TALBOT, James (1805-1883), of 1 Derby Street, London, Mdx.

One of eleven children, Talbot was the eldest of six sons of James Talbot and part of an ‘old Catholic Dublin family’ who shared ancestry with the earls of Shrewsbury and (on his mother’s side) the Milesian princely house of Breffney.1E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002) vi. 373-4; HP Commons 1820-1832, vii. 366. His grandfather, Richard Talbot, had been pardoned by William III in July 1690 for having accepted the office of auditor general under James II. The family turned Protestant in 1779, and James Talbot’s uncle, Richard Wogan Talbot (1766-1849), had sat as Whig MP for County Dublin, 1807-30, and was a firm supporter of Catholic relief and parliamentary reform.2Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament, vi. 373; HP Commons 1790-1820, v. 331; HP Commons 1820-1832, vii. 366. He had sat for County Dublin in the Irish parliament, 1790-1, and was created baron Furnival on 8 May 1839: Complete Peerage, xii (part 2), 626. His father succeeded Richard as 3^rd baron Talbot de Malahide on 29 October 1849, shortly before his death in the following year.3Morning Post, 25 Dec. 1850; Gent. Mag. (1851), i. 197. The title had been created by the Grey ministry for his mother, Margaret Talbot, on 28 May 1831. Talbot was born at Tiverton and, after graduating from Cambridge, toured extensively in southern and eastern Europe before returning to Ireland, where his family influence lay.4T. Secombe, rev. R. Smail, ‘Talbot, James’, Oxford DNB, liii. 700. He was approached by the local election club to stand for Athlone in the independent interest at the 1830 general election, but gathered only two freeman votes. He unsuccessfully petitioned against the result, but a return visit to the town in January 1831 was greeted by nearly 20,000 enthusiastic supporters.5Freeman’s Journal, 30 July, 9 Aug. 1830; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 913, Freeman’s Journal, 8 Jan. 1831. Having been pledged the support of the town’s reformers, he contested that year’s general election but with no more success.6Freeman’s Journal, 23 Apr. 1831; Examiner, 1 May 1831; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 913. When he stood again in the reform interest at the 1832 general election he paid close attention to the timely registration of his supporters, beating the long-standing Conservative member Richard Handcock, and thus overturning the previously entrenched interest of Handcock’s uncle, Lord Castlemaine.7Freeman’s Journal, 16 July, 26 Oct. 1832; Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 371.

Talbot was returned as a Reformer but the degree to which he sympathised with repeal remained unclear. After being nominated in person for membership of the National Political Union, 4 Sept. 1832, he was absent when formally admitted to the body a week later, at which time Edward Ruthven claimed that Talbot was ‘the unflinching supporter of freedom, and the inflexible advocate of repeal’.8Talbot’s uncle was a leading backer of Edward Ruthven and Daniel O’Connell for the seats in Dublin city: HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 367. Talbot had subsequently promised the electors merely ‘to vote and act as diametrically opposite to the manner’ in which Handcock had, but did not contradict a subsequent assertion at the hustings that he had ‘fully and candidly avowed himself an advocate of repeal’.9The Times, 21 Mar. 1834. Therefore, having been spoken of by Daniel O’Connell as ‘a high-spirited gentleman, and declared repealer’, Talbot was widely regarded as one of the ‘Quasi Protestant Joints’ of O’Connell’s ‘Tail’.10Hansard, 18 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 746-7; Irish Monthly Magazine, i (1833), 412; Standard, 3 Jan. 1833. The Freeman’s Journal, 27 Dec. 1832, also claimed him as a repealer.

