ERLE, William (1793-1880), of 20 Bedford Square, London, Mdx.

A distinguished Victorian judge, best remembered for his contribution to the 1871 Trade Union Act, Erle’s service as an MP has received little attention. Incorrectly assumed to have been a silent Member, and widely regarded as one of the Reform Club’s first ‘nominees’, in 1841 he abandoned the Commons in order to pursue his legal career. The promotion of such a ‘thick-and-thin’ Whig by the Peel ministry raised eyebrows in 1844, and may have had ulterior motives.1J. Prest, Politics in the Age of Cobden (1977), 90; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 8 July 1837; The Times, 5 Nov. 1844.

Erle, descended from a ‘very ancient family’ in Somersetshire, had combined a lucrative but unspectacular legal career with an Oxford fellowship during the 1820s and early 1830s, prior to taking silk in July 1834 and marrying that September.2See C. J. W. Allen, ‘Erle, Sir William (1793-1880)’, Oxford DNB. At the 1837 general election he was ‘understood to be the nominee of Joseph Parkes and the London Reform Club’ at Oxford, where the local Liberals were determined to reject one of their former MPs. Adopted at a meeting in the town hall, 3 July, his ‘extremely liberal principles’ included support for reform of the established church, commutation of tithes, and shorter parliaments, but stopped short of the secret ballot, since he did not believe that a public duty ‘should be veiled in secrecy’. Demanding an overhaul of the oppressive system of taxation under which all workers suffered, he added that ‘he had laboured hard for the fruits of his industry, and could feel for those who were treading the same path’. After a sharp contest he was returned in second place.3Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 8, 29 July 1837.

A steady attender, Erle gave loyal support to the Melbourne ministry on most major issues, but was in the radical minority for the removal of all religious barriers to municipal office holding, 4 Dec. 1837. Notwithstanding his earlier remarks, he avoted for the secret ballot, 15 Feb. 1838, 18 June 1839, for which he also brought up an Oxford petition, 16 Feb. 1838. He presented others for the abolition of slave apprenticeships, 2 Feb. 1838, and in support of the national education plan, 12 June 1839. In his first known speech, he successfully recommended leniency for a solicitor who had inadvertently altered a petition to the House, prompting charges of a breach of privilege, observing that ‘no fraud was intended, however gross the irregularity had been’, 28 May 1839.

On 21 Jan. 1840, in an influential speech on the Stockdale versus Hansard case, Erle challenged the views ‘generally entertained by the profession to which he belonged’ by upholding the supremacy of the Commons over the courts in cases of parliamentary privilege. ‘Any abandonment’ of this, he declared, ‘would be productive of the utmost inconvenience and danger to the House itself, and to the people it represented’. He was in the majority on the issue that day. He voted for inquiry into the corn laws, 26 May 1840, and with ministers on their poor law amendment bill, 8 Feb. 1841, Irish electors bill, 26 Apr. 1841, and was in their minority on the confidence motion, 4 June 1841. That day he presented an Oxford petition for a reduction of taxes on corn, sugar, tea and coffee.4The Times, 5 June 1841.

By now Erle had already been passed over twice for legal promotion owing to the ministry’s concerns about the possible loss of his seat in the resulting Oxford by-election, first in December 1838, when he was mooted for an available judgeship in the court of common pleas, and again in January 1841, when a vacancy occurred at Queen’s bench. He had had little chance of either, it was reported, owing to Oxford not being ‘a sure card’.5Examiner, 30 Dec. 1838; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 23 Jan. 1841. At the 1841 general election he accordingly retired to concentrate on the law, hoping that the delay in announcing his decision, evidently a sore point with his supporters, would not prove prejudicial to their interests.6Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 19 June 1841.

The change of ministry ought to have put his prospects on hold, but on 6 Nov. 1844, in a move that caused an outcry in the Tory press, the Peel administration made him a judge in common pleas, following the resignation of Thomas Erskine. ‘Mr. Erle has been for many years a strong partisan’, and ‘without any sort of independence or discrimination’ supported ‘all the extreme and in some cases revolutionary changes proposed ... by the late ministry’, protested The Times.7The Times, 5 Nov. 1844. The appointment, as the historian John Prest has noted, was all the more striking, since the 1843 Registration Act had established the court of common pleas as ‘the supreme registration tribunal’ for determining disputes over voting qualifications. At the time of Erle’s promotion the court was deciding whether the 1696 Splitting Act made the Anti-Corn Law League’s mass registration campaigns illegal. Their controversial rulings during 1845, upholding the League and its wholesale manufacture of freehold votes, have been viewed as a ‘Peelite judgement’, which helped pave the way for Peel’s subsequent repeal of the corn laws.8See Prest, Politics in the age of Cobden, 89-96. Erle received a knighthood from the ministry that year.

In 1846 Erle was transferred by the new Russell ministry to queen’s bench, where he remained for almost thirteen years before returning to common pleas as chief justice, in which role it was said, ‘the urbanity of his manner added force and effect to the unquestioned impartiality of his decisions’.9E. Foss, Biographical Dictionary of the Judges of England (1870), 234. His contributions as a judge, most notably to tort law, have naturally caught the attention of his biographers, but he was also a member of a series of royal commissions concerning the judicial system and international law.10Ibid.; Oxford DNB. After retiring as chief justice, 26 Nov. 1866, he was appointed head of the commission on trade unions set up by the Derby administration, to investigate relations between workers and employers and suggest improvements in the law, 12 Feb. 1867.11See H. W. McCready, ‘British Labour and the royal commission on trade unions, 1867-9’, University of Toronto Quarterly (1954-5), xxiv. 390-409. A supporter of the commission’s minority report recommending the decriminalisation of trade unions, his own views on the subject, which he published separately as The Law Relating to Trade Unions (1869), were endorsed by the Trade Union Congress and eventually formed the basis of Gladstone’s 1871 Trade Unions Act.

Erle, who had allegedly declined the offer of a hereditary title on retiring from the bench, died childless at his Hampshire country home of Bramshott Grange, near Liphook, in January 1880.12The Times, 30 Jan. 1880. His estate, proved under £100,000, passed to his wife and a nephew, Twynihoe William Erle, of 1 Cambridge Gate, Regent’s Park, London. Erle’s private papers are in the Bodleian Library, Oxford.