HECTOR, Cornthwaite John (c.1774-1842), of Stodham House, nr. Petersfield, Hants.

Hector, whose origins are obscure, had acted as steward at Petersfield for its absentee and eccentric Tory proprietor Hylton Jolliffe MP from the latter’s accession to the family’s estates in 1802 until February 1826.1J. Mylne and R. Craig, Reports of Cases Determined in the High Court of Chancery (1848), v. 168, 171. A local brewer and partner in the Petersfield banking concern of Hector, Lacy and Hector, Hector was connected by marriage to Richard Eyles, one of the town’s long-serving mayors, but by 1832 had dramatically fallen out with the Jolliffes, who around this time established a rival bank.2HP Commons 1820-32, v. 875; Twigg’s Corrected List of Country Bankers (1830), 65. At that year’s general election Hector abetted the candidature of the reformer John Shaw Lefevre, a nephew of the premier Grey, against his former patron. With the borough reduced to a single seat by the Reform Act the struggle was intense, and during the course of a vitriolic campaign Hector was involved in a ‘personal rencontre’ with Jolliffe’s new mayor Dr Quarrier, with whom he ‘exchanged blows at Petersfield market’, before the pair were separated by Lord Douro. Proposing Lefevre at the nomination, Hector denounced the despotic and unconstitutional attempts by the Jolliffe family to retain their former pocket borough and charged them with threatening their tenants.3Hampshire Telegraph, 8, 17 Dec. 1832. Lefevre was returned by a single vote but a petition against the return, which Hector steadily opposed, was decided in Jolliffe’s favour.4The Times, 7 Mar. 1833. Undeterred, Hector put himself forward at the 1835 general election as an opponent of ‘close boroughs’ and the newly installed Peel administration. After another highly-charged campaign, during which his supporters paraded ‘notices to quit’ from 1832 in their hats, he was returned with a reasonable margin at the head of the poll.5Hampshire Telegraph, 5 Jan. 1835.

An ‘ultra Liberal’, who is not known to have spoken in debate, Hector voted against Peel’s short-lived ministry on the address, the speakership and Irish Church appropriation, but sided with the agricultural interest over repeal of the malt tax.6The Assembled Commons (1837), 94. A member of the Westminster Reform Club and a regular presence in the lobbies, he gave steady support to the reappointed Melbourne ministry on most major issues, including municipal reform and the poor law, but frequently divided with the advanced radicals in support of more extensive reforms, such as the secret ballot, the abolition of military flogging, the removal of MPs’ property qualifications, Irish Church reform, the abolition of church rates, and measures to curb electoral bribery. He served on the 1835 Penryn election committee and was in the small minorities for Ewart’s bill for equal division of intestate property among children, 12 Apr., and an inquiry into the controversial reappointment of the disgraced army commander Lord Brudenell, 3 May 1836.7CJ (1835) xc. 401. However, he broke ranks with many advanced radicals to oppose the admission of bonded corn, 14 Apr. 1836, 16 Mar. 1837.

Denounced at a Petersfield Tory meeting shortly before the 1837 general election as ‘a man whose democratic and revolutionary principles are dangerous to the very existence of the state’ and as ‘a man who would pull down the House of Lords and level in the dust all our best and noblest institutions, even the throne itself’, Hector issued an address asserting his support for the present ministry and the new Queen, and citing his recent appointment by Lord John Russell, the Whig leader in the Commons, to the inquiry on church lands, which he was confident would ‘put an end to those grounds of dissension which have so long existed between the Church and the Dissenters’.8Hampshire Telegraph, 24 July 1837. Defeated by a single vote in the ensuing poll by Jolliffe’s Conservative nephew and heir Sir William Jolliffe, he petitioned against the return with the help of a subscription raised by local reformers, and was seated after an inquiry early the following year.9Hampshire Chronicle, 31 July, 14 Aug. 1837; The Times, 15 Feb. 1838.

Thereafter Hector resumed his regular presence in the lobbies, especially on minor issues, but his support for ministers on major divisions was less conspicuous during his second parliament. He was in the radical minorities for the immediate cessation of slave apprenticeships, 28 May 1838, for consideration of the Chartist petition, 12 July 1839, and against the creation of a poor law commission, 15 July 1839, 22 Mar. 1841. In 1839 his evidence as the former steward of the Jolliffes helped a high court case involving a tenant farmer go against them.10Reports of Cases in Chancery, 167-77. By now he had evidently become a convert to free trade, for he voted for inquiry into the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839, 26 May 1840. Having rallied to the defence of the Whig ministry on Peel’s motion of no confidence, 4 June 1841, he offered again at the ensuing general election, but ‘relinquished the contest’ after a disappointing canvass, leaving his Protectionist opponent to walk over.11Hampshire Advertiser, 3 July 1841.

It has been suggested that the ‘excitement consequent upon the temporary stoppage of his banking-house’ in January 1842, when his partnership with Lacy was dissolved, may have contributed to his death the following month after ‘a few weeks’ illness’.12C. R. Dod, Annual Biography (1843), 403; Manchester Times, 22 Jan. 1842; Annual Register (1843), lxxxiv. 84. By his will, dated 4 Jan. 1842, he established a trust to provide for his four daughters Jane, Matilda, Maria and Anna.13Prob. 11/1961. No mention was made of his sons, of whom there were at least two, the second of whom (his namesake) married in 1853.14Gent. Mag. (1853), i. 305.