790s. Leaving Brasenose College after less than a year, his son embarked on a career as a soldier. Sibthorp’s commission was purchased for him in the Royal Scots Greys in 1803 and transferred to the Fourth Royal Irish Dragoon Guards in 1811. Though the Guards fought with Wellington in Spain and it was assumed by Sibthorp’s obituarists that he was with them, this does not appear to have been the case – sources relating to his separation from his wife in 1828 suggest that he had remained in England and Ireland.5The Times, 17 Dec. 1855. For reports of Sibthorp’s separation see ibid., 5 Dec. 1828, 8 Dec., 9 Dec. 1829; also see J. Mills, D. Mills & M. Trott, ‘New Light on Charles de Laet Waldo Sibthorp’, Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 36 (2001), 25-37. Nevertheless, Sibthorp certainly identified himself as a military man, often emphasising his expertise on military matters in debates in the Commons.

As MP for Lincoln from 1826 to 1832, Sibthorp aligned himself with a sizeable group of independent gentlemen who were determined to protect the constitution and the interests of landlords and farmers. He was a bitter opponent of Catholic emancipation and the reform bill, protesting that the latter was ‘a heap of nonsense and absurdity’.6Hansard, 6 July 1831, vol. 4, c. 805. He failed to secure re-election at the 1832 general election, when he suffered the indignity of being burnt in effigy and hit in the face by a stone.7M. Acton, ‘1832: Mixed Fortunes for Colonel Sibthorp’, Lincolnshire Past and Present, 72 (2008), 3-7; 73 (2008), 3-6. Undeterred, Sibthorp re-entered the field at the 1835 election, when he stressed his family’s ties with the city, his own independence of mind, and his opposition to ‘rash theorists and desperate practitioners’, and topped the poll.8Lincoln, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, 19 Dec. 1834. An assiduous attender, he voted steadily against the Whigs. He condemned the new poor law of 1834 as ‘so grinding to the poor’ after reading reports about its operation in the newspapers and conducting his own investigation in an unspecified poor law union, 27 Feb. 1837. Despite coughing and laughter often interrupting his regular contributions to debate, Sibthorp refused to be silenced. He routinely resorted to delaying tactics, moving to adjourn debates or postpone the reading of bills. With one exception, Sibthorp’s speeches and amendments had little effect, although he did secure a reduction from £50,000 to £30,000 of a grant paid to Prince Albert, 27 Jan. 1840. Seeking re-election at Lincoln in 1841, he topped the poll.

Though Sibthorp sometimes sat with the ultra-Tory Sir Robert Inglis in the Commons, he was in truth a loner. No prime minister he encountered could, in his estimation, come up to the standard of William Pitt, though in 1841-2 he did express admiration for Peel.9Punch (1842), ii. 138. Sibthorp actually voted for the introduction of income tax, 13 Apr. 1842, but his regard for Peel did not last long. Peel’s decision to increase and make permanent the annual grant awarded to Maynooth College left him seething. ‘I am a Protestant; born a Protestant, bred a Protestant, educated a Protestant’, raged Sibthorp in the House of Commons, 17 Apr. 1845. (His younger brother Richard’s conversion to Catholicism in 1841 had been a serious blow, and Sibthorp was said to have ‘wept bitterly; sought his brother out, and for hours with many tears implored him to recall his decision’.)10Gent. Mag. (1856), i. 85-6. His brother subsequently returned to the Anglican church. See M. Trott, The Life of Richard Waldo Sibthorp: Evangelical, Catholic and Ritual Revivalism in the Nineteenth Century Church (2005). The following year, he declared that he would never support the repeal of the corn laws, challenged Peel to stand against him in Lincoln and, just for good measure, resigned from the Carlton Club, the only protectionist to do so.11J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the party system (1972), 20.

