TUDWAY, Robert Charles (1808-1855), of 7 Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, London, Mdx. and The Cedars, Wells, Som.

The Tudway family, formerly London merchants, had been established in Wells since the 17th century.2D. Morris, Thomas Hearne and his landscape (1989), 19-20; The Standard, 29 Oct. 1855. Tudway’s great-grandfather Charles Tudway, his great-uncle Clement Tudway and his father John Paine Tudway had served in turn as MPs for Wells from 1754 to 1830. The family had commercial interests in the West Indies from the late 17th century onwards and their sugar plantation of 1,096 acres at Parham Hill on the north coast of Antigua was the second largest on the island,3R.B. Sheridan, ‘The rise of a colonial gentry: a case study of Antigua’, Economic history review, 13 (1961), 348, 355; R.B. Sheridan, Sugar and slavery; an economic history of the British West Indies 1623-1775 (1974), 63; V.L. Oliver, History of the island of Antigua (1894-99), iii. 152-3, 379; J.R. Ward, ‘The profitability and viability of British West Indian plantation slaves 1807-1834’, Univ. of London Inst. of Commonwealth Studies Collected Seminar Papers 34, Caribbean societies, 2 (1985), 28. but they had been absentee landlords since 1732.4D. Morris, Thomas Hearne and his landscape (1989), 11, 19-20. When slavery was abolished they received compensation of £8,560 9s. 2d. for the loss of over 500 slaves.5PP 1837-38 (215), xlviii. 416; Oliver, History of the island of Antigua, iii. 308. Income from the Antigua estates enabled the family to acquire property, land and businesses in Somerset, at Wells and, just outside the city, at Dulcote, Walcombe and Wookey.6A.J. Scrase, ‘Working with British property records’, Power, profit and urban land, ed. F.-E. Eliassen and G.A. Ersland (1996), 20; D. Hicks, ‘Material improvements: the archaeology of estate landscapes in the British Leeward Islands, 1713-1838’, Estate landscapes, ed. J. Finch and K. Giles (2007), 219; W. Phelps, History and antiquities of Somersetshire (1836-39), ii. 25; London Gazette, 30 Aug. 1850; http://www.dulcote.com/webpages/mills.htm Tudway inherited the estates in Antigua and Somerset on his father’s death in 1835.

Tudway left Oxford without taking a degree and devoted himself to the management of his property and to country pursuits. He was a popular master of foxhounds and had a reputation as a good sportsman.7The sporting review, ed. by ‘Craven’ (1842), 362; A.F. Serrell, With hound and terrier in the field (1904), 24; The Times, 8 Nov. 1852. In 1846 he married Maria Catherine, the daughter of William Miles, M.P. for East Somerset.8John Bull, 7 Mar. 1846. In January 1846 he attended a large meeting of the Somerset gentry and farmers on agricultural protection and was described as ‘a gentleman of considerable fortune and high rank’.9The Standard, 17 Jan. 1846; Morning Post, 31 Jan. 1846. His name was mentioned as a possible candidate for Wells at the 1847 general election, but instead he nominated Richard Blakemore for re-election.10Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 15 July 1847; Bristol Mercury, 31 July 1847. He was again mooted as a candidate that December when the Liberal incumbent sought re-election on his appointment to office, but decided against a challenge.11The Standard, 22 Dec. 1847; The Times, 29 Dec. 1847. In 1850 he was a supporter of the Somerset County Protectionist Association and also signed the declaration against papal aggression at a county meeting.12Bristol Mercury, 4 May 1850, 30 Nov. 1850. When the sitting Conservative MP announced in April 1852 that he would retire at the dissolution, Tudway came forward, declaring that he was ‘generally disposed to support Lord Derby’s administration’. Although he ‘rejoiced that free trade has worked so well’, he believed that the agricultural interest had suffered, and was therefore ‘favourable to any measures by which the burdens on land could be relieved without abridging the comfort of the lower orders’.13Bristol Mercury, 3 Apr. 1852. He remained silent on the question of electoral reform, for which he was criticised.14Bristol Mercury, 22 May 1852. He was returned at the head of the poll that July. On 30 October, before the first meeting of the new Parliament, while he was out shooting at Butleigh his gun went off ‘from some unknown cause’, fatally wounding a local magistrate, Hungerford Colston of Lydford, which prompted the headline in The Standard, ‘A magistrate shot by a Member of Parliament’.15The Times, 2 Nov. 1852, 5 Nov. 1852; The Standard, 4 Nov. 1852; John Bull, 6 Nov. 1852. On his deathbed the victim had fully exonerated Tudway from all blame or negligence and the inquest returned a verdict of accidental death.16Bristol Mercury, 6 Nov. 1852; Bell’s Life in London, 7 Nov. 1852; The Times, 8 Nov. 1852.

