CHUTE, William Lyde Wiggett (1800-1879), of Pickenham Hall, Norf.; 10 Chandos Street, London; 24 Portland Place, London; later of The Vyne, Sherborne St. John, Hants.

Descended from a family which had long been settled at Guist, Norfolk, in 1827 William Lyde Wiggett inherited the Hampshire and Norfolk estates of the Chute family, and added the name Chute to his own by royal licence.1J. Burke, A genealogical and heraldic history of Great Britain (1836), 631; C. W. Chute, A History of the Vyne in Hampshire (1888), 131-2; F. Blomefield, An essay towards a topographical history of Norfolk (1805-10), viii. 213-17; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 443-4. The Chute brothers – William John (d. 1824) and Thomas Vere (d. 1827) – were cousins of his father, ‘on terms of great intimacy at college and in later life’ with him, and ‘having no nearer relation to whom they wished to bequeath the Vyne’, their family’s Hampshire seat since 1653, left it and their entire estates to Wiggett, who was also William John’s godson. Unable to take up residence at the Hampshire property until the death of William John’s widow in July 1842, Chute (as he now became), after training as a lawyer, lived on the Pickenham estate in Norfolk, and acted as high sheriff for that county in 1832.2Chute, Vyne, 127-31 (qu. at 131); HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 443-4; VCH Hants., iv. 158-71; F. Ruscombe, The Politics of County Power: Wellington and the Hampshire Gentleman, 1820-52 (1990), 107; D. Kaplan, Jane Austen among women (1992), 8, 20-1. William John Chute (1757-1824) was MP for Hampshire, 1790-1806, 1807-20. He was, nevertheless, also involved in Hampshire’s affairs, serving as a magistrate and on the Hampshire Conservative committee for the 1832 election, as well as investing in local railways in the late 1830s.3PP 1837 (97), xxxiii. 32, 52; Hampshire Advertiser and Salisbury Guardian, 8 Dec. 1832; PP 1837 (95), xlviii. 173, 348.

In the autumn of 1836, Chute announced his intention to accede ‘to the wishes of a large and influential body of freeholders’ and stand for West Norfolk at the next dissolution, citing the establishment of the constituency’s Conservative association as a critical factor in persuading him to come forward.4Norfolk Chronicle, 29 Oct., 19 Nov. 1836. Addressing that body in November, Chute welcomed the abandonment of the ‘old watchword Tory’ in favour of the ‘more comprehensive term’ Conservative, and emphasised his acceptance of the reform bill, despite admitting a ‘decided objection’ to many of its clauses, ‘thinking the principle of them to be dangerous’.5Norfolk Chronicle, 19 Nov. 1836; The Times, 17 Nov. 1836. Professing his firm attachment to the privileges of the Commons, he pledged to ‘preserve the throne in its just prerogatives, maintain inviolate the independence of the… Peers, and preserve in strict integrity the Protestant church’.6The Times, 17 Nov. 1836; The Poll for Two Knights of the Shire for the Western Division of the County of Norfolk (1837), pg. vi-vii. He castigated the Whigs as timeserving, profligate turncoats, who, by their encouragement of ‘popery’ and slavish obedience to Daniel O’Connell, had betrayed the principles of their forebears.7Norfolk Chronicle, 19 Nov. 1836. Warming to his theme on the hustings in 1837, Chute offered a stark choice to the assembled crowds, ‘whether we are to have a Democracy, or whether we are to have a Limited Monarchy’, the former being the ‘inevitable consequence’ of those measures foisted upon the Whigs by ‘O’Connell and all the Radicals of the large towns’.8Norfolk Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1837. Forced to deny rumours a few months prior to the poll that he intended ‘to cut and run because he was going to be married’, Chute secured the seat behind another Conservative. The result represented a momentous political swing in a division which had previously been branded a ‘close borough’ by the Conservatives, such was the supposedly unshakeable political influence exerted over it by the local Whig patriarch, Thomas Coke.9Norfolk Chronicle, 27 May 1837.

