WISE, John Ayshford (1813-1870), of Clayton Hall, near Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire

An active Liberal MP, Wise’s preoccupations were retrenchment and reform in the diplomatic and consular services, areas in which he had expertise, having been educated in Paris, Germany and Italy ‘with a view to entering the diplomatic service’.1M. Stenton, Who’s who of British MPs (1976), i. 415. In his youth he had been private secretary to Sir Robert Wilmot Horton, under-secretary of state for the colonies, and he later spent a number of years ‘visiting all the courts of Europe’.2Staffordshire Advertiser, 1 May 1852. An administrative reformer, Wise complained that the House of Commons was ‘inundated with placemen’.3Staffordshire Advertiser, 14 Mar. 1857. He voted in 47% of divisions in the 1852-53 session and 37% in the 1856 session.4Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck (1957), 18. His assiduity made him popular in Stafford, where he always topped the poll, but the Whig grandee Lord Hatherton claimed that Wise was ‘very vain’ and ‘will adopt any opinion to keep his seat’.5Hatherton Journal, 29 Apr. 1859, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/F/5/26/81. Although he frequently contributed to parliamentary debate, Wise was dismissed by Benjamin Disraeli as ‘a flippant speaker, with a sharp, underbred manner, but no real ability’.6Benjamin Disraeli to Queen Victoria, 22 Apr. 1858, qu. in Benjamin Disraeli letters, ed. M.G. Wiebe et al, (2004), vii. 172.

The Wise family had resided in Devon since the thirteenth century and his father Ayshford Wise had been MP for Totnes, 1812-18, before selling off the family’s estates in the 1820s.7HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 638. Wise acquired Clayton Hall, Staffordshire, through his marriage in 1837, and was thereafter resident in that county. Describing himself as a ‘moderate Reformer’ and ‘a sincere and constitutional Whig’, he offered for Newcastle-under-Lyme at the 1837 general election, but later withdrew.8Staffordshire Advertiser, 1, 15 July 1837. He later served as chairman of Stoke board of guardians for several years, was one of the jurors for the ceramic department of the 1851 Great Exhibition and high sheriff of Staffordshire in 1852.9Staffordshire Advertiser, 1 May 1852. By this time, Wise was a more formidable candidate, with impressive local credentials that he had lacked in 1837. In 1852 he offered for the venal borough of Stafford, styling himself a ‘Reformer of the school of Earl Grey’.10Ibid. Wise declared support for free trade, retrenchment, a revision of income tax and the poor law.11Staffordshire Advertiser, 1 May 1852, 10 July 1852. He also expressed a preference for ‘some industrial franchise’ so that workers in local staple trades ‘might be represented in the same way as the manufacturing population of Stafford’.12Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 July 1852. Although he was never returned unopposed, Wise topped the poll on every occasion he stood for Stafford.

At Westminster, Wise, as he had predicted, was generally to be found voting with those ‘who were anxious to reduce the expenditure of the country to the lowest possible amount’.13Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 July 1852. In an early speech, 19 May 1853, he questioned numerous items in the miscellaneous estimates, and the following day made the first of his many attacks on the cost of Britain’s foreign missions.14Hansard, 19, 20 May 1853, vol. 127, cc. 407, 410, 412, 462. Wise voted on the free trade side of all the key divisions of the 1852-53 session and also backed Jewish relief. In the debates on the government of India bill in the same session, Wise joined his colleague Arthur John Otway in assailing the East India Company (EIC), which he described as ‘an irresponsible, mysterious company in Leadenhall Street’.15Hansard, 25, 29 July 1853, vol. 129, cc. 770-1, 1042. He complained that the government had watered down its proposals at the behest of Sir James Hogg, the Company’s chairman and MP for Honiton, 26 July 1853.16Hansard, 26 July 1853, vol. 129, cc. 827-30. He subsequently attempted, unsuccessfully, to prevent a clause allowing the EIC to increase its British troops by 10,000, objecting to such an army operating without parliamentary oversight.17Hansard, 29 July 1853, vol. 129, cc. 1041-2.

Wise, who later dismissed the Aberdeen coalition as a ‘complete failure’, divided in favour of Roebuck’s motion that brought down the government, 29 Jan. 1855.18Staffordshire Advertiser, 28 Mar. 1857. He called for a thorough reform of the British consular service, principally by banning consuls from engaging in trade and making them salaried officials, 7 May 1855.19Hansard, 7 May 1855, vol. 138, cc. 212-15. This anticipated his motion for a complete revision of the diplomatic service by implementing the recommendations made by the 1850 select committee on public salaries, 22 May 1855.20Hansard, 22 May 1855, vol. 138, cc. 897-902. The inquiry had proposed amalgamating existing missions, downgrading the embassies at Paris and Constantinople to missions, and economising generally, but the recommendations had been largely resisted by the foreign office.21R.A. Jones, The British diplomatic service, 1815-1914 (1983), 97-101. In his speech, Wise also criticised ‘secret diplomacy’ and praised the use of examinations in the French and German diplomatic services.22Hansard, 22 May 1855, vol. 138, cc. 901-2. He decided to withdraw his motion after receiving reassurances from Palmerston, but his colleague Henry Baillie forced a division and his motion was passed, 112-57.23Ibid., cc. 919-20. In the same session he opposed Disraeli’s censure of the cabinet’s conduct of the Crimean War, 25 May 1855, but backed that of Roebuck, 19 July 1855.