Tudway’s conciliatory language on the free trade question in April and his statement in July raised doubts about his political allegiance. Some newspapers listed him as a Liberal-Conservative rather than a ministerialist,17The Examiner, 17 July 1852; Bell’s Life in London, 25 July 1852; Leeds Mercury, 31 July 1852; John Bull, 2 Aug. 1852, 4 Dec. 1852, 18 Dec. 1852. and he was described as ‘a Derbyite who has renounced protection’18Leeds Mercury, 7 Aug. 1852; Reynolds’s Newspaper, 8 Aug. 1852. and as ‘a supporter generally of Lord Derby’s government not opposed to free trade’.19Dod’s Parliamentary companion, 1852, 2nd ed. Although he was one of the 53 die-hards who voted against free trade, 26 Nov. 1852, he immediately wrote letters to the press saying that he had done this unintentionally because of his ‘inexperience in the mode of taking divisions in the House of Commons’.20The Times, 2 Dec. 1852; Bristol Mercury, 4 Dec. 1852. He voted with ministers when they were defeated on Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852.

A lax attender, Tudway is not known to have spoken in debate and one of his obituaries noted that he ‘had not taken any active or prominent part in Parliamentary business’.21Hardwicke’s annual biography for 1856, 114. He voted in only 37 out of 257 divisions in the 1853 session,22Bristol Mercury, 10 Sep. 1853. when he opposed the removal of Jewish disabilities, 24 Feb. and 11 Mar. 1853, and presented a petition on the subject.23Morning Post, 10 Mar. 1853. He also presented petitions in this Parliament on ocean penny postage, the savings banks bill, closing public houses on Sundays and the oaths bill.24Morning Chronicle, 2 July 1853; Daily News, 19 July 1853; Morning Post, 19 July 1853; The Times, 14 Mar. 1854; Morning Chronicle, 31 Mar. 1854. He was appointed to the Rye election committee but when he failed to attend one of its meetings the matter was raised in the House, 16 Mar. 1853.25PP 1852-53 (334) (493) (947), lxxxiii. 202, 205; 1852-53 (350), xviii. 388; 1852-53 (377-I), xviii. 396-9; Hansard, 16 Mar. 1853, vol. 125, c. 258; The Times, 3 Mar. 1853, 7 Mar. 1853, 19 Mar. 1853. He sat on private bill committees on railways in south Wales and the Bradford water works.26PP 1852-53 (944), lxxxiii. 74; PP 1854 (445), liii. 39. In November 1853 a public meeting in Wells on the ballot voted to send him a copy of their resolutions but he divided against the ballot, 13 June 1854, 22 May 1855.27Bristol Mercury, 12 Nov. 1853. He was in the majority against ministers in support of Roebuck’s motion for an inquiry into the conduct of the Crimean war, 29 Jan. 1855, and also supported Disraeli’s hostile motion, 25 May. His vote for Roebuck’s censure motion, 19 July 1855, appears to have been the last occasion on which he entered the division lobbies.

Tudway served regularly as a magistrate and on the grand jury in Somerset.28PP 1836 (583), xliii. 222; Bristol Mercury, 10 Aug. 1839, 10 Apr. 1841, 14 Aug. 1841, 7 Aug. 1852, 5 Aug. 1854, 4 Aug. 1855. He subscribed to the Wells Mechanics’ Institution, and supported the Wells Savings Bank and the building of the Somerset Central railway, which would run across his land.29Bristol Mercury, 11 Dec. 1852; PP 1852 (521), xxviii. 890; The Times, 19 Oct. 1855. In 1854 he chaired a lecture by the bishop of Bath and Wells on health and longevity.30John Bull, 18 Nov. 1854. In September 1855 he was afflicted by ‘an inflammation of the bronchial tubes or the larynx’, and died at his Wells residence the following month.31Bath Herald, cited in The Standard, 1 Oct. 1855; Gent. Mag. (1855), ii. 652. He was buried at the new cemetery in Wells on 26 October.32The Standard, 29 Oct. 1855. He was survived by his wife, who died in 1909,33Burke LG. and was succeeded by his elder son, Charles Clement Tudway (1846-1926), who married firstly Lady Edith Nelson, daughter of the 3rd Earl Nelson, and secondly Alice, half-sister of Sir Frederick Hervey-Bathurst, M.P. for South Wiltshire 1861-65.34Burke LG; Burke PB; The Times, 27 Nov. 1846; John Bull, 9 July 1870, 1 Sep. 1877, 12 Jan. 1884. Gent. Mag. (1852), ii. 652 states incorrectly that he ‘had no issue’. His younger son had died at the age of 2 in 1851.35Bristol Mercury, 10 Feb. 1849; The Times, 10 Dec. 1851; T. Serel, Historical notes on the Church of Saint Cuthbert in Wells (1875), 153. There are memorials to the family in St Cuthbert’s Church in Wells.36Serel, Historical notes on the Church of Saint Cuthbert, 94, 153.