Chute’s initial voting record largely followed the Conservative line. He supported Peel’s civil list and pension resolution, 11 Dec. 1837, and Lord Sandon’s motion censuring the government over the Canadian rebellion, 7 Mar. 1838, whilst dividing against the Whigs’ Irish government resolution, 19 Apr., their Jamaican legislation, 6 May, 20 June, and Russell’s education proposals with their ‘Papistical Board of Control’, 24 June 1839.10Norfolk Chronicle, 2 Nov. 1839. However, whilst Chute followed Peel’s lead in voting for the eventual passage of the Whigs’ Irish poor law, 2 May, and tithe bills, 25 July 1838, his loyalty was not unwavering, appearing in the small minorities opposing the third reading of the Irish municipal corporation bill, 9 Mar., and the annual Maynooth grant, 23 June 1840, measures which received the Conservative leader’s support.11Norfolk Chronicle, 26 Jan. 1839. Chute’s minority votes in favour of the law courts in the Hansard privilege case, 24 June 1839, 22 Jan. 1840, are probably explained by his legal background. Throughout his first parliament, Chute was assiduous in redeeming his pledge that the agricultural interest was his ‘own’, opposing all motions aimed at revision or discussion of the corn laws.12Norfolk Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1837. He likewise criticised the government’s penny postage measure as one designed to benefit the ‘commercial class’, but which would be shouldered ultimately by the agricultural community, as it would necessitate the introduction of a property tax.13Norfolk Chronicle, 2 Nov. 1839. Whilst Chute consistently backed the renewal of the poor law, he supported George Darby’s unsuccessful proposal in committee to enable guardians to give outdoor relief to certain widows and able-bodied men with families, 8 Aug. 1839, and was in the minority opposing the clause for the five-year extension of the poor law commission, 22 Mar. 1841. Only sixteen months later, however, he would reverse this latter vote, advocating the continuation of the commission until 1847, 12 July 1842. Chute’s only known committee service in his first Parliament was on the Belfast election petition in 1838.14CJ, xciii. 270.

Having previously dismissed rumours in 1839 that neither of the West Norfolk members would offer again, Chute sought re-election in 1841, and although he and his Conservative colleague were criticised for their ‘silent’ parliamentary attendance, they were returned unopposed and without expense after a Whig challenge failed to materialise.15Norfolk Chronicle, 25 May 1839, 26 June 1841, 22 Jan. 1842. On the hustings, Chute criticised the government’s attempts to ‘agitate the people’ by raising the ‘cry of cheap corn, cheap timber and cheap sugar’, arguing that the last would ‘ruin’ the colonies, while the first was desired only by ‘large mill-owners’ and would lead to reduced wages.16Norfolk Chronicle, 10 July 1841. However, when questioned in January 1842 about Peel’s rumoured corn law revision, Chute retorted somewhat sheepishly that it was ‘not his pretension to enlighten them’ as to Sir Robert’s intended course, ‘for he knew no more than themselves’ and all such speculation was ‘futile’.17Norfolk Chronicle, 22 Jan. 1842. In the event, he endorsed Peel’s sliding scale, 9 Apr. 1842, as well as the re-introduction of the income tax. Chute backed the premier when a number of his fellow agriculturist backbenchers, including his West Norfolk colleague William Bagge, opposed the government in support of Miles’s cattle duties amendment, 23 May 1842, and supported the government in the backbench revolts on the factory bill, 18 Mar. 1844, and the sugar duties, 14 June 1844. He displayed a similar loyalty to Peel on ecclesiastical issues, voting for the second reading of both the ecclesiastical courts bill, 1 May 1843, and the Dissenters’ chapel bill, 6 June 1844. He did not vote in any of the readings of the government’s Maynooth bill, however, and was said to be one of only four MPs who, previously having opposed the annual grant, ‘stayed away’ from the second reading, 18 Apr. 1845.18Hampshire Advertiser and Salisbury Guardian, 26 Apr. 1845. However, he divided against Catholic relief, 6 May 1846, 14 Apr. 1847.

