BENNET, Charles Augustus, Lord Ossulston (1810-1899), of 26 Grosvenor Square, London and Chillingham Castle, Northumberland

Born in Charles Street, Marylebone, Bennet, styled Lord Ossulston from 1822 to 1859, was heir to one of the north-east of England’s most influential and colourful political families. His father, Charles Bennet, a diminutive figure whom Greville described as a ‘sour malignant little Whig’, had represented Steyning, Knaresborough and Berwick-upon-Tweed in the Commons before succeeding as 5^th earl of Tankerville in 1822, whereupon he inherited Chillingham Park in Northumberland, and further estates in Surrey and Shropshire.1Greville memoirs, ii. 21; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 240-1. In the Lords, Tankerville had gravitated towards the Conservatives and had opposed the Grey ministry’s reform bills, earning the ire of the north-east’s Reformers.2Ibid. The family name had already been damaged in 1825 when Henry Grey Bennet - the 5^th earl’s younger brother and one of the most prominent radical Whigs of his time - suffered political ruin when he was accused of propositioning a young male servant.3Ibid., 241-51. Ossulston’s grandfather, the 4^th earl of Tankerville, was a less controversial but equally interesting character, who was best known for establishing a set of cricket rules that included the first mention of the leg-before-wicket law.4J. Pycroft, Cricketana (1865), 70.

Aged twenty-two, Ossulston’s entry into the Commons at the 1832 general election owed a great deal to the careful management of his father. After testing the ground with a canvass in Shrewsbury, where the family owned a prosperous lead mine, Tankerville brought forward his son in the Conservative interest for Northumberland North.5HP Commons, 1820-1832, iii. 241. Crucially, Tankerville secured a pact with the Reform candidate Viscount Howick, the son of the prime minister, Earl Grey, to ensure that no further candidates came forward.6Ibid. At the nomination Ossulston’s short speech, in which he asserted, rather vaguely, that he would ‘amend and adapt’ the country’s institutions rather than destroy them, was completely overshadowed by a lengthy and bitter exchange between Howick and Henry Thomas Liddell, Ossulston’s proposer, and a former Conservative MP for Northumberland who loomed large over the region’s political life.7Newcastle Journal, 22 Dec. 1832. Appearing very much like a minor figure in a larger drama, Ossulston was returned unopposed.

It took time for Ossulston to find his feet in the Commons. An occasional attender in his first Parliament, he gave steady but silent support to the Conservative opposition.8R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834). He opposed the Grey ministry’s Irish church reform bill, 6 May 1833, voted for Attwood’s motion for currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, and paired off for a repeal of the malt tax, 27 Feb. 1834. Hostile to further parliamentary reform, he paired off against the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, and voted against shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834. He sat, mainly passively, on select committees on Lower Canada, steam navigation to India and the admission of ladies to the strangers’ gallery.9PP 1834 (449), xviii. 240; PP 1834 (478), xiv. 370; PP 1835 (437), xviii. 98.

At the 1835 general election Ossulston declared himself an opponent of ‘that spirit of innovation which will do everything at once’ and attacked ‘that morbid desire for change’.10Parliamentary test book (1835), 118. Re-elected without opposition, he divided with the ministerial minority on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, and against the Whig opposition’s amendment to the address, 26 Feb. 1835. He voted against Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue which forced the collapse of Peel’s short-lived administration. Thereafter he remained opposed to the Melbourne ministry’s attempts to reform the Irish church, although he did, in his first known contribution to debate, speak in support of the Irish poor law, and criticised O’Connell for suggesting that poor law legislation led to more misery, 8 July 1835. A staunch defender of the landed interest, he also intervened to urge that the cost of Irish poor relief should not be borne by ‘landholders alone’, 10 Aug. 1835, and to express his opposition to giving greater powers to tithe commissioners, 12 May 1836. Following a brief campaign in which he defended church rates and condemned the appropriation of Irish church revenues, he was returned unopposed at the 1837 general election, and continued to vote against the Liberal government’s attempts to reform the Irish church. A poor attender, he made only one known spoken contribution in his third Parliament, lamenting the clamour to extend the British cotton industry at the expense of other, namely agricultural, interests, 20 July 1838. He voted for Peel’s motion of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 4 June 1841.

The 1841 general election at Northumberland North was a bitter affair dominated by the issue of the corn laws. Ossulston, who was joined by a second Conservative candidate, offered an unwavering defence of protection, declaring that repeal would ‘risk disorganizing society to its foundation’, and was returned at the top of the poll.11The poll book of the contested election for the north division of the county of Northumberland (1841), 10-60. Now a silent member who rarely attended the Commons, he voted against legislation to shorten the hours of work in factories, 18 Mar., 22 Mar. 1844, and consistently against corn law repeal, opposing Peel on the critical third reading of the bill, 15 May 1846. He also divided against Peel in favour of the factory bill, 22 May 1846. He later declared that, as a Protectionist, he had ‘avoided contagion from the bad example of Sir Robert Peel’.12Daily News, 9 Aug. 1847.