Sibthorp again topped the poll at Lincoln in 1847. He was soon berating the new Whig ministers, declaring that ‘worse they could not get’.12Hansard, 22 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, c. 1079. One Whig bill after another was dismissed as ‘dangerous’, ‘absurd’ or ‘burglarious’.13Hansard, 10 May 1848, vol. 96, c. 828; 18 May 1848, vol. 96, c. 1188; 26 May 1848, vol. 96, c. 1435. Declaring that he was ‘no toadeater … he was bound to no minister … he had no motive but a sense of duty’, Sibthorp scrutinized each clause of every bill to which he objected.14Hansard, 18 Feb. 1848, vol. 96, c. 942. Of the 1848 public health bill, he declared that ‘from clause 1 to clause 152, there was not a single clause he could approve of’, 8 May 1848. He condemned the salaries of the three commissioners on the new board of health and suggested that, if they were to have paid clerks, they ‘might just as well have provided that champagne, turtle, &c. should be supplied… every time they sat’, 5 May 1848. He also demanded reductions in the salaries of ‘too fat, too highly fed and too lazy ministers’, 2 Feb. 1849, having a decade earlier singled out the salary of the Irish chief secretary as one which might be cut, 8 Mar. 1839.

Sibthorp also made clear his horror of the new railways. He insisted that railways were dangerous and argued that dependants of those killed in accidents should be properly compensated. He feared that railways were ruining people financially, and refused to follow the example of one of his brothers who bought shares in a railway company. Above all, Sibthorp objected to the acquisition of land by railway companies, which amounted, in his eyes, to a direct attack on private property.15F. A. Sharman, ‘Colonel Sibthorp – the Don Quixote of Railways’, Journal of the Railway and Canal Historical Society, 27 (1982), 47-51. His outspoken views delighted the editors of Punch. In a top hat, be-whiskered and clutching a quizzing glass, he often crept into the cartoons published in the magazine. In February 1844 he appeared on horseback as Don Quixote charging a railway engine. He was portrayed falling back in shock on the benches of the Commons in April 1848 when his signature appeared on the great Chartist petition. Sibthorp had in fact tried to ignore the Chartists, but on the evening that the ‘monstrous’ petition had been presented, he met Feargus O’Connor in the Commons and expressed his regret that the demonstrators had not been on the end of ‘the damnedest hiding mortal man ever received’, 13 Apr. 1848.

Sibthorp reached the zenith of his notoriety in 1850-1 when he made a series of heated speeches in opposition to the Great Exhibition. Still ardently protectionist, he saw the Great Exhibition as a threat to British industry, arguing that it ‘would … encourage the foreigner to send his cheap and nasty goods where they were not wanted’, 30 Apr. 1850. Sibthorp put as many obstacles as he could in the path of the organizers. He protested when elm trees were felled in Hyde Park, supported a petition from residents who lived near the park who feared their property would depreciate in value, and warned that crime would increase.16Hansard, 18 June 1850, vol. 112, cc. 72-3; 4 July 1850, vol. 112, cc. 901-3; 12 July 1850, vol. 122, c. 1300. He did not secure the select committee he hoped for to examine these issues, and neither did the gales he repeatedly hoped would destroy the Crystal Palace materialize.17Hansard, 4 Feb. 1851, vol. 114, c. 106. He declared that he himself would never visit the Crystal Palace, and remained true to his word.18Lincoln, Rutland & Stamford Mercury, 8 June 1851.

Sibthorp was returned for the eighth and final time as MP for Lincoln in July 1852. His parliamentary career did not end quietly and he kept up his attacks on Roman Catholicism, foreigners and radicals until he became ill in the summer of 1855. He tried to restore his health in Brighton, but died at his house in Eaton Square, London, on 14 December 1855.19Lincoln, Rutland & StamfordMercury, 21 Dec. 1855. His estranged wife Maria was with him at the end, though he had arranged for his mistress Sarah Ward to be left £1,000 in his will.20Gent. Mag. (1856), ii. 86. Canvassing for Sibthorp’s eldest son, Gervaise, began in Lincoln the following day.21Lincoln, Rutland & StamfordMercury, 21 Dec. 1855. Gervaise Sibthorp, a moderate Conservative, was returned unopposed in January 1856 and re-elected in 1857 and 1859. He had little to say in the Commons and his death in October 1861 brought the Sibthorp family’s political connections with Lincoln to an end.