SHAFTO, Robert Duncombe (1806-1889), of 2 Cromwell Houses, South Kensington, Mdx.; Whitworth Park, co.Durham and Hampworth Lodge, Wilts.

A native of county Durham, Shafto, who ‘had the strong and vigorous frame of the fine old English gentleman’, possessed an impeccable political pedigree.1Northern Echo, 23 Mar. 1889. His great-great-uncle, Robert Shafto, had been MP for Durham City, 1712-13 and 1727-29, and his grandfather of the same name, who was the inspiration for the popular song ‘Bonny Bobby Shafto’, sat for Durham County, 1760-68.2HP Commons, 1715-54, ii. 418-19; HP Commons, 1754-90, iii. 427; J. Kilburn, ‘Shafto, Robert (c. 1732-1797)’, Oxf. DNB., www.oxforddnb.com. His father, Robert Duncombe Eden Shafto, MP for Durham City, 1804-6, resided at the family seat of Whitworth Hall, described by the historian Robert Surtees as ‘one of the best family mansions in the county’, although Shafto, even after succeeding his father, lived mainly in London.3HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 129; R. Surtees, The history and antiquities of the county palatine of Durham (1823), iii. 302.

At the 1832 general election Shafto offered as a Reformer for Durham South. His moderate stance on the established church won him the tacit support of the Conservative bishop of Durham, but, opposed by two popular local Reformers, he was defeated in third place.4C.E. Hardy, John Bowes and the Bowes Museum (1970), 40. At the 1847 general election he was brought forward for the northern division of the county by the second earl of Durham as a replacement for the sitting member, Hedworth Lambton, the earl’s uncle. As the earl’s nominee, Shafto went to great lengths to insist that, if elected, he would be an ‘independent representative’, but his selection angered local Radicals who felt that he was a poor substitute for the first earl’s brother.5Newcastle Courant, 6 Aug. 1847. However, the earl held the purse strings in the constituency and after a bitter campaign Shafto was returned unopposed.6T.J. Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms in reformed England: case studies from the North-east, 1832-74 (1975), 76-77. He was subsequently re-elected without a contest at the general elections of 1852, 1857 and 1859.

Shafto’s parliamentary career, which spanned over two decades, was utterly unremarkable. Like his father and grandfather before him, he is not known to have made a single contribution to debate in the Commons, and his select committee service was also limited.7HP Commons, 1754-90, iii. 427; HP Commons 1790-1820, v. 129. Shafto is known to have served on select committees on the Peterborough election, PP 1852-53 (580), xvii. 167, and the Thames conservancy bill, PP 1863 (454), xii. 2. He was, though, a steady attender, and he loyally backed the Russell and Palmerston ministries on most major issues. He was particularly supportive of Palmerston’s foreign policy, dividing against Disraeli’s motion criticising the prosecution of the Crimean War, 25 May 1855, Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet, 19 July 1855, and Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857. An advocate of the extension of religious liberties, he voted for the Roman Catholic relief bill, 8 Dec. 1847, the Jewish disabilities bill, 4 May 1848, and church rate abolition, 16 May 1855. He was, however, ‘against every endowment to any church or sect whatever’.8Newcastle Courant, 6 Aug. 1847.

At the 1865 general election Shafto, who advised his constituents that ‘he was a man of few words, but at the same time he was honest and true’, comfortably saw off a Conservative challenger.9Newcastle Courant, 7 July 1865. He subsequently backed the short-lived Russell ministry’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and, when present, followed Gladstone into the division lobbies on the representation of the people bill, 12 Apr., 8 Aug. 1867. He also supported Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868, before retiring from Parliament at the dissolution.

One historian has identified Shafto, along with Thomas Milner Gibson, Charles Villiers, Peter Locke King and Francis Henry Berkeley, as being part of a ‘small number of country gentlemen’ who represented ‘gentry radicalism’. ‘Intrepid in the House’, they formed an ‘earnest, able, hardworking fraternity’ who ‘influenced the course of social and political change’.10F.B. Smith, The making of the second reform bill (1966), 30. While it is the case that Shafto supported Berkeley’s motion for the ballot, 7 Mar. 1850, Locke King’s motion for the equalisation of the borough and county franchise, 27 Apr. 1852, and Villiers’ motion praising free trade, 26 Nov. 1852, he certainly was not an ‘intrepid’ member of the Commons. Given the wealth of contributions that the rest of the men above made to debate, Shafto, a silent member, could only have played, at best, a very minor role in this group. Moreover, at an election meeting in Durham in 1868, he suffered the rare indignity of witnessing the motion of thanks for his services defeated, reflecting his constituents’ displeasure at two decades of silence and inactivity during which he rarely visited the county.11Nossiter, Influence, opinion and political idioms, 30.

Following his retirement from Parliament Shafto played no further part in public life until April 1888 when he was the plaintiff in a law suit against the ecclesiastical commissioners who claimed, as successors in title to the bishops of Durham, the right to work the coal under their copyhold lands. Following a lengthy and prominent trial, Shafto won the case, with the judge granting injunctions to restrain the commissioners from mining the copyhold land.12Northern Echo, 23 Mar. 1889. In March 1889 Shafto died at his London residence, 10 Collingham Gardens. He left estate valued at £15,497 9s. 11d.13England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 15 May 1889. Whitworth Hall had been severely damaged by fire in 1876, with only part of the original library and kitchens surviving.14Kilburn, ‘Shafto, Robert’. He was succeeded by his only son, Robert Charles Duncombe. Following his death, the Shafto memorial tower was erected at St Paul’s Church, Spennymore, near the Whitworth estate in county Durham.15The monthly chronicle of North county lore and legend (1890), iv. 575.