TAYLOUR, Thomas, earl of Bective (1822-1894), of 24 Grafton Street, London and Underley Hall, Kirby Lonsdale, Westmorland

Bective was the eldest son of Thomas Taylour, earl of Bective, who had represented county Meath from 1812 until he succeeded to the Irish marquessate of Headfort in 1829. In 1831 the Grey ministry had given him a United Kingdom peerage as Baron Kenlis.1HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 378-9. In 1842 Bective married Amelia, the daughter and heir of William Thompson, then Conservative member for Westmorland, and owner of the vast estates at Underley, in Kirby Lonsdale.2R.S. Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs from the Restoration to the Reform Bill of 1867 (1871), 335. Following his father-in-law’s death in March 1854, Bective succeeded to the estates at Underley Hall, where he ‘played a large part in county life and ceremonial’ events.3J.D. Marshall and J.K. Walton, The Lake Counties from 1830 to the mid-twentieth century (1981), 106-8. He was also provincial grand master of the freemasons in Cumberland and Westmorland.4Freemason’s magazine (1871), 312.

In April 1854 Bective was brought forward by the Lowther interest for the vacancy at Westmorland created by Thompson’s death. Believing that ‘religion and loyalty are identical with the best interests of the people’, he declared that he would ‘to the best of my ability support Conservative policy’, but he was ‘not anxious to pledge [himself] in any way’.5Westmorland Gazette, 8 Apr. 1854. Although he admitted that he was ‘very inadequate in experience and knowledge of business to follow my late lamented relative’, his new position as a local landowner coupled with the support of the dominant Lowther interest made his position unassailable and he was returned without opposition.6Ibid. He was re-elected for Westmorland without a contest on four further occasions.

Bective, who ‘did not profess to be a speaker in the House of Commons’, made no known contributions to debate and attended only infrequently.7Westmorland Gazette, 4 Apr. 1857. In the 1856 session Bective was present for only 15 out of 198 divisions: J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 21. He is not known to have served on any select committees. He could be relied upon, however, to back the Conservatives on most major issues. He voted for Roebuck’s motion for an inquiry into the condition of the army, 29 Jan. 1855, Disraeli’s motion criticising the Crimean War, 25 May 1855, and Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet, 19 July 1855, though in 1857, he conceded that Palmerston had ‘prosecuted the war with a vigour worthy of the energetic character of that great man’.8Westmorland Gazette, 4 Apr. 1857. Although his father had been an unwavering supporter of Catholic claims, Bective opposed the Maynooth grant, 19 Feb. 1857, reflecting the Lowther family’s historic mistrust of popery. He voted for Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, explaining at the 1857 general election that Sir John Bowring, the governor of Hong Kong who had authorised the bombardment of the port in response to Chinese soldiers boarding a British vessel, had acted ‘for the sole purpose of gratifying his own vanity’.9Ibid.

Bective was in the majority against Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, which caused the collapse of the Liberal government, and backed the short-lived Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859. At the subsequent general election, he argued that as any franchise extension should include only those whose intelligence was a ‘fair presumption’, the Conservative government’s bill was the only measure ‘which could meet the present difficulties, and it was one which all men ought to have approved of’.10Carlisle Journal, 3 May. 1859. Unsurprisingly, he voted against Locke King’s county franchise bill, 13 Mar. 1861, and Baines’s borough franchise bill, 11 May 1864. He opposed church rate abolition, 14 May 1862, and the tests abolition (Oxford) bill, 16 Mar. 1864. He backed Disraeli’s censure of government policy on the Danish war, 8 July 1864.

Justifying his votes at the 1865 general election, Bective claimed that Baines’s bill would have led to the ‘degrading’ position of ‘universal suffrage’ and that church rate abolition was ‘the first step to attack the root of the established church in this country’.11Ibid., 18 July 1865. He voted against the Liberal government’s reform bill, 18 June 1866, and followed Disraeli into the division lobby on the major clauses of the Derby ministry’s representation of the people bill. He voted against Gladstone’s resolution on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868.

Re-elected in 1868, Bective continued to oppose the disestablishment of the Irish church, considering it ‘the first step towards the subversion and the overthrow of the Church of England’.12M. Stenton, Who’s who of British Members of Parliament, vol. I, 1832-1885 (1976), 27. He succeeded his father to the Irish marquessate of Headfort and to the Lords as Baron Kenlis in December 1870.

Bective died at his London residence in Belgrave Square in July 1894, having been ill for three months, ‘suffering from an affection of the heart and lungs’.13Yorkshire Herald, 23 July 1894. His effects were valued at £77,655 15s. 11d.14England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 26 Nov. 1894. He was succeeded by his son from his second marriage, Geoffrey Thomas; his eldest surviving son from his first marriage, Thomas Taylour, earl of Bective, MP for Westmorland 1871-1885 and Kendal 1885-1892, having predeceased him by seven months.