BROWN, James (1814-1877), of Rossington, nr. Bawtry, Yorks.; Copgrove, Boroughbridge, Yorks.; and Harehills Grove, Leeds, Yorks.

From a wealthy Leeds mercantile background, Brown acquired considerable landed estates in Yorkshire and cemented his new social position by securing election as Liberal MP for Malton in 1857, although his parliamentary contribution was minimal during the dozen years he spent in the Commons. Brown’s grandfather and namesake (1758-1813) had made his fortune as a wool merchant and manufacturer in Leeds in the boom that followed the American war of independence. Brown’s father, also James (1786-1845), continued the family business, which included operations at Bagby Mills, Leeds.1R.G. Wilson, Gentlemen merchants: the merchant community in Leeds, 1700-1830 (1971), 111, 241; PP 1834 (167), xx. 438. In 1838 he spent almost £100,000 to purchase the 3,000 acre Rossington estate from the indebted Doncaster corporation.2Sheffield Independent, 15 Dec. 1838. It has been erroneously suggested that it was James Brown MP and not his father who purchased the Rossington estate (see Wilson, Gentleman merchants, 11; F.M.L. Thompson, ‘Life after death: how successful nineteenth-century businessmen disposed of their fortunes’, Economic History Review, 43 (1990), 53). However, newspaper reports of the purchase refer to James Brown, rather than James Brown junior, and contemporary publications confirm that it was his father and not the MP who purchased this estate: H. Schroeder, The annals of Yorkshire from the earliest period to 1852 (1852), ii. 73; J.M. Wilson, Imperial Gazetteer of England and Wales (1870-2) [www.visionofbritain.org.uk/place/place_page.jsp?p_id=14143]. See also J. Chesman, ‘Rossington Hall – Shooters Hill’, The Rossington Villager (Mar. 1994) [http://www.the-villager.co.uk/Archives.asp?File=19940302002]. Brown, who does not appear to have pursued his legal training after being admitted to Inner Temple in 1836, inherited his father’s share in the cloth business in 1845, together with a considerable portion of his Yorkshire estates (including Rossington, where he resided). After provision for Brown’s mother and sisters, the residue of his father’s £160,000 personal estate was to be used to purchase landed property for Brown.3Morning Post, 7 Oct. 1845. In 1848 he duly spent £115,955 on an estate of 2,800 acres at Copgrove, where he became lord of the manor and patron of the living, although he only occasionally lived there.4Blackburn Standard, 6 Sept. 1848; Leeds Mercury, 15 June 1870, 31 Aug. 1877. The following year it was reported that he was retiring from his Leeds business interests,5Preston Guardian, 24 Mar. 1849. and he seems to have enthusiastically embraced his new role as ‘a fine example of the country gentleman’, taking a keen interest in sporting pursuits such as hunting (with the York and Ainsty Hunt) and hare coursing, and acquiring a reputation as ‘a kind and conscientious landlord’, who made considerable improvements to his estates.6Leeds Mercury, 31 Aug. 1877; The Era, 19 Feb. 1854; Nottinghamshire Guardian, 11 Nov. 1864; York Herald, 27 Feb. 1869. He had served as a magistrate for the West Riding since 1842, in which role he was said to have ‘an unusual capacity for business’.7Leeds Mercury, 20 Apr. 1877.

