BULLER (AFTERWARDS MANNINGHAM-BULLER), Edward (1800-1882), of Dilhorne Hall, near Cheadle, Staffordshire

‘A consistent politician of the old Liberal stamp’, Buller, a country gentleman and county member, offered staunch support to successive Whig and Liberal governments.1Birmingham Daily Post, 26 Sept. 1882. He was a strong advocate of the new poor law, which he described as ‘one of the most valuable Acts which a liberal government had ever introduced, and a reformed Parliament carried’.2Hansard, 27 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, c. 1084. Buller summarised his first decade in Parliament as favouring ‘popular rights, religious liberty and free trade’, but the last policy was not popular with his agricultural constituency, leading to his transfer to another seat in 1841 and defeat in 1847.3Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 July 1841. He was finally re-elected in 1865. The Tory squire Ralph Sneyd, of Keele Park, wrote that Buller was ‘an insignificant fellow & I dislike him’.4Ralph Sneyd to earl of Clare, 12 Aug. 1847, Sneyd correspondence, Keele University Library, SC 7/192.

Buller was born into the Devon gentry, but inherited Dilhorne Hall in Staffordshire from his maternal grandfather. His elder brother Sir John Yarde Buller, 3rd baronet (1799-1871), succeeded to the family title and estates in 1833 and was Conservative MP for South Devon from 1835 until he was ennobled as 1st baron Churston in 1858.5Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 410-11. Buller stood for the new constituency of North Staffordshire at the 1832 general election. The Whig Bertram Talbot, 17th earl of Shrewsbury, predicted that he ‘would be a formidable antagonist’, and his nomination speech was described as ‘flowery and well-delivered’.6Earl of Shrewsbury to earl of Lichfield, 12 June 1832, Anson papers, Staffordshire Record Office, D615/P(P)/1/19; Dyott’s diary: a selection from the journal of William Dyott, 1781-1845, ed. R.W. Jeffrey (1907), ii. 149 (13 Dec. 1832). He was elected in second place after denying that he was the ‘enemy of the farmer’.7Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832.

Buller voted with Whig ministers in favour of the Irish church temporalities bill, 11 Mar. 1833, and against Matthias Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833. He did not support proposals to reduce malt duty to relieve agriculturalists, as this would have risked ‘the greatest degree of financial embarrassment’ and damaged the ‘public credit’.8Staffordshire Advertiser, 17 Jan. 1835. Buller was one of the leaders of the ultimately successful resistance to the disenfranchisement of Stafford.9Hansard, 6 Aug. 1833, vol. 20, c. 266; 5 Mar. 1834, vol. 21, cc. 1175-6; 19 Mar. 1834, vol. 22, cc. 451-2. He declared his support for a fixed duty on corn, 6 Mar. 1834, which he argued would reduce price fluctuations.10Hansard, 6 Mar. 1834, vol. 21, cc. 1260-2. Endorsing the poor law amendment bill, he admitted that the proposed central board was ‘hardly constitutional’, but believed that it was necessary to have a central power removed from local influence and prejudices, 9 May 1834.11Hansard, 9 May 1834, vol. 9, c. 828. He was, however, critical of the controversial bastardy clause, 18 June 1834.12Hansard, 18 June 1834, vol. 24, c. 528. The clause stipulated that the mother’s word would be insufficient as proof of paternity without corroborating evidence, the consequence being that the responsibility for raising illegitimate children would fall largely on women rather than men.

Buller was returned unopposed at the 1835 general election, after publicly affirming that he remained committed to agricultural protection, but with ‘fair and reasonable duties’ on corn. He declared that he had the ‘highest respect’ for Peel, but described the premier’s supporters as ‘the most illiberal in politics, and most intolerant in religion’.13Staffordshire Advertiser, 17 Jan. 1835. Although he backed Abercromby for the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, Buller sided with Peel on the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and was included in Lord Stanley’s ‘Derby dilly’ list of moderate reformers inclining towards Conservatism.14R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative party, 1830-67 (1978), 376. The Whig magnate Thomas William Anson, 1st earl of Lichfield, was so annoyed with the votes of Buller and his colleague Sir Oswald Mosley that he declared that ‘if a Tory comes forward, I would split with him to turn them out; words cannot express my contemptible opinion of their conduct’.15Lord 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). However, unlike Mosley, Buller subsequently returned to the Liberal fold and was thereafter a reliable supporter of the Whig leadership in all the major party divisions. His membership of the 1835 select committee on Orange societies reinforced his belief that the opposition to the Whigs’ proposed reforms of the Irish church and tithes came from Protestant bigots.16PP 1835 (475), xvi. 2; Hansard, 12 Feb. 1836, vol. 31, cc. 342-3; Staffordshire Advertiser, 2 Sept. 1837. He also fully approved of concessions to Dissenters such as the settlement of church rates. He supported the commutation of English tithes in 1836, although he preferred Peel’s proposal of parochial commutation, rather than individual commutation as favoured by the Whig government.17Hansard, 25 Mar. 1836, vol. 32, cc. 642-3. Buller was re-elected in second place behind a Conservative at the 1837 general election.

Buller had the honour of moving the address, 5 Feb. 1839, his speech largely a paean to the Whig government’s record, although he again called for the ‘modification’ of the corn laws.18Hansard, 5 Feb. 1839, vol. 45, cc. 49-55. He voted against his brother’s motion of no confidence in Melbourne’s government, 31 Jan. 1840, and endorsed Baring’s budget of the following year, which included a low fixed duty on corn. However, Buller’s support for the policy contributed to his retirement from North Staffordshire, and he later complained that his position on the corn laws was ‘not understood by the farmers’.19Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 July 1841. Whig grandees considered putting him up as a second candidate for South Staffordshire, but Buller ‘doubted his success at this time anywhere’.20Hatherton Journal, 7 May 1841, Hatherton papers, Staffs. RO, D260/M/7/5/26/43. In the event, he stood at late notice for the venal borough of Stafford and was elected in second place.21Staffordshire Advertiser, 3 July 1841.