Talbot, however, took no part in O’Connell’s National Council in January 1833, and quickly demonstrated his independence in the House. Being ‘painfully convinced’ that ‘strong measures were necessary to the peace of Ireland’, he satisfied himself that the Irish coercion bill ‘was not meant to enforce the payment of tithes’, and so declined the ‘great pleasure’ it might have given him to join O’Connell in the minority against the bill’s first and second readings, 1 and 11 Mar. 1833. However, after the Athlone Trades’ Political Union threatened to ‘displace him if he did not reverse his conduct’, he did raise objections to some clauses of the bill, denouncing ‘domiciliary visits as a horrible abuse’ and declaring ‘arbitrary imprisonment as unnecessary’. He also voted against providing the Irish authorities with the power of trying civil offences by courts martial, 20 Mar. 1833.11Letter to D. O’Connell, 4 Mar. 1833, O’Connell Correspondence, ed. M.R. O’Connell, v. 13; O. MacDonagh, The Emancipist. Daniel O’Connell 1830-1847 (1989), 91; The Times, 30 Mar. 1833; Hansard, 11, 18 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 521-2, c. 746.

Talbot had opposed Joseph Hume’s resolutions in favour of economy in the public service, 14 Feb., but voted for Thomas Attwood’s committee on distress, 21 Mar. 1833. That month he sat on the select committee on the Southampton election petition and served the inquiry into the Bristol election that April.12CJ, lxxxviii. 216, 309. He supported Hume’s motion to abolish military flogging, 2 Apr., but opposed Matthias Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr., and voted for the second reading of the Jewish disabilities bill, 22 May. After initially supporting the ministry’s Irish temporalities bill, Talbot voted against the government’s proposals for dealing with Irish tithe arrears, 14 June, judging them insufficient to suppress the combination then ranged against them. He believed that ‘the collection of tithes for the purposes to which they were at present appropriated, could not be justified on any principle of equity or expediency’, but dissented from the principle of transferring the tax burden to Irish landlords, and contended that unless the proceeds from tithes were ‘appropriated to national purposes’, the question threatened ‘to destroy all connexion’ between Ireland and Great Britain.13Hansard, 14 June 1833, vol. 18, cc. 838-9. He voted with the O’Connellites to retain the appropriation clause of the government’s Irish Church temporalities bill, 21 June, and was reported to have attended a meeting of repeal members that month when, not being a declared repealer, he was not allowed to vote on the timing of a parliamentary motion on the issue.14The Times, 12 June 1833. That July he sat on the select committee on the borough of Carrickfergus which inquired into the propriety of its being represented in parliament.15PP 1833 (527) viii. 103.

On returning to Westminster in 1834, Talbot voted against Daniel Harvey’s motion for a select committee to scrutinise the pension list, 18 Feb., and opposed James Silk Buckingham’s motion for a select committee to consider an alternative to naval impressment, 4 Mar. He supported Lord Chandos’s motion on agricultural distress, 21 Feb., but opposed Hume’s motion for a low fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. He divided in favour of Colonel Williams’s plan to admit Dissenters to the universities, 17 Apr. He sided against the repealers once more by supporting Althorp’s motion that church rates be replaced by funds raised by a land tax, 21 Apr., thus reinforcing O’Connell’s expressed belief that Talbot should not remain in parliament.16R.B. McDowell, Public Opinion and Government Policy in Ireland, 1801-1846 (1952), 137, citing The Pilot, 23 Mar. 1834. Talbot did, however, back O’Connell’s opposition to the ministry’s Irish tithe bill, 2 and 5 May. With regard to reform issues, he voted against Charles Tennyson’s motion to repeal the Septennial Act, 15 May, and supported William Tooke’s motion for the authentic reporting of parliamentary debates, 22 May.

At the same time, Talbot rendered considerable service to his constituency. In June 1834 he moved successfully for an inquiry into the navigation of the River Shannon and its tributaries, and to assess the value of the lands adjoining the river. The committee, on which he served, also investigated the best means of improving the river so as to encourage manufactures, commerce, and agriculture along its course.17Hansard, 19 June 1834, vol. 24, cc. 590-2; CJ, lxxxix. 413; PP 1834 (532) xvii. 141: Belfast News-letter, 20 June 1834. Furthermore, having presented a petition from the grand jury of Athlone for the construction of a new bridge over the river, he and Colonel Alexander Perceval introduced a successful bill to facilitate the general construction of bridges in Ireland, 10 June.18The county bridges (Ireland) bill was passed, 5 Aug. 1834, and received royal assent as the Bridges (Ireland) Act (4 & 5 Wm. IV, c. 61): CJ, lxxxix. 348, 566-7; PP 1834 (360) i. 417; Hansard, 5 Aug. 1834, vol. 25, cc. 994-6.

