DAVENPORT, John (1765-1848), of Westwood Hall, near Leek, Staffordshire

‘A hard, gritty capitalist’, Davenport was one of the most successful Staffordshire pottery manufacturers.1T.A. Lockett, Davenport pottery and porcelain, 1794-1887 (1972), 23. Over the course of his decade in Parliament, Davenport shifted from being a moderate Reformer to a Conservative, but always maintained that his principles were unchanged. Although he rarely spoke, Davenport took his parliamentary duties seriously before old age and ill-health increasingly hindered his attendance.

A native of Leek, Davenport hailed from yeoman stock. His father’s death when he was six years old compelled Davenport to secure employment soon after, as his mother had but a ‘small fortune’.2Ibid., 9. He worked for a Newcastle-under-Lyme bank until 1785 when he joined a pottery firm in Stoke, where he remained until setting up on his own account in 1794 in Longport.3Ibid. In his study of Staffordshire pottery, the founder of the History of Parliament, Josiah Clement Wedgwood wrote that ‘for many years the Davenports represented the type of the most successful potters of the age’.4J.C. Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery and its history (1913), 147. The firm’s designs were not particularly original, mostly Japanese and Chinese patterns, but Davenport exploited the innovations of Josiah Wedgwood (I) and Josiah Spode (I) and gained an enviable reputation for quality porcelain, which secured aristocratic and royal patronage.5G.A. Godden (rev.) Jewitt’s Ceramic art of Great Britain 1800-1900 (1972), 37; Lockett, Davenport pottery, 9; G.W. Rhead and F.A. Rhead, Staffordshire pots & potters (1906), 289; Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery, 147; Gent. Mag. (1849), i. 545. When the European market re-opened after the end of the French Wars, Davenport’s ruthless focus on exports allowed his firm to take a large market share at the expense of more venerable competitors like Josiah Wedgwood & Sons.6Lockett, Davenport pottery, 11; Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery, 148-9. By 1836 the firm produced china and pottery valued at £100,000 and employed 1,400 people.7Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery, 147. Unusually for a master potter, Davenport also owned a successful glass manufactory.8Lockett, Davenport pottery, 9-10; Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery, 148.

In 1813 Davenport purchased the Westwood estate near his birthplace for £15,500.9Lockett, Davenport pottery, 11. With the day-to-day management of the business increasingly left to his second son Henry from the 1820s, Davenport began to get involved in politics.10Lockett, Davenport pottery, 12-13, 16-17. In particular, he lobbied for Stoke to be upgraded to a double-member borough during the passage of the reform bill. After the Whig MP for Staffordshire Edward John Littleton did not press his amendment to effect this, Davenport told him with characteristic bluntness that had he done his job ‘the Potteries would have had two representatives’.11John Davenport to Littleton, 12 Sept. 1831, Hatherton papers, Staffs. RO, D260/M/7/5/27/7, qu. in HP, Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 136 Stoke-on-Trent was eventually awarded a second member and Davenport stood as a Reformer at the inaugural election in 1832, perhaps to block the local landowner Richard Edensor Heathcote, whom he personally disliked.12John Davenport, letter, 3 Oct. 1831, Foxley Collection, Herefordshire Record Office, B47/IVD/67, qu. by Lockett, Davenport pottery, 17. Although he was an Anglican, Davenport denied that he was a ‘bigot’ during the campaign, acknowledging the need for ‘revision and reform’ of the established church. As well as commuting tithes, he supported ‘abolishing all pluralities, and enforcing residence on all ranks of the clergy’. He declared himself ‘firmly opposed to Revolution’, but endorsed the reform bill as ‘honestly intended to lop off the rotten branches’ of the constitution. He also supported the abolition of slavery and ‘an improved system of commercial legislation’.13Staffordshire Advertiser, 24 Nov. 1832.

After his election in second place, Davenport was accurately described by Charles Dod as a ‘moderate Reformer’.14Dod’s parliamentary companion (1833), 105. In his account to electors of his first session, Davenport said that he had given the Grey ministry ‘my undeviating support’ over Irish policy. He had converted to supporting shorter parliaments and had voted in the minority in favour of a low fixed duty on corn, 17 May 1833. Although he supported Thomas Attwood’s motion on distress, 21 Mar. 1833, he approved of the renewal of the Bank of England’s charter. ‘With two or three exceptions, I was content to give a silent vote’, Davenport explained, adding that he had been present ‘in most of the divisions of the House’.15Staffordshire Advertiser, 19 Oct. 1833. His only recorded speech was a terse endorsement of Joseph Ewart’s motion for equalising sugar duties, 1 Aug. 1833, during which he noted that ‘cheap sugar, and cheap coffee and tea, would do more towards remedying the evils of beer-shops and gin-shops than any other measure’.16Hansard, 1 Aug. 1833, vol. 20, cc. 260-1.

Davenport was returned without opposition at the 1835 general election, stressing that his opinions were unchanged and that he would support or oppose Peel’s new Conservative government on the merits of their measures.17Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835. However, he has been listed by the historian Robert Stewart as a convert to Conservatism and Davenport certainly sided with that party in the major votes of the following session, on the speakership, the address and Russell’s Irish church motion, 19, 26 Feb. 1835, 2 Apr. 1835.18R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative party, 1830-1867 (1978), 374-5. An 1837 parliamentary guide noted that Davenport ‘usually acts with the Tory party’.19The assembled Commons (1837), 53. Davenport was re-elected at the general election of that year, but denied that he had changed his principles, stating that he had backed the Melbourne government ‘when he could do it conscientiously … he had never offered a factious opposition to their measures, and never would’.20Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837. However, votes in favour of Whig policy were hard to find thereafter, especially as the aged Davenport was rarely well enough to attend, even missing the division on Peel’s motion of no confidence in the government on 4 June 1841. He retired at the subsequent dissolution from Parliament and from public life.

On Davenport’s death in 1848, the Westwood estate passed to his eldest son John Davenport II (1799-1862), a Harrow and Oxford-educated barrister who lived the life of a country gentleman and later moved to Foxley, Herefordshire.21Al. Oxon., 1715-1886, i. 342. As Henry, Davenport’s ablest son, had died in 1835, the business passed to his youngest son William (1805-69), who lived at Longport and then Maer Hall.22Lockett, Davenport pottery, 22-4. The firm continued to prosper in the mid-Victorian period, but suffered declining fortunes thereafter, due to the neglect and incompetence of the family, perhaps a result of their increasingly gentrified lifestyles and the expensive acquisition of landed estates.23Ibid., 24-7; Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery, 147-8; Rhead and Rhead, Staffordshire pots, 290; A. Popp, Business structure, business culture and the industrial district: the Potteries, c. 1850-1914 (2001), 49, 65, 108, 154. This was a temptation foreseen by Davenport, who had written in 1831 of Westwood that ‘our trade has suffered by the attraction it afforded to affairs of Sports rather than business.’24John Davenport to Henry Davenport, Foxley Collection, Herefordshire RO, B47/IVD/62, qu. by Lockett, Davenport pottery, 11. It was left to William’s son Henry to preside over the break-up of the company, with the firm wound up after the last of the Davenport factories was sold in 1887, a year after the sale of Maer Hall. Henry’s first cousin Harry Tichborne Davenport, the son of John Davenport II, was Conservative MP for North Staffordshire 1880-85 and Leek 1886-92, having previously unsuccessfully contested Stoke and Newcastle-under-Lyme.25Al. Cant., pt. II, ii. 232; Wedgwood, Staffordshire pottery, 147-8.