In the debates on financial policy in 1842-3, Buller continued to press for a fixed duty on corn, while opposing the reintroduction of the income tax.22Hansard, 16 Feb. 1842, vol. 60, cc. 538-45; 15 May 1843, vol. 69, cc. 346-50. He complained that his proposed amendment to the new sliding scale was treated ‘contemptuously’ by Peel, 2 Mar. 1842.23Hansard, 2 Mar. 1842, vol. 60, cc. 1360-6 (at 1366). He was a member of the 1842 select committee that recommended changing the law to facilitate the use of bonded corn for grinding flour and making biscuits.24PP 1842 (333), xiv. 4-5. On 20 Feb. 1844, Buller launched a forthright attack on the Conservatives’ Irish policy and described the Irish church as ‘unjust in origin’ and even more indefensible in practice.25Hansard, 20 Feb. 1844, vol. 72, cc. 1243-7 (at 1246). His votes against a ten hour day for factory workers, and indeed any legislative interference in the hours worked by adult workers, 22 Mar., 3 May 1844, placed him at the laissez-faire end of the spectrum of parliamentary opinion. Buller proposed the repeal of the duty on tallow, 20 June 1845, but withdrew his motion after government opposition.26Hansard, 20 June 1845, vol. 81, cc. 1004-6. He backed Peel’s repeal of the corn laws the following year.27Hansard, 23 Feb. 1846, vol. 83, cc. 1394-1400.

Buller retired from Stafford to contest North Staffordshire at the 1847 general election, but was defeated in controversial circumstances as the wife of the leading Whig magnate was duped into giving the support of her absent husband to a relative, who subsequently revealed himself to be a protectionist, rather than to Buller. Incensed by his treatment, Buller’s nomination speech was ‘intemperate and gave offence to many who would otherwise have supported him’.28Richard Sutton Ford to Thomas Fitzherbert, 8 Aug. 1847, Fitzherbert MSS, Staffs. RO, D641/5/E(C)/28. Buller was mooted as a Liberal candidate for Stoke-on-Trent and Newcastle-under-Lyme at the 1852 general election, but offered for neither.29Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Apr. 1852, 22, 29 May 1852. He was again defeated for North Staffordshire in 1857, but was finally re-elected at the 1865 general election, when he topped the poll.30Staffordshire Advertiser, 21 Mar. 1857; Derby Mercury, 8 Apr. 1857; Birmingham Daily Post, 18 July 1865.

Buller was given a baronetcy in January 1866 and assumed the additional name of Manningham, the surname of his late first wife. He fulfilled an election pledge by voting for the reduction and ultimate repeal of malt duty, 17 Apr. 1866, and subsequently served on an inquiry that in 1868 recommended the abolition of the duty provided that an alternative source of revenue could be identified.31Hansard, 17 Apr. 1866, vol. 182, cc. 1534-8; PP 1867 (470), xi. 2; 1867-8 (420), ix. 237-40, 245. He successfully moved a number of additional clauses to the government measure introduced in response to the 1866 cattle plague, but hoped that a cull would be applied selectively rather than to whole herds, 19 Feb. 1866.32Hansard, 19 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 794-5. His two amendments empowered local authorities to actively direct rather than simply prescribe, on matters relating to disinfection and precautions; and to insist that cattle herded with diseased animals could be used for experimental treatments, rather than simply slaughtered: ibid., 15, 17 Feb. 1866, vol. 181, cc. 553, 728. Manningham-Buller backed the Liberal government’s reform bill of the same year, although he thought that a £14 county franchise would give the vote to many farmers under landlord influence.33Hansard, 7 June 1866, vol. 183, cc. 2091-4. He complained that Disraeli’s 1867 representation of the people bill amounted to household suffrage without sufficient checks and voted with the majority of Liberal MPs to enfranchise compounders, reduce the representation of small boroughs and give more seats to the largest towns.34Hansard, 11 Apr. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 1533-6. His attempt to divide Staffordshire into northern, mid and southern divisions was abandoned after garnering little support, 9 July 1867.35Hansard, 9 July 1867, vol. 188, c. 1289. The government plan (which was enacted) was to divide the more populous southern division into eastern and western constituencies, while leaving Buller’s constituency intact.

Manningham-Buller was re-elected at the 1868 general election but retired at the following election in 1874. On his death in 1882 he was succeeded by his elder son Sir Morton Edward Manningham-Buller, 2nd baronet (1825-1910). On the latter’s death the title passed to his nephew, Sir Mervyn Edward Manningham-Buller, 3rd baronet (1876-1856), Conservative MP for Kettering 1924-9, and Northampton 1931-40.36Burke’s peerage and baronetage (1949), 295-6. His son, Manningham-Buller’s great-grandson, Sir Reginald Edward Manningham-Buller, 4th baronet (1905-80), was Conservative MP for Daventry, 1943-50, and South Northamptonshire, 1950-62. He held a number of legal posts in the Conservative governments of the 1950s, and was created Baron Dilhorne on appointment as lord chancellor in 1962, a post he held until 1964, when he was raised to a viscountcy.37D.J. Dutton, ‘Buller, Reginald Edward Manningham-, first Viscount Dilhorne (1905-80)’, www.oxforddnb.com.