JOLLIFFE, Hylton (1773-1843), of Merstham House, Surr.

Jolliffe’s membership of the reformed Commons is absent from most sources, which incorrectly identify his nephew Sir William Jolliffe as the MP for Petersfield after 1832 and the unsuccessful Conservative candidate at the 1835 general election.1See, for example, ‘Sir William Jolliffe’, Oxford DNB (2004), xxx. 423; M. Stenton (ed.), Who’s who of British MPs (1976), i. 215; F. W. S. Craig, British Parliamentary Election Results 1832-1885 (1977), 239; Dod’s Electoral Facts 1832-1853 (1972), ed. H. J. Hanham, 250; McCalmont’s Parliamentary Poll Book 1832-1918 (1971), eds. J. Vincent and M. Stenton, 236; http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/people/sir-william-jolliffe. By then Jolliffe, having sat intermittently for his pocket borough as a Tory since 1796, had become ‘one of the oldest members’, although his interrupted service left him some distance short of having the longest record of service.2Gent. Mag. (1843), i. 317. Notorious for his field sports and outsized hats, which included the ‘Jolliffe’, ‘whose dimensions exceed all others’, and invariably attired in antiquated dress, replete with top boots and breeches, Jolliffe had come to personify a dying breed of eccentric and anachronistic boroughmongers associated with the unreformed Commons, and the proposed abolition of his pocket borough of Petersfield had been hailed with glee by the reformers in 1831. Its last minute reprieve had given him little comfort, since he was convinced that the borough’s dramatic enlargement would destroy the influence of ‘the present patron’.3R. Lloyd, Lloyd’s treatise on hats; to which is added, the whole process of hat-making (1819), 17; HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 873-5. The Whigs, however, became ‘very nervous about Petersfield’ at the 1832 general election, and on hearing of Jolliffe’s defeat by a single vote, it was reported that ‘the rejoicing at Brookes’s was almost as great as on the passing of the schedule, of which poor Jolliffe passed almost as the representative’.4Three Early Nineteenth Century Diaries (1952), ed. A. Aspinall, 287.

Jolliffe’s petition against his opponent’s return, which centred around the eligibility of ‘cricket-field’ voters created by his estranged former agent Cornthwaite Hector, went in his favour and he took his seat, 6 Mar. 1833.5Morning Chronicle, 7 Mar. 1833. The news was greeted by his friends in Petersfield with ‘bell ringing and dressing up the statue in the square’, but in the newly added districts of the borough ‘they refused to ring at all’ and ‘commenced ringing the bells backwards’.6Hampshire Telegraph, 11 Mar. 1833.

In his last parliament Jolliffe, who is not known to have spoken in debate, generally backed the Tory opposition, although he supported a radical motion for repeal of the house and window tax, 1 May 1833.7Morning Post, 2 May 1833.. He voted against currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, the secret ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, the lowering of corn duties, 7 Mar. 1834, and shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834, and divided for Lord Althorp’s plan to replace church rates with a central grant raised from a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834. He was in the minorities for repeal of the malt tax, 27 Feb. 1834, and Chandos’s motion for an address to the king protesting against agricultural distress, 11 July 1834. He brought up local petitions for the abolition of slavery and better observance of the sabbath, 17 Apr. 1833, and against the separation of church and state, 14 July 1834.8Standard, 17 Apr. 1833; Morning Chronicle, 28 Apr. 1834; Morning Chronicle, 15 July 1834.

At the 1835 general election he offered again for Petersfield, but after a bitter struggle against Hector was ousted by a clear margin.9Hampshire Telegraph, 5, 10 Jan. 1835. Shortly thereafter Jolliffe relinquished his political claims on the borough to his nephew Sir William, to whom he also ‘conveyed’ the bulk of his extensive Petersfield estates two years later.10Somerset RO, Hylton mss DD/HY/17, 37; H. G. H. Jolliffe, The Jolliffes of Staffordshire (1892), 225-27; J. Mylne and R. Craig, Reports of Cases Determined in the High Court of Chancery (1848), v. 168; PROB 11/1973/37. In 1839 he ‘wholly failed’ in a chancery case involving a tenant farmer whom he had tried to evict, following the production of evidence by Hector, with whom the family continued to vie for control of the representation until 1841.11Reports of Cases in Chancery, 167-77.

Jolliffe died in January 1843, leaving the Pall Mall residence where he had spent his declining years and the residue of his estate to Sir William. Stocks and shares were provided for his two illegitimate sons, Charles, aged 32, who inherited his Hylton estates in Cumberland and Durham, and George, aged 30, who received an annuity of £600.12Jolliffes of Staffordshire, 193, 226-7; PROB 11/1973/37; IR26/1644/28. His nephew eventually secured the peerage that he had coveted: an obituary recalled that Jolliffe had scorned the offer of a baronetcy from Lord Liverpool with the sarcastic reply, ‘“Your proposal, my lord, if acceded to, would only enable me to do by patent what I already practise as a gentleman — namely, walk out of a room after the very numerous tribe who have recently been selected as fit subjects for such a dignity!”’13Gent. Mag. (1843), i. 317.