WINTERBOTHAM, Henry Selfe Page (1837-1873), of Bank House, Stroud, Glos. of 7 New Square, Lincoln’s Inn, London, Mdx.

Born at Tewkesbury, Winterbotham was one of eight surviving children of a Stroud banker and his wife, the daughter of a Baptist minister.1Gent. Mag. (1802), ii. 780. His father was a former mayor of Tewkesbury, who in 1836 was described as ‘the leader of the movement party, whether on a question of a political, municipal or parochial nature’.2Standard, 21 July 1836. His father was a director, trustee and registered public officer of the Gloucestershire Banking Company: Morning Post, 11 Jan. 1855; Standard, 18 Feb. 1858. His paternal grandfather, Rev. William Winterbotham (1763-1829), had been an ‘avowed, though not extreme, Nonconformist’ minister of the Shortwood Tabernacle at Nailsworth, and had been jailed for four years in Newgate for advocating an extension of civil and religious liberty whilst an assistant Baptist minister at Plymouth in 1793.3J. Stratford, Gloucestershire Biographical Notes (1887), 287-8. Winterbotham was a member of the Congregationalist Church at Bedford Street, Stroud, where his father was deacon, and was publicly baptised at the age of 15.4In London he ‘sat under Thomas Jones at Bedford Chapel, Oakley Square’, was ‘a hearer of William Brock’, and a donor to Bloomsbury Baptist Church, but is not thought to have been a Baptist. At his death he was attending the Brixton Independent Church: D.W. Bebbington, Congregationalist Members of Parliament in the Nineteenth Century (2007), 78; Idem., ‘Baptist MPs in the Nineteenth Century’, Baptist Quarterly xxix (1981), 23; The Times, 22 Dec. 1873.

Winterbotham enjoyed ‘an exceptionally brilliant’ academic career at the University of London, becoming Hume scholar in jurisprudence, 1858, and political economy, 1859, and taking the university law scholarship and gold medal. After being called to the bar he went on the Oxford circuit and practiced at the chancery bar, acting as a conveyancer until 1871.5Williams, Parl. Hist. Glos., 228; The Times, 15 Dec. 1873; J.R. MacDonald, rev. H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Winterbotham, Henry Selfe Page’, Oxf. DNB, lix. 793.

In January 1867 Winterbotham came forward for Stroud in anticipation of an early dissolution after the long-standing Liberal member, George Poulett Scrope, intimated an intention to retire. As a member of a much respected local family, Winterbotham was regarded as a popular alternative to the other sitting Liberal, Edward Horsman, who had long been unsympathetic to parliamentary reform.6Bristol Mercury, 19 Jan. 1867; Pall Mall Gazette, 29 Jan. 1867. He addressed electors in favour of ‘household suffrage and a suitable lodger franchise’ for the boroughs, a £10 county franchise, and a redistribution of seats. He also advocated the abolition of church rates and the disestablishment of the Irish Church, and was readily adopted by a large meeting of Liberal electors.7Daily News, 28 Jan. 1867; Bristol Mercury, 2 Feb. 1867. Scrope took the Chiltern Hundreds in August 1867, by which time Winterbotham had accepted the Conservative reform bill with ‘satisfaction’, but presented the measure ‘as a great triumph of Liberal principles’.8Birmingham Daily Post, 15 Aug. 1867; Daily News, 20 Aug. 1867. Although it was anticipated that ‘moderate Liberals’ would hold aloof from Winterbotham ‘and his levelling supporters’, he was returned by a clear margin over a local Conservative candidate just one day before the end of the parliamentary session.9Standard, 23 Jan. 1867; Pall Mall Gazette, 21 Aug. 1867.

Although Winterbotham had declared himself ‘a consistent member of the liberal party’, he chose to sit ‘among the more advanced politicians’ below the gangway.10Daily News, 20 Aug. 1867; J.R. MacDonald, ‘Winterbotham, Henry Selfe Page’, DNB, xxi. 693. He supported Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish Church, 3, 30 Apr. 1868 and quickly distinguished himself as a gifted speaker. In his maiden speech he argued for the abolition of university theological tests on the ground that it would increase ‘the influence of real religion by liberating it from odious and unnatural restrictions’. Just as the House of Commons had admitted men ‘connected with all the prominent sects’, he argued, the universities might by admitting the ‘free breath and healthy light of inquiry and opinion’ help to smooth away ‘religious and political distinctions’.11Hansard, 13 May 1868, vol. 192, cc. 227-8; Bristol Mercury, 16 May 1868. He divided in favour of the Irish established church bill, 22 May, and voted for minority amendments to the Scottish reform bill, which proposed to either provide Glasgow with four seats, 25 May, or divide the borough into three electoral districts, 28 May. Regarding the Irish reform bill, he backed Chichester Fortescue’s proposal that Trinity College and the Queen’s University in Ireland should jointly return two members, supported the abolition of the freeman franchise and the reduction of the county franchise from £12 to £8, but abstained on the question of the ballot, 18 June 1868.

Notwithstanding strong personal attacks over his support for the disestablishment of the Irish Church, Winterbotham was said to be popular with the ‘intelligent working men’ of Stroud, and easily defeated a Conservative to take second place in the poll at the 1868 general election.12Standard, 18 Nov. 1868; Stratford, Glos. Biog. Notes, 289; Birmingham Daily Post, 19 Nov. 1868. He was regarded as holding ‘fixed and definite principles’, but also displayed ‘great charm of manners’, and over the following sessions became ‘virtually the leader of the nonconformists in the House of Commons’.13Stratford, Glos. Biog. Notes, 289; ‘Winterbotham, Henry Selfe Page’, Oxf. DNB. Convinced that restricting the access of middle classes Dissenters to the universities had caused them to be ‘too much diverted and narrowed into the production of material wealth’, so that they ‘wanted culture and refinement’, he took a prominent part in the education movement.14Hansard, 13 May 1868, vol. 192, cc. 226-7. In spite of his relative youth, he was made under-secretary of state for the home department by William Gladstone in March 1871, and came to be regarded as ‘a coming leader – a statesman of the younger generation’.15Birmingham Daily Post, 17 Mar. 1871; The Times, 22 Dec. 1873. However, his political career was cut short in December 1873 when, his health having been impaired by ‘a heavy burden of administrative work’, he visited Italy in order to convalesce and was seized with a sudden illness near Rome.16Pall Mall Gazette, 15 Dec. 1873; The Times, 22 Dec. 1873. He died within a few hours and was buried in the city’s Protestant cemetery. His personalty was sworn at under £4,000, and in his will, dated 30 January 1867, he placed his estate in trust with his brothers for the benefit of his sister Elizabeth Mary Weedon.17The Times, 23 Jan. 1874. His death was considered by Gladstone as ‘a serious loss’ to the Liberal party, and most particularly to its ‘nonconforming part’.18‘Winterbotham, Henry Selfe Page’, Oxf. DNB. For Winterbotham’s correspondence with Gladstone, see BL Gladstone MSS, Add. MS 44789. One of Winterbotham’s younger brothers, Arthur Brend Winterbotham (1838-1892), was Liberal MP for East Gloucestershire, 1885-92.19Morning Post, 4 Dec. 1885; Stenton & Lees, Who’s Who of British MPs, ii. 379.