TOLLEMACHE, Algernon Gray (1805-1892), of 1 Hyde Park Place, London and Ham House, Richmond, Surrey

Tollemache, or Talmash, whose party allegiance was ambiguous, sat for five years as MP for Grantham before emigrating to New Zealand, where he amassed an immense fortune in land speculation, for which he is best known. He was the youngest son of Sir William Manners, MP for Ilchester, 1803-4 and 1806-7, who, following the death without issue of his uncle, Wilbraham Tollemache, 6^th earl of Dysart, in 1821, was styled Lord Huntingtower and took the name Tollemache in lieu of Manners.1HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 534-6. Huntingtower, a Tory ‘notorious for his occasional eccentricities’, was lord of the manor of Grantham and head of the local ‘Blue’ party.2Gent. Mag. (1833), i. 370. He took an active interest in the borough’s politics, securing the return of Tollemache’s elder brother, James Frederick, in 1826. In 1831 Algernon and his brother Felix were brought forward for Grantham by their father in the name of ‘King William and Reform’, but their apparent conversion to the cause failed to convince the electors and they were defeated in third and fourth place respectively.3HP Commons, 1820-32, vii. 462-3.

At the 1832 general election Tollemache was again brought forward on his father’s interest for Grantham. Although nominally standing as a Conservative, his election speeches gave little away in terms of party allegiance. He called for the abolition of slavery, but insisted that ‘the first approach to this desirable consummation was an honest discharge of the claims of the planters’, and he gave his support for church reform, ‘particularly pluralities’, although he declared that he would never ‘agree to any appropriation of one shilling’.4Morning Post, 12 Dec. 1832. He was comfortably elected at the top of the poll.

Like his brothers, Tollemache is not known to have spoken in debate, and his infrequent attendance in his first Parliament makes it difficult to discern his party loyalties. He backed Grey’s administration on Irish coercion, 11 Mar. 1833, but was in the minorities for scrutiny of the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834, and repeal of the malt tax, 27 Feb. 1834. He is not known to have sat on any select committees.

Declaring that he ‘pledged himself to support measures not men’, Tollemache’s speeches at the 1835 general election did little to clarify his position. At the hustings, he merely reiterated his wish to abolish church pluralities whilst resolutely opposing appropriation of its revenues.5Morning Post, 8 Jan. 1835. Re-elected by a considerable margin, the Examiner listed him as one of the Commons’ ‘doubtful men’:

We are reluctant to give Peel the benefit of Mr Talmash’s vote, which has generally been that of a Reformer; and yet we cannot rely on it for the purposes of opposition.6Examiner, 8 Feb. 1835.

The 1835 Parliamentary Test Book described Tollemache as a ‘Reformer’, while Dod’s 1836 Parliamentary Companion listed him as a ‘moderate reformer.7The Parliamentary test book (1835), 158; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 167. However, Dod’s electoral facts, impartially stated, ed. H.J. Hanham (1972), 129, lists him as a ‘Conservative’. However, his votes in 1835 made his Conservative loyalties clear. He backed Peel on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and paired off against Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835. Thereafter he generally followed Peel into the division lobby, and voted against Irish municipal reform, 28 Mar. 1836, and the Irish tithes and church bill, 3 June 1836. He opposed the ballot, 7 Mar. 1837. At the dissolution in 1837 he announced his intention not to seek re-election, and made way for his brother, Frederick James.8Stamford Mercury, 7 July 1837.

Following his retirement from the Commons, Tollemache focused his energies on investing in New Zealand Company settlements. A significant shareholder in the company, he purchased land in Wellington in 1839, and in 1841 sponsored a group of seven labourers from his Ham estates in Surrey to emigrate there.9S. Middleton, ‘The seven servants of Ham: labourers’ letters from Wellington in the New Zealand Journal, 1840-1845’, New Zealand Journal of History, 44, 1 (2010), 62; E. Pritchard, The 1841 Emigrants from Ham to New Zealand sponsored by Algernon Tollemache of Ham House (2003). In April 1844, with the New Zealand Company’s financial position deteriorating following violent clashes between Maori and settlers, he was part of a delegation of shareholders who petitioned the government to ‘redress the wrongs inflicted on the Company’.10The Times, 27 Apr. 1844. Although the Company never recovered, Tollemache had accumulated significant wealth by lending money to settlers. In 1849 he finally moved to New Zealand where, from his base in Wellington, he made a further fortune in land speculation. By the time he left in 1855 he had investments totalling at least £250,000 and was acknowledged as ‘indisputably the leader’ of the large group of aristocratic British rentiers who had settled in the country.11J. Belich, Making peoples: a history of the new Zealanders, from Polynesian settlement to the end of the nineteenth century (2001), 357.

Tollemache died without issue at Wickhouse, his residence in Richmond Hill, Surrey, in January 1892, following a bout of pneumonia.12The Times, 18 Jan. 1892; Lincolnshire Chronicle, 22 Jan. 1892. His effects, which were valued at £815,175 4s. 1d., were left to his niece Ada, Lady Sudely, daughter of his brother Frederick.13England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 12 Feb. 1872.