MOSLEY, Sir Sir Oswald (1785-1871), of Rolleston Hall, near Burton-on-Trent, Staffordshire

A Staffordshire country gentleman, Mosley had voted with the Whig opposition in his three brief stints in the unreformed Parliament.1HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 639-40. He was described as a ‘blustering reformer’ shortly before his election for North Staffordshire at the 1832 general election, but he later found Peel’s moderate Conservatism attractive.2Dyott’s diary: a selection from the diary of William Dyott, 1781-1845, ed. R.W. Jeffrey (1907), ii. 117 (25 Oct. 1831). His ambiguous position as a ‘three-quarter Conservative’ or ‘half Tory, half Whig’ contributed to his defeat in 1837.3‘A Conservative’, letter, Morning Post, 30 June 1837; The Standard, 27 July 1837. A devout Christian, Mosley helped Sir Andrew Agnew bring in bills to enforce a strict observance of the Sabbath in 1834 and 1836, neither of which progressed beyond a first reading. In 1837 he declared that through his position as chairman of the Staffordshire quarter-sessions ‘he had learnt that Sabbath-breaking was the origin of almost all other crimes’.4Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837. Writing of his unsuccessful initiatives in a later memoir, he noted:

upon none of these occasions was he enabled to effect the good which he had eagerly expected as a result of his pursuits, and with the single exception of having been thereby introduced to many talented, and to a few pious men, he found that the rest of his anticipations ended in nothing but vanity and vexation of spirit.5Sir O. Mosley, Family memoirs (1849), 75-6.

The Mosley family owned land in Staffordshire and Lancashire, the latter including the manor of Manchester which they had acquired in the late sixteenth century.6Mosley, Family memoirs, 7-8. In 1779 the estates passed to Mosley’s grandfather John Parker Mosley, who became 1st baronet after the family’s title was revived in 1781.7Ibid., 49-54. An orphan at a young age, Mosley was raised by his pious grandfather who exerted a profound influence on him.8Ibid., 68-70. He later wrote that ‘I was indebted to my excellent grandfather for those early religious impressions which have, by the grace of God, brought peace to my soul under all the changes and trials of life’.9Ibid., 71. An Evangelical, Mosley followed his grandfather’s Sabbatarianism and later commented severely on the fashionable culture of Bath, where the family spent the winter months.10Ibid., 70-2. Mosley succeeded his grandfather in 1798, and represented Portarlington, 1806-7, Winchelsea, 1807-12, and Midhurst, 1817-18.

Mosley did not seek a return to Parliament until offering for the new constituency of North Staffordshire at the 1832 general election. A ‘staunch reformer’, he declared support for retrenchment, reform of the church and tithes, a revision of the corn laws and the immediate abolition of slavery.11Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832. An observer described his nomination speech as ‘prosey, lengthy and violent and extremely tiresome’, but Mosley topped the poll.12Dyott’s diary, ii. 149 (13 Dec. 1832). Mosley reluctantly voted against the government in favour of Hume’s motion for retrenchment of pensions and sinecures, 14 Feb. 1833, and the following year served on the inquiry which called for a general cull of sinecures.13Hansard, 14 Feb. 1833, vol. 15, c. 696; PP 1834 (519), v. 340. He was vocal in his opposition to Jewish emancipation, which he argued would undermine the Christian character of Parliament, 22 May 1833.14Hansard, 22 May 1833, vol. 18, cc. 56-7. He later proposed that Jews be granted the same privileges as Roman Catholics, except the right to sit in the House, but this was rejected 23-118, 26 June 1833. He did, however, support concessions to Dissenters, such as their admission to universities and Althorp’s scheme to relieve them from paying church rates, 17, 21 Apr. 1834. In the same month he seconded Sir Andrew Agnew’s bill for a strict observance of the Sabbath which he complained had been misconstrued as an attack on the poor’s leisure activities, 30 Apr. 1834.15Hansard, 30 Apr. 1834, vol. 23, cc. 314-16. However, the bill was denied a second reading by 161 votes to 125.16Ibid., cc. 356-7. An active committee man, Mosley served on inquiries on Irish vagrants, public walks and education in 1833 and 1834.17PP 1833 (394), xvi. 324-7 (Irish vagrants); 1833 (448), xv. 338, 345-7 (public walks); 1834 (572), ix. 1, 3. More important was the committee on county rates that recommended that financial committees be established in every county to produce regular accounts and provide more effective control of expenditure by magistrates.18PP 1834 (542), xiv. 2-3, 12.