Brown made his first attempt to enter Parliament in 1847, offering as a third Liberal candidate at Kingston-upon-Hull after an approach from a section of the town’s ‘Blues’ (Conservatives) in combination with a section of the ‘Orange’ (Liberal) party.8PP 1854 [1791], xxvii. 9. Said to be ‘only an indifferent speaker’, he distinguished himself by adopting crimson as his colour,9W.A. Gunnell (ed.), Sketches of Hull Celebrities (1876), 479. and declared that he would be ‘strictly independent’ and that ‘his acts would be governed by no man, or body of men, and by no ministry whatever’. However, he also ‘professed to be a Whig’, explaining that he ‘was willing to reform where reforms were proved necessary, and should be anxious to reform in time, as he conceived the interests of the country were injured by those reforms being delayed’, but wished ‘to improve, and not to alter merely, or to destroy’. He supported free trade, but, mindful of Hull’s maritime interests, would leave the navigation laws untouched. He defended the connection between church and state, and the position of the House of Lords. He endorsed the Liberal ministry’s education proposals, although he felt that some details could be improved, and favoured relaxing the severity of the poor law.10Hull Packet, 30 July 1847. While Brown’s exposition of his principles suggested that he was attempting to appeal to the men ‘of various political opinions’ who had invited him, it quickly transpired that their motives were largely ‘pecuniary’, and with blocs of votes being openly bought and sold, Brown, who had told his committee that he would be no party to bribery, resigned in disgust at 3 p.m. on polling day, when he trailed in third place.11Ibid.; PP 1854 [1791], xxvii. 9-10. He was subsequently called upon to testify when Hull’s murky electoral affairs were investigated by an election commission in 1853. Despite his disavowal of bribery, the commissioners criticised him for not having taken greater care to limit the expense of his contest, particularly as the previous MP, Sir John Hanmer, had warned him about the costs. Brown had nonetheless paid £3,000 over to his agents, ‘such a sum of money as could only be required for purposes of bribery’.12PP 1854 [1791], xxvii. 9-10, 27, 1629-34. Brown had just returned from a trip to Norway when he attended to give his evidence.

In 1848 Brown was rumoured as a possible candidate for a vacancy in the West Riding, but in the event he gave his backing to the Hon. Charles William Wentworth Fitzwilliam, introducing him to a meeting of electors at Leeds that November.13York Herald, 14 Oct. 1848; Morning Post, 7 Nov., 22 Nov. 1848. Fitzwilliam subsequently withdrew in favour of another Liberal candidate. Brown served as high sheriff of Yorkshire in 1855.14Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 17 Feb. 1855. Two years later, when he was described as ‘a gentleman of great wealth, but… unknown in public life’, he was mooted as a Liberal candidate for Leeds, but declined to offer as he had agreed to stand alongside Fitzwilliam at Malton, where both seats were controlled by Earl Fitzwilliam.15Liverpool Mercury, 18 Mar. 1857; Morning Post, 20 Mar. 1857; N. Gash, Politics in the age of Peel (1953), 439. He and Fitzwilliam were returned without a contest in 1857, 1859 and 1865.16It was rumoured in 1865 that Brown would offer instead for the Southern division of the West Riding, but this proved to be false: Doncaster Gazette, cited in Leeds Mercury, 11 Feb. 1865. He gave his support to the Liberal candidates for that constituency at the 1865 general election: Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 17 July 1865.

An infrequent attender, Brown does not appear to have served on any select committees. His only known contribution to debate came in 1862, when he moved successfully to postpone the second reading of the Great Northern railway bill, a measure which the House had rejected on four previous occasions. He argued that not only did the bill fail to satisfy local requirements, but that the House should not allow ‘a company such as the Great Northern, gigantic in its resources, strong in its Parliamentary influence, and overwhelming in the number of its adherents’ to repeatedly introduce what was substantially the same bill, 18 Feb. 1862. When present, Brown gave ‘uniform support’ to Palmerston’s ministry, although he was absent from the key divisions on the conspiracy to murder bill in February 1858.17Doncaster Gazette, cited in Leeds Mercury, 11 Feb. 1865. He consistently voted for the abolition of church rates. He divided against the ballot, 30 June 1857, 8 June 1858, but backed the county franchise bill, 10 June 1858, 13 Apr. 1864. He was involved in fundraising efforts in Malton for the distressed Lancashire factory operatives during the cotton famine, when he referred to the ‘blot of slavery’ on the Southern states, but argued that England must bear some responsibility for having previously sanctioned slavery, and expressed his support for gradual emancipation.18York Herald, 8 Nov. 1862.

