MILLER, William Henry (1789-1848), of Craigentinny House, North Leith, Edinburgh; 12 Brompton Row, Middlesex; Britwell Court, near Burnham, Berkshire

A famous bibliophile, Miller cut a poor figure on the platform, where he was ‘notoriously tongue-tied’, and he offered only silent support for Conservative principles during his time in the Commons.1H. Barker and D. Vincent, (eds), Language, print and electoral politics, 1790-1832: Newcastle-under-Lyme broadsides (2001), p. xxxvii. Part of a family of Scottish Quakers, he was also related by blood to the Christy family of London, hat manufacturers. It was this connection and the influence of his Christy cousins which enabled him to successfully contest Newcastle-under-Lyme, where the dominant industry was hat manufacture, in 1830.2HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 396; The assembled Commons (1837), 124. As a broadside advised electors in 1830: ‘You know that the Messrs. Christy’s are immense Hat Merchants, and have long been a main support of our Staple Trade’.3‘A Burgess’, ‘To the Independent Electors of Newcastle’, 28 July 1830, Keele University Library, K277, 1830.16, reproduced in Language, print and electoral politics, 301. Elected as an Independent, Miller opposed the reform bill, especially the abolition of the freemen franchise.4HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 397.

Miller was returned in first place at the 1832 general election and in the following session supported Matthias Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, and the proposals of Sir William Ingilby and Sir John Key to reduce malt duty and repeal house and window tax respectively, 26, 30 Apr. 1833. He opposed the appropriation of surplus Irish church revenues. Prior to the 1835 general election, Miller unsuccessfully beseeched the premier Sir Robert Peel to persuade his brother, Edmund, to withdraw from the Newcastle-under-Lyme contest.5Sir Robert Peel to William Henry Miller, 26 Dec. 1834, Add. 40407, f. 279, cited in P. Salmon, Electoral reform at work: local politics and national parties, 1832-1841 (2002), 52. Privately, Edmund advised his brother that:

Miller is very unpopular in the town & if any third candidate offers, he must expend a very large sum to secure two seats. He could not poll more than 100 votes without having recourse to bribery. £1500 of his last election expenses remains unpaid.6Edmund Peel to Sir Robert Peel, 29 Dec. 1834, Add. 40408, f. 67.

During the campaign Miller said that although he had not been a supporter of the Grey ministry, he had never given them a ‘factious or vexatious opposition’. At times he had even backed the government and he had ‘absented [himself] from that House … when he could not honestly oppose the[ir] measures, and when to have given them his support would have been only to swell the ministerial majorities’ and so delay the return of the Conservatives to office.7Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835. Miller was re-elected in second place and in the 1835 session he sided with the Conservatives in the key party divisions, opposing Irish municipal and church reform in particular. At the 1837 general election, when he topped the poll, Miller denounced the Irish leader Daniel O’Connell as ‘the greatest boroughmonger in the kingdom’. He also declared that he had never given a vote for the new poor law, which was unpopular in Newcastle-under-Lyme.8Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837.

Thereafter Miller opposed political reforms, such as the ballot and equalisation of the borough and county franchises, and resisted free trade, but he backed the call for the immediate abolition of slave apprenticeships in 1838. He supported the votes of no confidence in the Melbourne administration, 31 Jan. 1840, 4 June 1841, and offered a stout defence of the corn laws at the 1841 general election.9Staffordshire Advertiser, 19 June 1841, 3 July 1841. On this occasion, however, he was relegated to third place. Although the Liberal victor was later unseated for bribery, Miller did not contest the 1842 by-election, neither, despite rumours to the contrary, did he offer at the 1847 general election.10Morning Post, 24 July 1847.

On his death in 1848, Miller, a bachelor, left property worth £300,000 as well as his impressive library of rare books to his cousins, the Misses Marsh, from whom it passed in 1862 to another cousin Samuel Christy (1810-89), also a Conservative MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1847-1859.11Al. Cant., pt. II, iv. 417; HP Commons, 1820-1832, vi. 398; Gent. Mag. (1849), i. 98-9.