RIDLEY COLBORNE, Hon. William Nicholas (1814-1846), of West Harling Hall, Norf. and 19 Hill Street, London, Mdx.

Ridley Colborne’s parliamentary career as Liberal MP for Richmond was cut short by his untimely death at the age of 31. He came from a strong family tradition of parliamentary service, with members of the Ridley family having represented Newcastle-upon-Tyne since the mid-eighteenth century, among them his grandfather, Sir Matthew White Ridley, 2^nd bt., and his uncle, Sir Matthew White Ridley, 3^rd bt. His father Nicholas, who assumed the additional surname of Colborne in 1803 after inheriting the property of his maternal uncle, had sat for various pocket boroughs in the pre-Reform parliament, and represented Wells, 1834-7. A loyal Whig, he was elevated to the peerage as Baron Colborne in 1839 at the behest of Melbourne’s ministry.1HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 972-4.

Educated at Westminster and Oxford, Ridley Colborne entered the Commons in 1841.2He presided at the annual dinner of Westminster school alumni in 1844: The Times, 13 June 1844. He had initially canvassed at Knaresborough, where he was said to have been sent ‘by Mr. Thomas Duncombe, who has some local influence’.3Morning Post, 11 June 1841. The Duncombes had estates at Copgrove, near Knaresborough. It seems likely that this referred to the radical MP Thomas Slingsby Duncombe, rather than his septuagenarian father, although Ridley Colborne himself did not display any particularly radical tendencies. However, having come late into the field, he withdrew after an unpropitious canvass, declaring that he had no wish to mount ‘a vexatious opposition’.4Leeds Mercury, 12 June 1841. Instead he offered for Richmond, where both the incumbent Whigs were retiring. Sir Robert Dundas was making way for his nephew, John Charles Dundas, who had previously sat for York, and who informed three of the borough’s leading Whigs that he wished to bring in Ridley Colborne with him, but would withdraw him if they preferred someone else. Despite this assurance, their attempt to challenge the Dundas family’s control of Richmond by choosing another candidate was quashed, and Ridley Colborne was returned unopposed alongside John Dundas.5The Times, 25 June 1841. The year after taking his seat, he acted as second for his fellow MP Craven Berkeley in a ‘hostile meeting’ at Osterley Park with another MP, Henry Boldero, over alleged remarks by the latter which were disrespectful to the queen. The matter ended after shots were exchanged ‘without effect’.6The Times, 16 July 1842.

In the Commons Ridley Colborne generally divided with the Liberals. He voted against the ballot, 21 June 1842. He consistently supported the Maynooth grant, and was in the minority for Roebuck’s motion that state-supported education should not make ‘any attempt… to inculcate peculiar religious opinions’, 18 May 1843. He backed the admission of Dissenters to universities, 25 May 1843, and voted for the second reading of the Dissenters’ chapels bill, 6 June 1844. He supported Russell’s motion to consider the state of Ireland, 23 Feb. 1844, and was in the minority for going into committee on the Irish church temporalities question, 12 June 1844. He divided for a ten hour day for factory workers, 22 Mar. 1844. His interest in the social condition of the working classes was also shown by his presence on the committee of the Health of Towns Association, and at a meeting of a body to promote the establishment of baths and washhouses for the working classes in May 1845.7Health of Towns Association: abstract of the proceedings of the public meeting held... Dec. 11, 1844 [?1844], 2-3; Morning Post, 23 May 1845.

He appears to have made only two contributions to debate. The first was on Duncombe’s motion for a select committee to inquire into the opening of letters – including Duncombe’s own – at the post office under warrants issued by ministers. Ridley Colborne’s father had served on a previous committee on this matter, which had failed to satisfy Duncombe, and it was thus in defence of his parent that Ridley Colborne opposed Duncombe’s motion for a fresh inquiry, 21 Feb. 1845. His second intervention was to deny charges of political apostasy on the question of the corn laws, although his votes did reveal a gradually shifting position. He had supported Russell’s proposals for a fixed duty on corn, divided against Peel’s sliding scale, 9 Mar. 1842, and opposed Villiers’s motion for immediate repeal, 15 May 1843. However, he backed Hume’s pro-repeal amendment to the address, 1 Feb. 1844, divided with Villiers for total and immediate repeal, 10 June 1845, and was in the minority of 78 who voted in the same direction, rather than for Peel’s phased measure, 2 Mar. 1846. He justified his conduct on the latter occasion by arguing that ‘sacrifices must be made where the food of the people was concerned’, but declared that ‘if they were to do away with all import duties, and to throw the whole burdens of the country upon direct taxation, he should be opposed to free trade’.

Ridley Colborne was a member of the 1845 select committee on art unions, which discussed how these bodies could be made ‘more subservient to the improvement and diffusion of Art through the different classes of the community’.8PP 1845 (612), vii. 1. There had been some doubts about the legal status of art unions, as one of their activities was to hold lotteries whereby members could win paintings as prizes, and the committee’s recommendations that art unions be licensed in some way by the government were embodied in legislation passed in 1846: C.P. Darcy, The encouragement of the fine arts in Lancashire, 1760-1860 (1976), 93. His interest in art was reflected in his support for the Artists’ Benevolent Fund.9The Times, 29 Apr. 1844. The following year he served on the committee which investigated irregularities in the collection of signatures for an anti-corn law petition from Cheltenham. Although no fraudulent intention was found, the committee bemoaned the fact that ‘methods of promoting and of preparing Petitions should prevail, which have a tendency to bring into discredit that mode of giving expression to the sentiments of the subjects of the Realm’.10PP 1846 (139), viii. 126-7. He was appointed to the select committee on votes of electors, 16 Mar. 1846, but died before it met.11Morning Post, 17 Mar. 1846.

Outside Parliament, he was on the provisional committees of the London and York railway and of the Liverpool, Manchester and Newcastle-upon-Tyne railway.12Railway Chronicle, 11 May 1844; The Times, 12 July 1845. He moved in fashionable circles, attending at court and at events such as the Royal Yacht Squadron’s ball at Cowes.13Hampshire Advertiser, 26 Aug. 1843. He was among those present at a dinner in honour of Charles Dickens prior to the author’s departure for Italy in 1844.14Bristol Mercury, 29 June 1844. In June 1845 he took part in a pigeon-shooting match at Battersea fields for £1,000 a side, assisting his team to victory.15The Standard, 23 June 1845. He was also a keen racegoer.16The Era, 6 June 1841; The Standard, 27 Sept. 1843.

Having previously been in good health, Ridley Colborne died in March 1846 at his father’s London residence in Hill Street. A week before his death he had ruptured a blood vessel, then caught cold and succumbed to ‘an inflammation on the lungs’.17The Times, 24 Mar. 1846; The Standard, 25 Mar. 1846. He was buried at Kensal Green cemetery and also commemorated with a tablet at West Harling church.18Gent. Mag. (1846), i. 552; E. Farrer, The church heraldry of Norfolk (1887), i. 45. Paying tribute to Ridley Colborne at the by-election caused by his death, George Smurthwaite, who had nominated him in 1841, recorded that he had been ‘possessed of an amiability of disposition that conciliated and won their esteem’, and lamented that his ‘fair and blooming promise’ had been so suddenly curtailed.19York Herald, 11 Apr. 1846. The Colborne barony became extinct on his father’s death in May 1854.20Burke’s dormant and extinct peerages (1883), 128.