FOLEY, Henry John Wentworth Hodgetts (1828-1894), of Prestwood, Staffordshire

A country gentlemen, Foley was a rather inactive Liberal county MP for the Staffordshire Black Country. He was notably inattentive to local issues, once remarking that the rating of mines question was ‘so local a question that he would leave it with his friends to consider’.1Wolverhampton Chronicle, 21, 25 Mar. 1857, qu. in R. Trainor, Black Country élites: the exercise of authority in an industrialised area, 1830-1900 (1993), 223. His Adullamite sympathies on the reform question contributed to his defeat in 1868.

Foley hailed from a junior branch of the Foleys, barons Foley, of Witley Court, Worcestershire, who were Foxite Whigs in politics. His father John Hodgetts Hodgetts Foley, represented Droitwich, 1822-35, and East Worcestershire from 1847 until his death in 1861, in both constituencies benefiting from the influence of his noble kinsmen.2HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 667-8.

Unlike his father, Foley sought election in Staffordshire rather than Worcestershire, offering for the southern division of the former county at the 1857 general election. He was selected ahead of an absent (but more impressive) rival at a party meeting, after declaring his support for extension of the franchise and the ballot.3Staffordshire Advertiser, 21, 28 Mar. 1857. At the nomination, when he was returned unopposed with another Liberal, Foley declared that ‘on all questions of the day his opinions were identical with those of the advanced section of the Liberal party’.4Derby Mercury, 8 Apr. 1857. In light of his later ambivalence to political reform it seems reasonable to assume that these declarations were motivated by electoral calculation rather than sincere conviction. Indeed, the Whig grandee Lord Hatherton thought that Foley’s ballot pledge was a ‘particularly offensive’ example of a candidate being forced to pay lip service to the whims of local partisans.5Hatherton Journal, 30 Mar. 1857, Hatherton papers, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/7/5/26/71.

Foley fulfilled his pledge by supporting the ballot, 30 June 1857. The following year he backed Palmerston’s government in the divisions on the conspiracy to murder and government of India bills. He opposed triennial parliaments, but backed Locke King’s county franchise bill, 20 Apr., 10 June 1858. He favoured Jewish relief and cast votes against the anti-Maynooth campaign of Richard Spooner and other anti-Catholics, 22 Mar., 29 Apr. 1858. After voting against Derby’s 1859 reform bill, Foley was re-elected without opposition after describing the Conservative government as full ‘of mediocrities’. He reaffirmed his support for the ballot, and argued that the Italian question was pitting the ‘despotic powers’ against the ‘liberal governments of Europe’. Given this context it was important that the country maintained its ‘alliances with the only other great free country in the world – America’.6Birmingham Daily Post, 4 May 1859.

In the succeeding parliament, Foley offered general support to Palmerston’s government. Although he continued to back county franchise reform, he opposed Baines’ 1865 borough franchise bill. As he explained at the 1865 general election, when he was again returned unopposed, he ‘was opposed to any project of reform which would have the effect of doubling the constituency and swamping that middle class who elected the Parliament by which so many useful legislative enactments had been passed’.7The Times, 15 July 1865. Having avoided pledging on the issue, Foley did eventually vote for the reduction and repeal of malt duty, 17 Apr. 1866. He supported the second reading of the Liberal government’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, but backed Lord Dunkellin’s amendment for a rateable franchise that ejected Russell’s ministry, 18 June 1866. In the debates on the representation of the people bill in 1867, Foley’s votes were not dissimilar from the majority of Liberal MPs, supporting a lower residency qualification and expanding the representation of the largest cities at the expense of smaller boroughs. The two exceptions were his opposition to enfranchising compound ratepayers, 12 Apr. 1867, and his support for Lowe’s proposal for cumulative voting, 5 July 1867, which was intended to secure minority representation. He questioned Disraeli about the population of the proposed East Staffordshire division, 11 Apr. 1867.8Hansard, 11 Apr. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 1482-3.

Foley backed Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, 3 Apr. 1868, and stood for the new division of West Staffordshire at the general election later that year. His and his colleague’s votes on reform had ‘cooled the ardour of some of their former supporters’, however, and they were defeated by two Conservatives.9McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 272; Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Apr. 1894. Although he was ‘predisposed’ to stand for ‘a neighbouring constituency’, Foley did not get the chance to stand for Parliament again.10Ibid. He was not politically active thereafter, although he transferred his allegiance to the Liberal Unionists, and in his last years became ‘more or less an invalid’.11Ibid. On his death in 1894, he was succeeded by his only son Paul Henry Foley (1857-1928), ‘the well-known Worcestershire cricketer’.12Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 28 Apr. 1894; Burke’s landed gentry (1908), 603; ibid., (1937), 798.