Although Chute rarely spoke in debate, he was sedulous in his presentation of local petitions, and took a particular interest in the prominent East Anglian concern of marshland drainage, being among a deputation to Goulburn to discuss the Great Level of the Fens, and later sitting on the select committee on the 1844 Middle Level drainage and navigation bill.19The Times, 9 June 1842; PP 1844 (446), xiv. 375ff. On the latter measure, the Bury and Norwich Post recorded Chute as supporting an amendment for the bill’s recommitment, having declared in the preceding Commons debate that, whilst he supported the scheme of drainage in principle, he did not believe that ‘the funds were sufficient to carry out the object’.20Bury and Norwich Post, 10 July 1844. In keeping with earlier avowals of support for ‘reasonable measures’ to counter ecclesiastical abuses, in 1845 Chute successfully applied for the right to unite the sinecure rectory with the vicarage of Sherbourne St. John.21Norfolk Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1837; PP 1845 (203), xxxv. 73-74.

Unsurprisingly, following his move to Hampshire in 1842, Chute’s presence in his constituency appears to have greatly declined; at a King’s Lynn meeting in January 1846, it was left to Bagge to read out a letter penned by Chute, assuring supporters of his determination to oppose ‘any measures’ for diminishing protection in the forthcoming session.22Norfolk Chronicle, 10 Jan. 1846. Chute was in the minorities opposing the government’s reduction of butter and cotton duties, 13 Mar. 1846, and divided against every stage in the passage of the repeal of the corn laws. Nevertheless, Chute refused to renounce Peel’s ministry entirely, The Times listing him as one of fifty-one Protectionists to support the government in the critical division against the factory bill, 22 May 1846.23The Times, 26 May 1846. Likewise, he voted in favour of the second reading of the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846, refusing to join with the factious coterie which succeeded in defeating the Conservative government. Whilst Chute’s protectionist stance was seemingly affirmed in his subsequent opposition to the reduction of sugar duties, 28 July 1846, he opposed both Bentinck’s Irish railways bill, 16 Feb., and the Whig government’s subsequent resolution for making smaller loans to three Irish railway companies, 30 Apr. 1847. In this latter vote, Chute found himself in a minority comprised largely of free trade Conservatives and Radicals.24J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the party system, 1846-52 (1972), 27.

As one local paper had rumoured in December 1845, Chute retired at the dissolution, on the grounds that his ‘want of property in the county’ and his ‘non-residence’ rendered it ‘improper’ for him to continue.25Ipswich Journal, 20 Dec. 1845; Norfolk Chronicle, 24 July 1847. One of the Whig candidates at the subsequent 1847 hustings suggested that the electors’ patience had been tried by Chute’s absenteeism, but a correspondent to the Norfolk Chronicle mourned the loss of a member who had served his constituents with such ‘zeal’.26Bury and Norwich Post, 18 Aug. 1847; Norfolk Chronicle, 8 May 1847.

Upon retiring to the Vyne, Chute began a sustained programme of improvement on his estates, partially funded by the selling of his Pickenham property. His labours, which included the enclosure of common fields, road construction and drainage, were detailed in the journals of the Royal Agricultural Society, where his advocation of the use of the steam-plough was lauded as an ‘example’ which ‘must be followed’.27Chute, Vyne, 132-33; Journal of Royal Agricultural Society of England (1861), xxii. 266-67, 311, 316-19; see also PP 1847-48 (461), vii. 302. He was elected vice-president of the North Hampshire Agricultural Society for 1847. Chute was also involved in the developing rail network, having earlier emphasised the benefits it could confer on the agricultural interest to a meeting of Norfolk farmers; in 1846, he had investments of £9,740 in railway shares.28PP 1846 (473), xxxviii. 61. Chute died in July 1879, leaving personal estate valued at £25,000, and was succeeded by his eldest son, Challoner William, a barrister.29The Times, 3 Oct. 1879; The Vyne (1983), 44; Chute, Vyne, 133.