MORETON, Hon. Henry John Reynolds (1827-1921), of Tortworth Court, Falfield, Glos.

align="left">Moreton was born at Sherborne and came from a long-established Gloucestershire family. He was the eldest of 10 sons and 4 daughters, born to the 2^nd earl Ducie, who had sat for Gloucestershire, 1831-2, and East Gloucestershire, 1832-5. He served his political apprenticeship in the salons of the Palmerstons, Howards, and Russells, engaged in such pursuits as dancing the Duchess of Bedford’s ‘Camelia’ quadrille at the Literary Association Friends of Poland annual ball.1Standard, 15 Mar. 1847; Morning Post, 24 May, 17 July 1847, 22 Mar. 1849. In 1848 he attended the royal family during their sojourn at the Isle of Wight, and the following year married his first cousin, Julia Langston, whose father James represented Oxford, 1826-35, 1841-63, and on whom an estate in that county had been settled.2Morning Chronicle, 27 May 1848; HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 42.

Moreton was spoken of as a Liberal candidate for East Gloucestershire when it had appeared that a vacancy might occur in January 1851.3Royal Cornwall Gazette, 31 Jan. 1851. That March he was named by the ‘influential Whig gentlemen’ of Stroud, where his father had particular influence, as a replacement for the retiring Whig member, and when an election seemed likely the following year he was brought forward for the borough in his absence.4Daily News, 6 Mar. 1851; The Times, 15 Mar. 1851; Morning Post, 17 Mar. 1851, quoting Bristol Journal ; Morning Post, 22 Mar. 1852, quoting Wiltshire Standard. Issuing an address from Malta, he extolled the benefits of free trade, advocated an extension of the franchise and warned against making too great economies in the country’s defences.5Daily News, 23 Apr. 1852, quoting Stroud Free Press. He was, however, believed by some to be ‘a dissenter, and opposed to the existing connexion between the Church and the State’, and was drawn into a dispute which had arisen within the Liberal party over the ‘Popish Aggression’.6The Times, 24 Mar. 1852, quoting Stroud Free Press. Moreton had been a prominent signatory to the lay address to the queen on this matter, which had been drawn up at a meeting at the Freemason’s Hall on 5 Dec. 1850: Morning Post, 5 Feb. 1851. In April 1852 he was requisitioned to stand against John Bright and Thomas Milner Gibson by 3,500 electors organised by the free trade and resolutely low church Manchester Independent Election Committee.7Daily News, 30 Apr., 5 May 1852; The Times, 14 May 1852. He declined the invitation, citing his prior commitment to Stroud, although his father’s free trade convictions were believed to have determined his decision.8The Times, 17 May 1852; Leicester Chronicle, 22 May 1852, quoting Morning Advertiser. Faced with a challenge from a Radical free trader at Stroud, he lost the show of hands, but was returned in second place with the strong support of the borough’s Whigs.9Daily News, 15 May 1852; Morning Post, 7, 8 July 1852; The Times, 8 June 1853.

Moreton does not appear to have spoken in the Commons, sat on any select committees or introduced any bills. True to the political values of his family, he supported Villiers’s free trade motion, 26 Nov., and paired against Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852. He turned out to divide in favour of the government on the Canadian clergy reserves bill, 11 Apr., and the county rates and expenditure bill, 13 Apr., and voted for the third reading of the Jewish disabilities bill, 15 Apr. 1853. He supported Gladstone’s budget resolutions, 2 May, and the subsequent amendments on income tax, 9, 12 May, but opposed the ministry by voting for the inspection of nunneries bill, 10 May, and supporting Milner Gibson’s motion for the repeal of advertising duty, 14 May 1853.

In June 1853 Moreton vacated his seat upon succeeding his father as 3^rd earl of Ducie. He sat in the House of Lords for 68 years and at his death was described in The Times as the ‘Father’ of that House.10 The Times, 29 Oct. 1921. He spoke only occasionally, such as when he seconded the address to the queen’s speech, 31 Jan. 1854, and petitioned for the improvement of communications to Kensington across Hyde Park, 14 May 1860.11Hansard, 31 Jan. 1854, vol. 130, cc. 16-9; 14 May 1860, vol. 158, cc. 1189-90. He became a Liberal Unionist in 1886 and in 1888-90 was a member of the council of the Prince of Wales.12G.E.C., Complete Peerage, iv. 477; Burke’s Peerage (99th edn., 1949), 630. He had been appointed lord lieutenant of Gloucestershire and of the cities of Gloucester and Bristol (being counties in themselves) by Lord Palmerston in 1857, and only retired in 1911, when he was the oldest lord lieutenant then living.

In the 1850s Moreton had been an active member of the Metropolitan Sanitary Association and the Society for Improving the Condition of the Labouring Classes, and was a fellow of several learned societies.13Morning Chronicle, 18 Feb. 1850; Morning Post, 12 May 1853. He maintained a life-long interest in science, being elected a fellow of the Royal Society, 22 Feb. 1855, and in October 1864 offered to supply Charles Darwin with Red Cowslips from his estate in order to assist him in his research.14Proc. Of the Royal Society of London, vii (1854-5), 242; The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, xii (2001), 384.

All his life he had been interested in military matters, and served as the captain of the Yeoman of the Guard in the 1860s and was for many years an honorary colonel of militia. He had once been ‘a clever shot’ and represented his country at the sport, later serving as president of the National Rifle Association.15The Times, 29 Oct. 1921. The owner of 9,000 acres in Oxfordshire and 5,500 acres in Gloucestershire, he pulled down an old and ‘very insanitary’ mansion at Woodchester Park in order to build Tortworth Court, where he established a notable arboretum and maintained a small orphanage.16J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 140; G.E.C., Complete Peerage, iv. 477; The Upper Ten Thousand (1876), 137; The Times, 29 Oct. 1921.

The earl of Ducie died in October 1921. His only son, Henry Haughton Reynolds-Moreton (1857-1920), Liberal MP for West Gloucestershire 1880-5,17Stenton, Who’s Who of British MPs, i. 276-7; Who Was Who, 1916-1928, 746-7. had died the previous year, and he was succeeded as 4^th earl by his brother Berkeley Basil Reynolds-Moreton (1834-1924), colonial secretary for Queensland and its minister of public instruction, 1886-8.18Who Was Who, 1916-1928, 305. In 1874 his daughter Lady Constance Reynolds-Moreton had married George John Shaw-Lefevre MP, who was created 1^st baron Eversley in 1906.