MORDAUNT, Sir John, 9th bt. (1808-1845), of Walton House, Warwickshire

Mordaunt, ‘a young moderate Tory’, boasted an impressive parliamentary pedigree.1Morning Chron., 3 Jan. 1835. Four consecutive generations of Mordaunts had represented Warwickshire, but with the exception of his Whig father, Sir Charles, the 8th baronet, they were all ‘high church Tories’.2Gent. Mag. (1845), ii. 638. Warwickshire was thus represented by a Mordaunt for much of the long eighteenth century: 1698-1715, 1734-74, 1793-1802, 1804-20: ‘Mordaunt, Sir John, 5th bt.’, HP Commons, 1690-1715, iv. 920-3; ‘Mordaunt, Sir Charles, 6th bt.’, ibid., 1715-54, ii. 272; ibid., 1754-1790, iii. 162-3; ‘Mordaunt, Sir John, 7th bt.’, ibid., 1790-1820, iv. 632; ‘Mordaunt, Charles’, ibid., 631-2; ibid., 1820-1832, vi. 433-4; The Assembled Commons (1837), 124; E. Hamilton, The Mordaunts (1965), 37-69. Sir Charles, who sat from 1804-20, was described as ‘most talented and liberal, an early friend to Catholic Emancipation and religious liberty generally’, but his son reverted to the family’s traditional politics.3Gent. Mag. (1845), ii. 638; ‘Mordaunt, Charles’, HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 433-4. Mordaunt succeeded him whilst at Eton, where he was generally lethargic in his studies, but his time at Oxford, where he became friends with William Gladstone, turned him into a devout and conscientious young man.4Elizabeth Hamilton, ‘Life on a country estate in the mid-nineteenth century’, Dugdale Society Occasional Papers, no. 34 (1991), 2-3. After university, Mordaunt embarked on a lengthy continental tour but returned in time to consider offering for the new constituency of South Warwickshire at the 1832 general election.5Hamilton, The Mordaunts, 272-80. In the event, however, he decided against standing on account of his ‘age, & having been absent so long’, reasoning that ‘by being in too great a hurry I might do myself more harm than good’.6Ibid., 282. He had no such qualms at the subsequent general election in 1835, when he was returned unopposed for the same constituency, and he was congratulated on his nomination speech, ‘which I heard from all quarters was most excellent’, by the local Whig Lord Leigh.7Ibid., 281; The Times, 20 Dec. 1834, 13, 16 Jan. 1835.

Although Mordaunt, who faced no further opposition, is not known to have spoken in the Commons, his regular speeches at local party meetings, together with his votes, show him to be a ‘firm Conservative’.8Blackburn Standard, 1 Oct. 1845. In 1837 he described Peel as ‘the champion of British liberty’, who had been found ‘never to promise what he could not perform’.9The Times, 27, 28 Jan. 1837. He told local supporters that the Conservative party possessed a ‘a singleness of purpose – a union of sentiment – and a firm determination to unite in one great and paramount object – the preservation of the British Constitution of Church and State’.10Morning Post, 27 Jan. 1837. By contrast, the Whigs were the ‘rash advocates of revolutionary measures’.11The Standard, 13 Nov. 1837. Mordaunt opposed the ecclesiastical and municipal reforms which comprised the Whigs’ Irish policy, especially their plan to appropriate surplus revenues of the Irish church for secular purposes. Such a surplus did not exist, argued Mordaunt, and if it did it should be used to ‘strengthen the … usefulness of the Establishment’.12Morning Post, 27 Jan. 1837; The Standard, 13 Nov. 1837. He also resisted attempts to replace church rates with alternative sources of revenue, 15 Mar. 1837, 23 May 1837, but his religious views seem to have mellowed slightly by the 1840s, as he supported the dissenters’ chapels bill, 6 June 1844, and seems to have favoured the 1845 Maynooth college bill.13He did not vote in the first, second or third readings of the bill, 3, 18 Apr. 1845, 21 May 1845, but his vote against a sunset clause (so the measure would have lapsed in 1848) can perhaps be taken as an indication of support. He repeatedly cast votes in favour of legislation to enforce a strict observance of the Sabbath.

Mordaunt resisted a fixed duty on corn, 16 Mar. 1837, and when the Whigs adopted the policy he told constituents at the 1841 general election that ‘he did not consider cheapness of provisions as any criterion of the prosperity of the country’.14The Times, 6 July 1841.He supported Peel’s 1842 revision of the corn laws, but, like other local landowners, became alarmed at the Anti-Corn Law League’s campaign and was present at the founding meeting of the Warwickshire Agricultural Protection Association, 24 Jan. 1844, at which he called on protectionists to petition vigorously.15The Times, 25 Jan. 1844; Hamilton, ‘Life’, 4-5.

Other issues seem to have been of less interest to Mordaunt. Despite being chairman of the Stratford board of guardians, and overseeing the construction of the workhouse, he seldom voted on the poor laws at Westminster, although he did support longer terms for commissioners, 12 July 1844.16Hamilton, ‘Life’, 8, 11. He divided for a ten hour day for factory workers, 22 Mar. 1844, but otherwise seems to have been ambivalent towards paternalist measures. Gladstone nominated Mordaunt to the 1835 committee on education, but on that and on the 1838 inquiry into the rating of tenements, he made little impression.17Ibid., 13; PP 1835 (465), vii. 764; 1837-38 (209), xxi. 2-3. Mordaunt’s relative inactivity and absences are partly accounted for by his dedication to local duties. Aside from his chairmanship of the local board of guardians, he was an enthusiastic agricultural improver and an active and generous patron to local religious, educational and philanthropic causes.18Hamilton, ‘Life’, 3, 5-11, 23-7.

Whilst out hunting, 2 Sept. 1845, Mordaunt’s companion, who had been trying to uncock his gun whilst climbing over a fence, accidently discharged the shot into the baronet, who wrote in his diary later that day ‘shot in both legs’.19Ibid., 34; The Times, 18, 29 Sept. 1845. Mordaunt’s condition seemed to improve the following week, but by that time gangrene had set in, which ultimately proved fatal, although the baronet did not expire until the end of the month.20Hamilton, ‘Life’, 35; The Times, 29 Sept. 1845. After his death the local Conservative party paid tribute to him as a most upright, independent and conscientious Member of Parliament’.21Morning Post, 31 Oct. 1845. Mordaunt was succeeded by his heir Sir Charles Mordaunt, 10th baronet (1836-97), who as Conservative MP for South Warwickshire, 1859-68, was the last of the family to represent the county.