ST. PAUL, Horace (1812-1891), of Ewart Park, Belford, Northumb.

St. Paul was born at St. Ninians, Wooler, Northumberland in 1812, the youngest child and only son of Sir Horace St. Paul, ‘one of the senior Colonels in the Army’ and ‘a sporting country gentleman’ who had once been ‘one of the Prince of Wales’s set’.1HP Commons 1790-1820, v. 92; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 Oct. 1840; Burke’s Peerage (6th edn., 1839), 910. His grandfather, Colonel Horace St. Paul (1729-1812), went into exile after killing a man in a duel in 1751, was a soldier of fortune in the Seven Years’ war, and returned to England with an Austrian title (20 July 1759) and a royal pardon. He later served as secretary to the embassy in Paris. St. Paul’s father, whom the Prince Regent made a baronet in 1813, had sat as a Tory MP for Bridport, 1812-32 and his uncle, Henry Heneage St. Paul, represented Berwick-upon-Tweed from 1812 until his death in November 1820.2HP Commons 1820-1832, vii. 11-3. His mother was the illegitimate daughter of John Ward, 2^nd viscount Dudley, who had sat for Worcestershire, 1761-74. One of ‘the leading aristocratic entrepreneurs of his time’, Ward bequeathed his personalty and unsettled estates to his daughter in 1788.3D. Brown, ‘Ward, John, second Viscount Dudley and Ward’, Oxford DNB, lvii. 315-6. St. Paul was a therefore a kinsman of John Ward, the 1st earl of Dudley, who served as foreign secretary, 1827-8. At the 1832 general election St. Paul’s father contested the newly enfranchised borough of Dudley, where his wife’s property was largely located, but was easily defeated by Sir John Campbell, the solicitor-general.4Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832.

The father’s parliamentary ambitions thenceforth passed to the son, who contested East Worcestershire as a Conservative ‘unpledged’ to any particular policy in 1835. Dismissed by the Liberal press as ‘a young, raw, inexperienced youth, fresh from Oxford’, he declined to ‘enter into a description of any particular principles’, but expressed a ‘strong attachment to the Church and State, to the King and Constitution’, and referred electors to ‘the excellent address of Sir Robert Peel to his constituents at Tamworth’.5Morning Chronicle, 14 Jan. 1835; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Jan. 1835. It was the opinion of his Whig opponents that ‘a more honourable candidate never came forward at an Election’,6Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Jan. 1835. yet despite securing the backing of the influential local banker, James Taylor, and receiving assurances of support ‘from every District of the Division’, he lost the election by a narrow margin. He blamed his defeat on a ‘ferocious attack of a lawless mob’ of forgemen upon his electors at Stourbridge, and immediately petitioned against the result, but without success.7Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15, 22 Jan., 2 Mar. 1835.

This experience ‘bound’ St. Paul to what he came to regard as the ‘most “Old-English” constituency in the empire’.8Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14 Jan. 1847. Having earned the gratitude of local Conservatives for the ‘ready manner in which he had answered their call’ in 1835, he came forward again for East Worcestershire ‘on the Tory interest’ at the 1837 general election.9Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 Oct. 1836; The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 200. His political principles were unchanged, and he committed himself to reform of the poor law ‘with a view of removing all its enactments that are cruel and oppressive’. With regard to church rates, he promised to support ‘any measure which, while it relieves the conscientious Dissenter, commits not a robbery upon the Established Church’.10Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 July 1837. After the Liberals declined an offer to share the representation, he fought a ‘fierce contest’ with ‘immense ardour’ and was returned at the head of the poll after spending a rumoured £16,000 on the election.11Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 30 May 1891; T.C. Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century (1852), 26-7. It was recorded that ‘he knew every elector in the division’, and ‘took particular care to call upon those who had voted against him’ in 1835: Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Sept. 1891.

St. Paul committee service was confined into election petitions, sitting on the Belfast, Tamworth and Woodstock election committees between February and June 1838.12Morning Chronicle, 14 Feb. 1838; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 29 Mar. 1838; Morning Post, 8 June 1838. He did not introduce any bills, and does not appear to have been a regular attender beyond his first session. He opposed William Smith O’Brien’s motion attacking the funding of Irish election petitions, 6 Dec. 1837, and supported Sir Robert Peel’s resolution on the civil pensions list, 8 Dec. He voted against the ballot, 15 Feb. 1838, and backed Lord Sandon’s motion blaming government policy for the rebellion in Canada, 7 Mar. 1838. Having signified his intention of attending the grand dinner to Peel at the Merchant Tailors’ Hall on 12 May, he opposed the ministry’s motion in support of the appropriation of Irish tithes, 15 May, and supported Peel’s proposed £10 franchise for the new Irish municipal corporations.13Morning Post, 30 Apr., 14 May 1838.