After the dismissal of Melbourne’s government in November 1834, Mosley was one of a number of Staffordshire Reformers who gravitated towards Peel’s Conservative party. Indeed Josiah Clement Wedgwood, founder of the History of Parliament, has written that ‘this somewhat unknown baronet … tried to form a party of dissident Whigs to support Peel’.19J.C. Wedgwood, Staffordshire parliamentary history (1934), iii. 79. Before the 1835 general election it was said that Mosley ‘will not push Reform principles farther than Lord Stanley did’ and others described him as a ‘Conservative Whig’.20Morning Post, 7, 10 Jan. 1835. He was returned unopposed after declaring that he would give no factious opposition to Peel’s government.21Staffordshire Advertiser, 17 Jan. 1835. Mosley voted for Abercromby for the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, but was listed by Stanley as one of the Derby dilly, 23 Feb. 1835, and voted with the Conservatives on the address and against Russell’s Irish church motion, 26 Feb. 1835, 2 Apr. 1835.22R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative party, 1830-1867 (1978), 376. The Whig magnate Thomas William Anson, 1st earl of Lichfield, was so annoyed with the votes of Mosley and his colleague Edward Buller that he wrote that ‘if a Tory comes forward, I would split with him to turn them out; words cannot express my contemptible opinion of their conduct’.23Lord Lichfield to Edward John Littleton, Feb. 1835, Staffs. RO, D260, qu. in G.B. Kent, ‘The beginnings of party political organisation in Staffordshire, 1832-41’, North Staffordshire Journal of Field Studies, 1 (1961), 86-100 (at 93). In the same session Mosley served on inquiries on the Weights and Measures Act, education and colonial sinecures, which combined with his magisterial duties seems to have affected his health.24PP 1835 (292), xviii. 490 (Weights and Measures Act); 1835 (465), vii. 764 (education); 1835 (507), xviii. 442 (sinecures). After resigning as chairman of Staffordshire quarter-sessions in April 1835, one observer remarked that Mosley ‘looked like a ghost’.25Dyott’s diary, ii. 195 (8 Apr. 1835).

Before the 1836 session, local Conservatives considered forming a tacit alliance with Mosley, which ultimately came to nothing.26Ibid., 221-2 (6 Jan. 1836). His party allegiance remained unclear and Conservatives complained that he was ‘unfortunately but an indifferent supporter’.27‘A Conservative’, letter, Morning Post, 30 June 1837. Mosley opposed the Whig government’s motion on the Irish church and tithes, 3 June 1836, but supported the government in its battle with the Lords over the Irish municipal corporations bill, 10 June 1836. Mosley again co-sponsored Agnew’s Sabbatarian bill and acted as a teller in the division on its first reading, 21 Apr. 1836. The following year, he moved for and served on a select committee that endorsed the claim of the Fourdrinier brothers for compensation for their financial losses in developing ground-breaking paper-making machinery.28PP 1837 (351), xx. 36, 38; 1837 (405), xx. 91-4.

At the 1837 general election Mosley declared that he was ‘a Reformer on principle’ but would ‘not aid the work of destruction’.29Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837. He tried to curry favour with Conservatives by playing up his votes against Irish church appropriation and Spring Rice’s 1837 proposal to replace church rates with pew rents.30Ibid. However, he paid the price for his ambiguous party allegiance and was relegated to third by a Conservative and a Liberal. In defeat he declared that he would ‘take my leave of political cares’. The Conservative MP for Liverpool, Lord Sandon, paid tribute to the baronet, who had ‘invariably displayed the utmost zeal, and bestowed the closest attention, in the discharge of his important duties’. However, a Liberal clergyman, J.P. Jones, of Alston, described him as ‘a politician of dubious character’.31Staffordshire Advertiser, 5 Aug. 1837.

After protracted negotiations, Mosley sold his manorial rights at Manchester to the town council in 1845 for £250,000, the transfer made by a deed dated 5 May 1846.32Mosley, Family memoirs, 77; Manchester Times, 3 June 1871. After his retirement he wrote a number of books on nature and antiquarian studies, including Gleanings on horticulture (1851) and The natural history of Tutbury (1863).33F. Boase, Modern English biography (1897), ii. 998-9; The Standard, 29 May 1871. At the 1857 general election he led the abortive attempt to invite the Liberal Conservative Lord Sandon, the son of his former admirer, to stand for North Staffordshire.34The Times, 16 Mar. 1857.

On Mosley’s death in 1871, the title, Rolleston Hall estate and personalty of £350,000 passed to his eldest surviving son Sir Tonman Mosley, 3rd baronet (1813-90).35Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 1432; Calendar of Grants of Probate and Letters of Administration (1871), 92. Mosley’s great-great-grandson, Sir Oswald Ernest Mosley, 6th baronet (1896-1980), was Conservative, Independent and then Labour MP for Harrow, 1918-24, Labour MP for Smethwick, 1926-31, and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, 1929-30. He later led the British Union of Fascists, which he founded in 1932.36R. Skidelsky, ‘Mosley, Sir Oswald Ernest, sixth baronet (1896-1980)’, www.oxforddnb.com.