Wise urged the reform of the British consular service, 14 Apr. 1856, and in other debates complained of the wasteful expenditure on British embassies.24Hansard, 14 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, cc. 1014-23; 5 June 1856, vol. 142, cc. 1039-40; 3 July 1856, vol. 143, cc. 272-5, 276-7. He obtained a leave of absence from Parliament due to the illness of his wife in early 1857, and when he returned to support Palmerston in the division on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, the speaker prevented him from voting.25Staffordshire Advertiser, 14 Mar. 1857. At the consequent general election Wise declared that he had given Palmerston ‘an independent though not subservient support’. He denounced the ‘system of secret diplomacy’ and centralisation, and advocated the differentiation of income tax, the revision of local taxes and poor laws.26Staffordshire Advertiser, 14, 28 Mar. 1857. ‘Deservedly popular’ in the constituency, rumours that Wise intended to retire at the election were greeted by 500 electors signing a declaration to return him free of expense in this most venal of boroughs.27Staffordshire Advertiser, 14, 21 Mar. 1857.

Wise secured a pledge from Palmerston to establish a committee on the consular service, 3 July 1857, and he was a member of the ensuing inquiry.28Hansard, 3 July 1857, vol. 146, cc. 935, 946-7. Its report, published in 1858, has been described by one historian as ‘the most sensible of the Victorian reports on the consular service’.29D.C.M. Platt, The Cinderella service: British consuls since 1825 (1971), 42. The committee recommended establishing a well-paid, trained, salaried service, with a clear hierarchical structure and career path for consuls, who should be prohibited from trading.30PP 1857-58 (482), viii. 3-12. However, the Treasury’s aversion to spending and bureaucratic conservatism delayed the implementation of these recommendations until the later nineteenth century.31Platt, Cinderella service, 42. On 22 Apr. 1858, Wise moved that diplomatic salaries and pensions currently charged on the consolidated fund should henceforth be paid from a parliamentary grant, and thus subject to the legislature’s scrutiny.32Hansard, 22 Apr. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 1496-1508. Sir John Trelawny, Liberal MP for Tavistock, praised him for making a ‘good speech’.33The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865, ed. T. Jenkins, Camden Society, 4th ser., xl (1990), 35. Despite the opposition of Palmerston, Lord John Russell and Derby’s government, the motion was only narrowly defeated 114 to 142, prompting ‘tremendous & protracted cheering – the Radicals making a good fight against Whigs & Tories combined’.34Ibid., 36. Wise’s subsequent attempt to reduce the sum for extraordinary diplomatic expenses by £5,000 was defeated by twelve votes in a thin House, 12 July 1858.35Hansard, 12 July 1858, vol. 151, cc. 1270-1, 1273-5.

Wise had been in the majority that had rejected the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, prompting Palmerston’s resignation. That autumn, much to Hatherton’s horror, he ‘spoke in the borough [of Stafford] for equalising poor rates throughout the kingdom. [He] … found it [to be] a popular topic’.36Hatherton Journal, 29 Apr. 1859, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/5/26/81. After opposing Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, Wise again topped the poll at the ensuing general election.

At the beginning of the 1860 session, he successfully moved for an annually appointed select committee on miscellaneous civil service expenditure and payments charged on the consolidated fund.37Hansard, 2 Feb. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 446-56. Such a committee would ‘exercise a further check and control over the national expenditure’, and allow MPs to ‘prove themselves really and truly the guardians of the public purse’. 38Ibid., 447-8. Trelawny remarked that Wise ‘made a good plain & unpretending address – supporting his case with a copious array of figures’.39Trelawny diaries, 95. The motion was passed 121-93, 2 Feb. 1860.40Hansard, 2 Feb. 1860, vol. 156, cc. 478-80. Despite his triumph Wise resigned in July, informing his constituents that his ‘health has been for some time so injured by the labours, late hours and general habits of a parliamentary life’.41Birmingham Daily Post, 12 July 1860.

Wise recovered sufficiently to contest Newcastle-under-Lyme at the 1865 general election, but was easily beaten. At the nomination he had complained that ‘there was a great deal of sham and humbug over Parliamentary matters; but he had never lent himself to any clap-trap measures’.42Birmingham Daily Post, 12 July 1865. On his death in 1870 he was succeeded by his only son Lewis Lovatt Ayshford Wise (1844-1927).43Burke’s landed gentry (1908), 1835-6. Wise’s personal effects were sworn under £25,000, but were re-sworn as £45,000 in July 1872.44Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1870), 193.