St. Paul is not known to have spoken in the House, but in October 1838 explained to his constituents that although ‘the walls of St. Stephen’s’ had ‘never heard [his] voice’, this did not detract from his value as their representative. He regarded it as ‘an unpardonable presumption in any young and inexperienced member to address the House’, and recounted that he had seen ‘some young and ambitious Members make their maiden speeches at great length’ only to leave the House ‘with very different countenances from what they had when they came in’.14Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 Nov. 1838. He also took the opportunity to vilify Daniel O’Connell for which he was likened by the Irish press to a beast ‘Who’s famous among his four-footed peers, For a very thick head and very long ears’: Freeman’s Journal, 20 Nov. 1838. A firm adherent of the agricultural interest, he voted against any reconsideration of the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839 (and did so again, 26 May 1840), and opposed Lord John Russell’s endorsement of the conduct of the Irish administration, 19 Apr. 1839, and his motion for a committee on the Jamaica government bill, 6 May. He backed Henry Goulborn for the speakership, 27 May, and, having recently warned his constituents about ‘the late encroachments of the people’ upon the ‘balanced affairs’ of parliament, paired against the equalisation of the English borough and county franchises, 4 June.15Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 Nov. 1838; Morning Chronicle, 5 June 1839. He appears to have visited the division lobby whenever required to back the Conservatives on important party issues, dividing in favour of Stanley’s Irish registration bill, 26 Mar., 20 May 1840,16He was shut out of the opposition amendment on 26 April: Morning Post, 28 Apr. 1841. and backing a motion of censure on ministers’ policy towards China, 9 Apr. He was nominated to the committee on the Severn navigation bill, but did not attend its sitting, 30 Apr. 1840.17Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 6 May 1841.

In October 1840 St. Paul inherited the titles and substantial Northumberland estate of his father, and through his mother (d. 26 Jan. 1837), came into possession of Ellowes Hall, near Dudley.18His title as a count of the Austrian Empire had been recognised in the United Kingdom by grant of the regent, 7 Sept. 1812. He also possessed properties at Tipton, Sedgley and Wednesbury and ‘was for some time engaged in the staple trades of the district’. These met with little success, and a venture in the iron trade, at Windmill End, Dudley, cost him ‘many thousands of pounds’. His mines at Tipton also became gradually worked out.19Birmingham Daily Post, 25 Sept. 1891. That November he was party to a suit to determine custody of his nephew, John Talbot (1830-1846), heir presumptive to the earldom of Shrewsbury.20Morning Post, 11 Nov. 1840. St. Paul’s sister, Augusta, had married the Hon. George Henry Talbot, who died in June 1839. She was re-married to the Hon. Craven Fitzhardinge Berkeley, Liberal MP for Cheltenham, 1832-47, 1848, 1852-5: Morning Post, 13 June 1839.

In the Commons, St. Paul voted against Lord Morpeth’s Irish registration bill, 25 Feb., 29 Apr 1841, and joined other Protectionists in backing Sandon’s motion condemning the duty on foreign sugar, 18 May 1841. Having supported the motion of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 31 Jan. 1840, he voted for Peel’s motion which brought the government down, 4 June 1841. At the dissolution he offered again as a Protectionist, 10 June, pledging to defend the agricultural interest ‘without causing injury to the manufacturer’, and arguing that British farmers not only provided much-needed employment to ‘English, Scottish and Irish labourers … in preference to the foreigner’, but also protected the country from dependence on imported corn. He was, however, forced to retire owing to ‘suddenly increased illness’.21Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 24, 28 June, 1, 15 July 1841.

Although he had no further wish to be in parliament, St. Paul remained involved in the politics of East Worcestershire. Wedded to protectionism, he railed against any compromise with the Whigs at the by-election of January 1847, but ultimately accepted the arrangement for the sake of party unity.22Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 24 Dec. 1846, 14 Jan. 1847. In his native Northumberland St. Paul served as high sheriff in 1851 and clashed with the assize judges when he made ‘a practical protest against the heavy expenditure’ imposed on holders of the office. Dispensing with the usual retinue, he appeared before them ‘in a modest conveyance instead of the customary grand carriage with six horses and outriders’, his trumpeters being ‘unprovided with a livery’.23Yorkshire Herald, 1 June 1891.

In later life St. Paul involved himself in promoting education and religious teaching ‘among all classes of the community’, his half yearly ‘rent dinners’ for local clergy, scholars and members of his tenantry being served ‘without intoxicating liquors’.24Birmingham Daily Post, 29 May 1891, 18 May 1870. He married ‘rather late in life’ a daughter of a Northumbrian landowner, who bore him one child.25Birmingham Daily Post, 29 May 1891; Daily News, 30 May 1891. His father, on the other hand, is reputed to have had 15 children by three different women: http://thepeerage.com/p8045.htm#i80442. He died at Ewart Park in May 1891, his personal wealth being valued at £3,287, and bequeathed his estates to his daughter, Maria. There being no male heir, the title expired.26The Times, 2 June 1891; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 11 July 1891. Nat. Probate Calendar, Index of Wills, 1861-1941 (29 June 1891). Some of his lands in Staffordshire and Worcestershire were sold to pay off mortgage debts. Ewart Park was sold in 1937.