DIVETT, Edward (1797-1864), of Bystock, Exmouth, Devon; 14 King Street, St. James’s, London and 97 Eaton Square, London

Divett represented Exeter with an ‘unwearied regard for the interests of his constituency’ for over three decades.1Woolmer’s Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 27 July 1864. ‘Tall, commanding, magnanimous and energetic’, the local Liberal Association noted that he retained his seat ‘not by the strength of the Liberal party, but by the force of his own personal character’.2R. S. Lambert, The Cobbett of the West: A Study of Thomas Latimer (1939), 202; Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 27 Aug. 1862. As well as being a ‘conscientious’ representative, he paid close attention to the development of South Australia, lobbying successive ministries on behalf of the nascent colony and serving as chairman of the South Australia Company, in which he had a private stake. He is now regarded as an important figure in that colony’s early settlement.3A Memorial Sketch: Mr Edward Divett MP, in His Relations with the Australian Colonies (c. 1864), passim; D. Pike, Paradise of Dissent. South Australia 1829-1857 (1968), 214-5, 378, 411, 416.

Divett’s father and namesake came from a well-established Quaker family of London leather and wool merchants based in West Smithfield. His first cousin was Thomas Divett, who inherited the business in 1790, and later bought his way into Parliament, sitting for the pocket boroughs of Gatton, 1820-26, and Lymington, 1827-28.4See HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 924-5. By the 1780s Divett’s father was a partner in Doxat and Divett, a prosperous London bank and silk merchants, which in 1809 imported over half the nation’s foreign silk.5The Tradesman (1809), ii. 557. Like other younger members of the Divett family he drifted apart from the Quakers and his marriage to Divett’s mother, a banking heiress, took place in a church.6Prob. 11/2114, will of Mary Divett, 16 Nov. 1839. In 1801 the couple purchased a 250 acre estate near Exmouth, complete with a ‘comfortable mansion’, which became the family home.7Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 22 Jan., 26 Mar., 2 Apr. 1801.

Divett inherited Bystock on the death of his father in 1819, before which he appears to have joined him in business.8Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 23 Sept. 1819; European Magazine and London Review (1820), 275. Thereafter he served as a county magistrate and deputy lieutenant and was also active in local insurance and banking concerns, including the Devon and Exeter Savings Bank, of which he was a trustee.9Morning Post, 11 Mar. 1822; Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 3 Oct. 1822; Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 16 Feb. 1828; Western Times, 3 Apr. 1830. In 1830 Divett and his brother-in-law Thomas Buller, cousin of the Exeter MP James Wentworth Buller, attended the victory dinner for the newly elected Whig MP for Devon Viscount Ebrington, at which Divett spoke.10Western Times, 11 Sept. 1830. At the following year’s general election Thomas Buller was instrumental in arranging for Divett to stand as a supporter of the Grey ministry’s reform bill in Exeter, where he was defeated in third place.11HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 273-5. Persuaded to offer again following the passage of the Reform Act, and visited by Ebrington and Lord John Russell at Bystock in September 1832, Divett came forward as an advanced reformer at the 1832 election, citing his support for retrenchment and reduced taxation. Returned in second place, he was successively re-elected on seven more occasions.12Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 8 Sept.; Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 13 Dec. 1832.

A regular attender, who made at least 120 known speeches in the Commons, Divett was among the ‘considerable number’ of advanced reformers who met to establish the Reform Association to promote Liberal registration activity in May 1835.13The Times, 22, 25 May 1835. The following year he was one of 35 MPs (along with Joseph Hume and Sir William Molesworth) appointed to the founding committee of the Reform Club.14Reform Club Archives, memo on founding of Reform Club, 6 Feb. 1836. By 1838 he was listed by one parliamentary guide as a member of the ‘extreme Liberal party’, who had supported ‘nearly every popular motion’.15The Assembled Commons (1838), 56. His voting record, which included steady support for the secret ballot, shorter parliaments, retrenchment and most radical causes, amply bears out this description, but he continued to be regarded as a Whig by many commentators and support many of their measures.16See, for example, his entries in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, passim. He lost little time in making his maiden speech, 18 Mar. 1833, clashing with the Irish agitator Daniel O’Connell for holding up the Whig ministry’s Irish coercion bill, a regrettable ‘necessity’, when there were so many ‘other great questions of public interest’. He was also soon at loggerheads with the currency and banking reformer Thomas Attwood, saying that he ‘felt it to be his duty to protest against his doctrines, for views more mischievous never were promulgated by any individual’, 24 May 1833. He was in the majority against Attwood’s motion to consider the universal suffrage petition of the Chartists in 1839. A vociferous presenter of petitions himself, usually on behalf of his constituents, he also served on more than fifty committees, frequently as chairman.17Illustrated London News, 6 Aug. 1864.