Talbot once again incurred O’Connell’s emnity for opposing his repeal motion, 29 Apr. 1834, and it has been asserted that because Talbot was not ‘sufficiently plastic’ to suit O’Connell and his party he was advised ‘not to offer himself for re-election’.19A. Macintyre, The Liberator. Daniel O’Connell and the Irish Party 1830-1847 (1965), 308; The Times, 17 Apr. 1883. However, Talbot quickly joined the Anti-Tory Association, 16 Dec. 1834, and in his address to that body, O’Connell claimed to have ‘no objection’ to Talbot continuing to represent Athlone, although ‘he could by no means approve of all of that gentleman’s votes’, but added that as ‘a young man’ Talbot had ‘time as well as room to improve’. In the event, however, it seems that O’Connell’s doubts about Talbot’s fitness to represent a Catholic borough ‘rendered it impossible’ for him to contest the 1835 general election successfully, and he was defeated amidst allegations of ‘gross bribery’ against his Conservative rival.20The Times, 19 Dec. 1834; Morning Chronicle, 9 Dec. 1834; T. Secombe, ‘Talbot, James’, DNB (1909), xix. 318-9; Morning Post, 14 Jan. 1835.

Although Talbot helped to keep the cause of reform alive in Somerset, chairing a meeting of the Shepton Mallet Reform Association in October 1836, thereafter he appears to have played little part in politics.21Examiner, 9 Oct. 1836. Upon his father’s death in 1850 he succeeded to the Irish peerage and to estates in Dublin, Westmeath and Cavan amounting to more than 3,500 acres, the valuable estate at Malahide having been in the family’s hands since the Norman conquest.22Gent. Mag. (1857), ii. 54-61; J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 296; Morning Post, 2 Nov. 1849. His wife owned 2,645 acres of land in Scotland. In November 1856, at the instance of Lord Palmerston, his Irish barony was advanced to a peerage of the United Kingdom, and through the same influence he served as a lord-in-waiting, 1863-6.23The Times, 19 Nov. 1856. In the House of Lords he generally spoke upon measures of social reform, such as legislations to prevent the adulteration of food. He had a special interest in Roman and Irish antiquities and chaired meetings of the Archæological Institute from the mid-1840s. He formed a collection of Irish gold ornaments and enamels, specimens of which he presented to the Fitzwilliam Museum at Cambridge.24Morning Post, 25 Dec. 1850; Gent. Mag. (1846), ii. 299; Gent. Mag. (1849), i. 633; Antiquary, vii (1883), 272. In 1858 his archæological interests led him to introduce a bill respecting treasure-trove but, owing to the difficulties raised by the treasury, the bill was read only once, 5 July 1858.25Secombe, ‘Talbot, James’. Based upon a measure in force in Denmark, the finder of archæological remains of substantial value was to have deposited the same before a justice of the peace for valuation, with a view to purchase by the state, the full value to be remitted to the finder.

A member of numerous learned bodies, Talbot’s help and encouragement to John O’Donovan in his Celtic studies helped to earn him the presidency of the Royal Irish Academy. His wife having predeceased him by almost ten years, he died at Funchal, Madeira, in April 1883, his wealth at death being £23,354. He was succeeded in the title by his eldest son, Richard Wogan Talbot (1846-1921), a former military officer and later a Liberal Unionist peer.26Smail, ‘Talbot, James’, 700; The Times, 17 Apr., 4 Aug. 1883. Through his first marriage to Emily Boswell, the 5th baron came into possession of the manuscripts of her great-grandfather, James Boswell, the biographer of Dr. Samuel Johnson: G.E.C., Complete Peerage, xii (pt. 1). 627. A collection of Talbot’s papers is held in the Bodleian Library, Oxford (MSS. Talbot c. 21-5).