Ossulston endured a torrid nomination at the 1847 general election. At the front of the hustings, a placard was raised, stating in large characters that out of the 610 divisions that had taken place since the last election, Ossulston had only been present for 47. Responding to the placard, he denied that he had neglected the interests of his constituents, but he was mocked remorselessly by his Liberal opponent, Sir George Grey, who quipped that:

There is one way of resisting contagion, and that is keeping at a very long distance from it – and if that placard which we have seen here today contains any approximation to an accurate estimate of the votes given by the noble lord, he had taken a most effectual means of avoiding any contagion which might be caught within the walls of the House of Commons.13Ibid.

Following a fierce contest, Ossulston was narrowly returned in second place. He voted against Roman Catholic relief, 8 Dec. 1847, the Jewish disabilities bill, 17 Dec. 1847, and the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849. His attendance showed little signs of improvement, but on the rare occasions that he troubled the division lobbies, he generally voted with Disraeli.14In the 1849 session, for example, he was present for only 23 out of 219 divisions: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. Following the fall of Russell’s ministry and the establishment of a Conservative administration under Derby, Ossulston’s loyalty was rewarded with the offer of the treasuryship, but with his Chillingham estate failing, he declined the appointment on the grounds that he could not afford to fight a by-election.15A. Hawkins, The forgotten prime minister: the 14th earl of Derby. Vol. II: achievement, 1799-1851 (2008), 15.

Ossulston considered retiring at the 1852 general election to avoid the cost of a contest. The establishment of a subscription fund to pay his expenses, however, convinced him to come forward.16N. McCord and A.E. Carrick, ‘Northumberland in the general election of 1852’, Northern History, I (1966), 96. At the nomination, when he was constantly interrupted by jeers from the crowd, he insisted that this was ‘not the time to renew the fight upon the old battle ground of protection and free trade’, though he called for a readjustment of taxation to favour farmers. He stated that franchise reform must be based on property and intelligence, ‘not merely upon numbers’, and called for the promotion of religious and secular education. Following a divisive contest, he was again re-elected in second place.17Morning Chronicle, 22 July 1852. He voted against Villiers’s motion praising corn law repeal, but abstained from Palmerston’s subsequent motion praising free trade, 26 Nov. 1852. Although he remained a silent member, his attendance record improved slightly, and he continued to follow Disraeli into the division lobby on most major issues.18In the 1853 session he was present for 51 out of 257 divisions; in 1856 he was present for 37 out of 198: Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 13. He voted for the motion to inquire into the condition of the army at Sebastopol, 29 Jan. 1855, but opposed Roebuck’s censure of the government’s handling of the Crimean war, 19 July 1855. He voted against the Maynooth grant, 15 Apr. 1856, and backed Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.

At the 1857 general election Ossulston launched a scathing attack on Palmerston, accusing him of indulging ‘in the pleasures of quarrelling with their neighbours’ while ignoring ‘the bill of damages to pay’. Studiously ignoring the real reason behind his earlier decision not to join Derby’s first administration, he declared that he was ‘one of a large body of independent men to resist the temptations of office’, and argued that his presence in the Commons was vital to keep a check on the excesses of government.19Newcastle Courant, 3 Apr. 1857. He was returned without opposition. Despite his outspoken criticism of Palmerston’s foreign policy, he voted for the premier’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858. In one of his last known votes in the Commons, he supported the short-lived Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.

In May 1859 Ossulston was summoned to the House of Lords through a writ of acceleration in his father’s barony. On the death of his father the following month, he succeeded him as the 6^th earl of Tankerville. His steadfast, if largely silent loyalty to the Conservative party was rewarded in July 1866 when he was appointed captain of the gentlemen-at-arms. In March 1867 he was promoted to lord steward of the household, a position he held until Gladstone’s accession to power in December 1868. Thereafter he made little impact in political life, preferring to devote his energies to philanthropy. He was a major donor to the Mildmay Mission Hospital in Bethnal Green, which, after opening new premises in 1892, named a wing after him.20Newcastle Weekly Courant, 23 Dec. 1899.

Ossulston died at the family seat of Chillingham Castle, near Alnwick, in December 1899. At the time of his death, he was the oldest peer in the House of Lords.21Northern Echo, 20 Dec. 1899. Having recovered from the financial difficulties that beset him in the 1850s, he left effects valued at £85,931 6s. 4d.22England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1858-1966, 12 May 1900. He was succeeded in the earldom by his eldest surviving son, George Montagu Bennet, who had previously served in the royal navy.23The Times, 20 Dec. 1899. The family’s papers are held by Northumberland archives.24NRO. 424.