HALLEWELL, Edmund Gilling (1796-1881), of Mourne Park, Kilkeel, Co. Down of 6 Royal Crescent, Cheltenham, Glos.

Hallewell’s political career demonstrates that men of relatively modest means could exert political influence in more than one region of the United Kingdom. A Yorkshireman by birth, Hallewell developed his political skills as a local Conservative politician in the Cotswolds before seizing an opportunity to secure a parliamentary seat in south Ulster. His career as an MP was, however, very brief, and in spite of fighting three elections, he spent little more than a year in Parliament.

Hallewell was born at Boroughbridge, Yorkshire, the son of the vicar of Nidd and curate of Farnham, near Knaresborough.1F. Boase, Modern English Biography, i. 1293; Hull Packet, 30 June 1818. By the mid-1830s he had established a business in Stroud, where he became director of the General Provincial Gas and Water Works Company and a partner in a local banking firm.2Bristol Mercury, 2 Jan. 1836; Sheffield Independent, 21 July 1838. Having considered the reform bill to be ‘too sweeping’, he took a leading part in the establishment of the Stroud Constitutional Association in 1835.3Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1852), 188. He subsequently used this organisation as a platform from which to expound his political views, and that October spoke in defence of the nation’s institutions which, he believed, had allowed men from the ‘middle ranks of life’ to attain the highest positions in the church and legal professions ‘solely by their own merit’.4Morning Post, 3 Oct. 1835, quoting Gloucestershire Chronicle. He was a trenchant critic of the Whig ministry, which had allowed the followers of Daniel O’Connell ‘to dictate to and insult’ the English people with their insistent demands for constitutional change.5Hull Packet, 7 Oct. 1836. As the leading Conservative activist in Stroud, he was credited with engineering the unsuccessful challenge to Lord John Russell’s return for the borough in 1837, and was actively engaged in the registration of electors throughout East Gloucestershire.6The Times, 16 Oct. 1838. It was later erroneously reported that he had himself stood against Russell in 1837: Examiner, 24 May 1851.

Hallewell became a widower in 1847, and his youngest daughter died the following year. He was opposed to what he regarded as Britain’s unreciprocated system of free trade and in 1847 he published a long series of letters on various questions of social and political economy in the Gloucestershire Chronicle and other newspapers, under the signature of ‘A True Conservative’.7Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 30 Dec. 1847; Dod’s parliamentary companion (1852), 188-9. After the death of the Conservative member for Newry, in May 1851, Hallewell was solicited to come forward for the vacancy by some ‘influential individuals’ of different political and religious views, who were ‘connected with the Trading Interests of the town’.8Belfast News-letter, 5 July 1852. He therefore stood as a protectionist at the by-election for a borough in which he possessed property and to which he had been connected with important improvements.9Belfast News-letter, 21 May 1851; Examiner, 24 May 1851. He immediately secured the backing of the Newry Telegraph, a local Conservative newspaper,10Belfast News-letter, 21 May 1851, quoting Newry Telegraph. and while he admitted that he enjoyed the confidence and support of important local proprietors, such as the marquess of Downshire and the trustees of the earl of Kilmorey, he denied that he was their nominee. He claimed that his views and opinions were ‘the results of his own independent thought’, and argued that the current system of free trade was based upon the ‘complete fallacy’ that other countries would follow Britain’s example. He nevertheless promised to seek a balance between the interests of trade, commerce and agriculture, and having roundly condemned the Whig government for its failure to mitigate the effects of the famine, was returned unopposed.11Belfast News-letter, 2 June 1851.

Hallewell is not known to have sat on any select committees or introduced any bills, but was a regular attender and appears to have been among the staunchest of Conservatives. According to his backers, he sought ‘a return to a system of moderate protection to all branches of native industry’, and voted in favour of a partial repeal of the malt tax, 17 June 1851. A member of the established church, he had informed his constituents that he would never consent to ‘any foreign potentate’ having any communication with the ‘civil or religious establishments’ of the United Kingdom without the ‘approbation of the Queen and her government’. He therefore joined the minority in favour of Sir Robert Inglis’s amendment to the ecclesiastical titles bill, denying rank or precedence to any representative of the Catholic Church, 20 June.12Belfast News-letter, 2 June 1851. Having voted for Lord Palmerston’s amendment to the militia bill, 20 Feb. 1852, which brought down Lord John Russell’s ministry, he divided consistently with the followers of Lord Derby.

Hallewell is known to have spoken only once in the Commons in March 1852, when he endorsed the proposed inquiry into outrages in Ireland, a question that he felt not only affected ‘the moral and material improvement’ of that country, but also ‘its character as a civilised community’, observing that ‘unless the law became a terror to evil-doers they would become a terror to society’.13Hansard, 16 Mar. 1852, vol. 119, c. 1192. He further believed that ‘revealed truth should be the basis of every system of education’, and so divided in favour of Richard Spooner’s amendment for a select inquiry into Maynooth College, 25 May 1852.14Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1852), 189.

Hallewell came forward again at Newry at the 1852 general election, and in a long and closely argued address he qualified his support for the ecclesiastical titles bill by arguing that because it had been badly framed, the measure had caused unnecessary irritation to Catholics. At the same time he declared that he was still prepared to back an inquiry into Maynooth College, and in a subsequent speech made clear his hostility to the admission of Jews to Parliament. Although he was presented as ‘practically devoted’ to the interests of the town, and was credited with having induced the government to reduce the rate of interest on its loan to the Newry Navigation, he was narrowly defeated by a local Presbyterian Liberal.15Belfast News-letter, 5, 23 July 1852.

Returning to Gloucestershire, he remarried in July 1855 and in November 1856 contested his local borough of Cheltenham as a staunch Conservative, albeit one who ‘adhered to the rule of independence’.16Standard, 31 July 1855. At the hustings he spoke in opposition to the ballot, an extension of the suffrage, the reform of church rates and the Maynooth grant, and promised that he ‘would resolutely resist every attempt to un-Christianize the British Legislature’. After castigating the government for its conduct in the late war with Russia, he polled well, but could not overturn the Berkeley interest.17Ipswich Journal, 10 May 1856.

Hallewell does not appear to have sought another parliamentary seat, but was for 50 years an active county magistrate and maintained his banking interests in Gloucestershire. He died at his residence, Beauchamp Lodge, near Gloucester in November 1881, when his personal estate was sworn at £9,205 (re-sworn at £8,526 in June 1882). He was succeeded by his third son, John Hallewell of Chesterfield,18Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 14 Feb. 1880; Belfast News-letter, 9 Nov. 1881; Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 12 Nov. 1881; Nat. Probate Calendar, Index of Wills, 1858-1966 (13 Jan. 1882). his eldest son, Colonel Edmund Gilling Hallewell (1822-69), commandant of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, 1864-9, and a noted landscape painter, having predeceased him.19Pall Mall Gazette, 1 Dec. 1869; Standard, 2 Dec. 1869.