Although he had joined the bulk of his party in voting against the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, Brown expressed his regret following his re-election at Malton in 1865 that this measure had not been proceeded with, arguing that there ‘was much good in it, and all it wanted was a good sifting in committee’. He promised to support any reform bill, whether Liberal or Conservative, which enfranchised ‘the thrift and the intelligence’ of the country’ and believed that a £6 franchise could be obtained. On the same occasion he remarked that the malt tax should be left to the chancellor of the exchequer to deal with, and expressed cautious support for a measure for Sunday closing of public houses if this could be done without ‘interfering too much with the liberty of the subject’. He returned to Westminster ‘again unfettered by pledges, except to support the great Liberal party – that of progress’.19Leeds Mercury, 13 July 1865. Brown duly voted for the Liberal ministry’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, but was present for only 7 of the 50 divisions on the Conservative ministry’s reform bill the following session, being the least attentive Yorkshire MP on this question.20Daily News, 23 Aug. 1867. He did, however, enter the lobbies to divide for a one rather than two year residence requirement, 2 May 1867, and for a £5 copyhold franchise, 20 May 1867, but opposed John Stuart Mill’s amendment to enfranchise women the same day. Brown voted on only a handful of occasions in the 1868 session and retired at the dissolution, leaving Fitzwilliam to occupy the single seat to which Malton had been reduced by the Second Reform Act.

Brown was not active in politics thereafter, but continued his involvement with the Yorkshire Agricultural Society, of which he was a vice-president, and helped to re-establish the Doncaster Agricultural Society in 1872, serving as its president.21The Times, 5 Aug. 1864; Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 28 June 1872; York Herald, 27 June 1878. A generous benefactor to many causes,22Leeds Mercury, 20 Apr. 1877. he was chairman of committees for the Yorkshire Institution for the Deaf and Dumb.23Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 16 June 1877. He retired in 1873 from the position of lieutenant-colonel in the 1st West Riding yeomanry cavalry, which he had held since 1861.24London Gazette, 30 Apr. 1861, 11 Feb. 1873.

Brown, who never married, died ‘somewhat suddenly’ at 43 Upper Grosvenor Street, London, in April 1877, having previously visited Sussex for a change of air after being ‘attacked by disease of the lungs’.25Leeds Mercury, 20 Apr. 1877; York Herald, 20 Apr. 1877; The Standard, 23 Apr. 1877. He was buried in the family vault which his father had constructed at Rossington parish church, and despite his expressed wish for a quiet and simple funeral, over 500 people attended, including his tenants, local magistrates and tradesmen, and the mayor of Doncaster.26Sheffield & Rotherham Independent, 25 Apr. 1877. His sister later commemorated him with a memorial window at St. Leonard’s church, Burton Leonard, which Brown had left £1,500 to help rebuild.27York Herald, 21 Nov. 1878; Leeds Mercury, 31 Aug. 1877. His Yorkshire estates were divided between his only surviving sister, Mary Shiffner, who inherited Copgrove, and the sons of his two other sisters, Richard James Streatfeild, who succeeded to Rossington, and William James Scarlett. The bulk of his personal estate, sworn under £250,000, was divided between his surviving sister and his nieces and nephews, although he also left small legacies to family, friends and servants, and bequeathed £1,400 to various charities, including £500 each to Leeds and Doncaster infirmaries.28Leeds Mercury, 13 July 1877; B. Burke, A genealogical history and heraldic history of the landed gentry of Great Britain and Ireland (1894), i. 230; F.M.L. Thompson, ‘Stitching it together again’, Economic History Review, 45 (1992), 366 (which mistakenly identifies Streatfeild as Brown’s brother-in-law rather than his nephew). J. Bateman, Great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edn., 1883), 405, 427, listed Brown’s sister Mary Shiffner, of Copgrove, as in possession of 5,565 acres, while his nephew, Richard James Streatfeild, of Rossington, occupied 3,248 acres. Estate papers relating to his Yorkshire properties are held at the West Yorkshire Archive Service, Leeds.