MARRYAT, Joseph (1790-1876), of Wimbledon House, Surr. and 6 Richmond Terrace, Whitehall, Mdx.

Marryat had assumed control of his family’s London business interests, which included the West Indian mercantile house of Marryat and Sons, committee membership of Lloyd’s, and a banking interest in Kay, Price, Marryat and Coleman, following his father’s death in 1824. Two years later he had occupied his father’s former seat at Sandwich, which he continued to represent until 1835 as an independently-minded Member, variously described as ‘moderate reformer’ and ‘radical’.1Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1834), 141; Morning Post, 3 Jan. 1835.

A convert to the Grey ministry’s reform bill, Marryat had campaigned steadily in the unreformed Commons on behalf of the West India interest, including the planters of Trinidad, for whom he became an unpaid agent from 1830 before falling out with them in August 1832, following his decision to endorse the ministerial order of November 1831 ameliorating slavery conditions in the British colonies.2HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 353-55; N. Draper, The Price of Emancipation (2010), 20, 23, 26, 243, 250. He remained an official agent for Grenada, however, and at meetings of the West India proprietors in May and June 1833 urged the committee to accept the plan of emancipation put forward by Lord Howick and avoid precipitate collision over the terms of compensation.3Morning Post, 17 May, 25 June; The Standard, 28 May, 4 July 1833. Adopting a similarly mediatory tone in the Commons, 10 June 1833, he explained that he ‘heartily wished for emancipation, if it could be accomplished’, noting how ‘the question had formerly been taken up by a party careless and even reckless of what evils they might inflict’, but that it ‘now assumed a different aspect’ as ‘it was in the hands of a government responsible for its consequences’. However, he cautioned against immediate emancipation without measures to keep former slaves ‘attached to the soil’ and productive, citing the immorality, drunkenness, and housebreaking that had resulted from releases elsewhere and the ‘necessity of preparing the negro for freedom, by an intermediate state of constraint’. He also insisted that ‘no doubt could exist that, as between the British nation and the planter, full indemnity was justly due for any loss which might be occasioned by this measure’. He duly voted for a system of slave apprenticeships and against an amendment for immediate abolition that day.4Ipswich Journal, 15 June 1833. Speaking at another West India proprietors’ meeting, 5 July, he again urged restraint in the negotiations over the bill, reminding members that they had ‘pledged themselves to co-operate with the government’, and successfully defeated a resolution condemning the ministerial plan on a vote.5Morning Post, 6 July 1833. Back in the House, it was Marryat who moved the amendment delaying the start of apprenticeships from 1 Nov. 1833 to 1 June 1834 (subsequently modified to 1 Aug. 1834), which passed, 25 July 1833.6Hull Packet, 2 Aug. 1833. Following the implementation of emancipation on these terms the following year he and his brother Charles Marryat received compensation of £44,369 for 1,466 slaves held in Grenada, Jamaica, St Lucia, and Trinidad.7Data from Legacies of British Slave-Ownership Project, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/.

A fairly active attender, who served on the 1833 Lithlingow election committee, Marryat gave general support to the Whigs on most other issues, but was not beyond charting an independent course.8CJ, lxxxviii. 328. He was in the hostile minority of 23 ‘who usually vote with the ministry’ opposed to tithe payments being omitted from the Irish Coercion Act, 19 Mar. 1833, and voted for the Sabbath observance bill, 16 May 1833.9Standard, 20 Mar. 1833. He rubbed shoulders with radicals in supporting the abolition of naval impressment, 4 Mar. 1834, and an inquiry into the pension list, 6 May 1834, but steadily opposed the ballot and divided against Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, Hume’s motion for low fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834, repeal of the Septennial Act, 15 May 1834, and the abolition of university tests, 20 June, 28 July 1834. A steady campaigner on behalf of the Deal pilots, he regularly forwarded letters and memorials about the declining state of their boats to Trinity House, and in 1833 endorsed the boatmen’s request for relief from distress at a sub-committee of the shipowners’ society.10PP 1833 (636), vii. 567-8 After serving on that year’s select committees on channel fishing and the cinque ports he appears to have entertained hopes of succeeding in his father’s footsteps to the chairmanship of Lloyd’s, but this was frustrated in December 1833 by the appearance of another contender.11CJ, lxxxviii. 477, 485; Morning Post, 19 Dec. 1833.

Welcoming an abortive labour rate bill designed to address agricultural distress, 5 Aug. 1833, Marryat admitted that it was as ‘wrong to interfere between the farmer and the labourer as it would be to say to a manufacturer how many men he should employ’, but defended it ‘as a temporary palliative to an evil to which he should hope to see a more general and permanent remedy applied’. He was absent from the ensuing division on the issue, however. On 14 July 1834 he brought up a petition from the London Dock company against the London dock bill.12Standard, 18 Oct. 1833; Morning Post, 15 July 1834. Giving evidence to the inquiry on the postal service with France, he cautioned against any reform which would not enable the costs of letters in transit to be passed to the West Indies, 8 Nov. 1834.13PP 1835 (416), xlviii. 277.

At that year’s unexpected dissolution Marryat initially stood for re-election at Sandwich, but with the substantial admiralty influence now in Conservative hands, he withdrew before the poll.14The Times, 1 Dec.; Standard, 26 Dec. 1834; N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel (1953), 458. He is not known to have sought a return to the Commons. He remained at his West Indian mercantile house until retiring in June 1849 and a partner in Price, Marryat and Sons, based at 3 King William Street, until the bank ceased payments in 1866. He also acquired industrial interests in Breconshire, where he was listed as a banker and ironworks proprietor living at Ystradglynais in 1861. A well-respected expert on ceramics, his Collections Towards a History appeared in 1850 and was followed by three editions of a History of Pottery and Porcelain, Medieval and Modern. He died childless at 61 Warwick Street, Pimlico in September 1876, leaving all his property, sworn under £4,000, to his wife and sole executrix.15HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 355; Data from Legacies of British Slave ownership.