Divett, perhaps mindful of his own family’s religious heritage, was especially prominent in the campaign to relieve Dissenters of their grievances. A year after entering Parliament he introduced a motion against the compulsory payment of church rates, which prompted the Whig ministry to adopt their own measure, and throughout his career he continued to speak and divide steadily for the abolition of ‘this monstrous tax’.18Hansard, 18 Mar. 1834, vol. 22, c. 381. See also J. Coohill, Ideas of the Liberal Party: Perceptions, Agendas and Liberal Politics in the House of Commons, 1832-52 (2011), 137-9. He regularly called for Dissenters to have the right to enter universities and backed their demands for state schools to be non-denominational, insisting that ‘we will have education but we will not have sectarian education’.19Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 13 May 1852. Significantly, however, he broke with many Nonconformists on the issue of state support for the Irish Catholic seminary at Maynooth, voting for Peel’s controversial bill to make its funding permanent in 1845 on the grounds that it improved the education of priests and ‘disassociated them from agitators’.20R. D. Floyd, Church, Chapel and Party: Religious Dissent and Political Modernization in Nineteenth Century England (2008), 135. He also had no qualms about extending civil liberties to Jews, urging that they be allowed to ‘subscribe to all forms of public office’, 31 Mar. 1841, and voting accordingly.

Divett’s commitment to other ‘causes of civil and religious liberty’, a phrase he used when addressing the North Devon Grand Reform Festival in 1837, included support for the abolition of slavery, ending the use of capital punishment, and allowing women to hear debates in parliament.21Morning Chronicle, 16 Sept. 1837. In 1836 he advocated a radical overhaul of the divorce laws and the establishment of a separate divorce court, ‘easily accessible to all parties where rich and poor could meet on equal terms’.22Hansard, 22 Apr. 1836, vol. 33, c. 116. However, he later became a determined opponent of the Marriage Law Reform Association’s campaign to legalise marriage with a dead wife’s sister, which he believed ‘was fraught with danger’ and ‘would produce the most melancholy moral and social evils in every English home’. He particularly criticised the Association’s promotion of such marriages abroad, which had led to the ‘bastardization’ of many children.23Hansard, 23 Mar. 1858, vol. 149, cc. 608-11. Divett’s own marriage to a ‘very wealthy’ heiress, who brought a fortune of £44,000, took place in 1836 following a courtship facilitated by Lady Charlotte Guest, the wife of Divett’s close friend Sir Josiah Guest, MP for Merthyr.24Sherbourne Mercury, 13 June 1836; Devon RO, 4770M-O/T/12; NLW, unpubl. journals of Lady Charlotte Guest, passim. Two years later Divett also became Guest’s business advisor.

Divett was also a fierce advocate of free trade ‘in the fullest meaning of the term’ and spoke and voted regularly against the protective duties on corn from 1833 onwards.25Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 26 Dec. 1833. In October 1834 he and Thomas Buller toured a number of industrial sites around the country, including the vast ironworks at Dowlais owned by Guest.26Exmouth Library, T. to A. Buller, 22 Oct. 1834. Divett’s vision, as expressed at a free trade demonstration in 1849, was for ‘England to be a great workshop’, which it could never become ‘if the necessities of life especially food are not cheap’.27 Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 8 Feb. 1849. He of course voted with the bulk of his party in favour of Peel’s repeal of the corn laws in 1846. However, he then differed with the Liberal leadership about opposing Peel’s renewal of the Irish coercion bill, acting as the ’head of the party’ of Liberal dissidents who threatened to break ranks on the issue. When it came to this crucial vote that ended Peel’s premiership the following month, however, he abstained.28Wimborne mss, 15 June 1846. We are indebted to Lord Rowlands CBE for providing access to his transcripts of Lady Charlotte Guest’s journals, based on those in the possession of Lord Wimborne at Ashby St. Ledger.

Significantly, it was not just the price of food that concerned him. Divett wanted trade with China and the East Indies to be opened up and the duties on imports from the colonies to be reduced.29Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 26 Dec. 1833. He welcomed the repeal of navigation laws and keenly supported railway development, acting as the director of a number of railway companies, including the Bristol and Exeter railway.30Morning Chronicle, 3 May 1844, report on the opening of the Bristol and Exeter Railway. Divett also spoke on railways in the House: 11 Mar. 1840, 6 Feb. 1845, 20 May 1847, 3 Dec. 1847, 4 Sept. 1857. He also resisted state interference in private enterprise, voting steadily against the Factory Acts, and objected to the public health bill of 1848 on the grounds that it was ‘imbued … with an objectionable assumption of power by the government … Electors did not object to sanitary improvement, but they did not choose to be ordered how to set about it’.31Hansard, 9 May 1848, vol. 98, c. 724.

From 1840 onwards many of Divett’s contributions in the Commons reflected his interest in South Australia, a non-convict colony founded to be free from political patronage and the established church.32See Pike, Paradise of Dissent, passim. Following the lead of Edward Gibbon Wakefield and Charles Buller, he had become an early proponent of the need for emigration, which he saw as a solution to overpopulation and poverty.33 Memorial Sketch, 4. He was a trustee and shareholder of the South Australia Company, a joint-stock company established in 1836 to oversee settlement and allocate land, of which he became chairman in 1839.34Report of 3rd AGM of the South Australian Company: Morning Chronicle, 3 July 1839. He was also on the first board of directors of the South Australian Banking Company created in 1841, which he chaired from 1848 until his death.35Report of 7th AGM of South Australian Banking Company: Morning Chronicle, 24 June 1848.

Divett’s involvement in the colony began at a time when the ill-defined divisions of power between the colonial office in London and the board of colonisation commissioners in South Australia were presenting difficulties. He ‘counselled perseverance’ and ‘by assiduous attention and study of the complications which had arisen from divided authority, helped to bring that amount of government interference necessary alike for financial purposes and restoring regularity’.36Memorial Sketch, 4-5.

Speaking in committee on the South Australian Acts, 15 Mar. 1841, Divett supported a loan guarantee of £210,000 from the government to South Australia, insisting that past investment had been good and that the House underestimated the resources of the colony, which included land ‘of the highest quality and advantageous for sheep farming’.37Hansard, 15 Mar. 1841, vol. 57, c. 281. A year later, when discussions focused on the better government and management of South Australia, he successfully resisted attempts to pass any measure that did not contain a clause keeping the colony ‘free of convictism’.38Hansard, 5 July 1842, vol. 64, c. 997; Memorial Sketch, 5. By 1844 he was pressing for lower import duties on Australian wheat coming into England: he used the argument that Canada had recently gained this concession.39The Maitland Mercury, 29 June 1844, reported Divett chairing a special meeting of the South Australian Society to formulate a petition on the issue, 21 Feb 1844.

Divett spoke several times in the Commons about the legislation granting responsible government to Australia and successfully lobbied for South Australia to retain its independent identity, particularly in relation to New South Wales. On 22 April 1850, for instance, he warned that any federal assembly would be ‘inoperative as the outer colonies did not want the powerful legislature of Sydney to override them’, adding that ‘they were disposed to draw their connection closer with the mother country rather than with each other‘.40Hansard, 22 Apr. 1850, vol. 110, c. 641. He was also active in the drive for better communications between Australia and England and joined a committee formed at Willis’s rooms to urge the introduction of steam vessels, 27 June 1849.41Morning Chronicle, 30 June 1849. Divett did not let the issue lie and on 20 Mar. 1850 he, along with others including Molesworth, led a deputation to the colonial secretary Grey, who acknowledged the matter’s importance.42Morning Chronicle, 20 Mar. 1850. A few days later another deputation, again including Divett, had an interview with Sir John Hobhouse at the board of control.43Morning Chronicle, 13 Apr. 1850. On 25 July Divett complained to the House that the East India Company was a ‘stumbling block to speedy communications with the Australian colonies’,44Hansard, 25 July 1850, vol. 113, c. 251. and he subsequently accused the Company of ‘throwing obstacles in the way’.45Hansard, 27 Mar. 1851, vol. 115, c. 657. He remained vigilant following the establishment of steam services, on 1 Dec. 1852 noting that ‘from the time that the Australian Royal Steamer Company started operating there were complaints against their management’, and insisting that ‘it was the duty of the admiralty to secure the safe and rapid transit of mail and passengers’.46Hansard, 1 Dec. 1852, vol. 123, c. 815.

Divett was an increasingly lax attender by the 1850s, being present for 78 out of 257 divisions in the 1853 session and just 21 out of 198 in 1856.47Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 5. He was, however, in his place to support Palmerston’s ministry against the critical divisions of Disraeli and Roebuck on the conduct of the Crimean war, 25 May, 19 July 1855, and also rallied to the premier on Cobden’s censure motion on the Canton question, 3 Mar. 1857, and the conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858. He divided against the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.

In 1860 it was rumoured that Divett, a widower since 1856, would retire from politics on account of failing health, but he continued to represent Exeter until his death following a long illness in July 1864.48The Times, 12 Sept. 1860; E. H. Coleridge, Life and Correspondence of John Duke: Lord Coleridge, Lord Chief Justice of England, 2 vols. (1904), ii. 36. His eldest son Edward Ross Divett (1837-1922), a Cambridge educated barrister, may have already been provided for, since the Bystock estate passed into the hands of trustees acting for his orphaned younger children, on whose behalf it was eventually sold from 1871-2.49Devon RO, 2798Z/T/1-4. In keeping with his wishes Divett’s funeral was conducted ‘without ostentation’.50Will of Edward Divett, 17 Oct 1863. His name lives on in Adelaide, where there is a Divett Street as well as a Divett Chambers and Divett Place.