HILDYARD, Thomas Blackborne Thoroton (1821-1888), of 24 St. James’s Street, London; Flintham Hall, Newark, Nottinghamshire and Winestead Hall, Yorkshire

A young country squire with a penchant for the hunt and a weakness for rash spending, Hildyard was a zealous protectionist who represented the southern division of his native Nottinghamshire on two separate occasions. His father, Colonel Thomas Blackborne Thoroton, had taken the additional name of Hildyard by royal licence in 1815, in compliance with the will of his wife’s uncle, Sir Robert D’Arcy Hildyard, 4^th bt., of Winestead Hall, Yorkshire.1Marquis of Ruvugny and Raineval Staff, The Plantagenet Roll of the blood royal: the Mortimer-Percy volume (2001), 308. Sir Robert D’arcy Hildyard’s father, Sir Robert Hildyard, 3rd bt., had sat for Great Bedwyn, 1754-61; Sir Robert Hildyard, 2nd bt., had represented Hedon, 1701-2: www.historyofparliamentonline.org. Following his father’s death in 1830, when Hildyard was only nine years old, the family’s heavily mortgaged estates were administered by his mother and uncles until he came of age.2http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/family/thorotonhildyard/biographies/biographyofthomasblackbornethorotonhildyard(1821-1888).aspx.

At the 1846 South Nottinghamshire by-election, triggered by the earl of Lincoln’s acceptance of office in Peel’s short-lived repeal ministry, Hildyard overcame accusations of youth and inexperience to defeat the heir of one of the county’s major magnates.3J.R. Fisher, ‘Issues and influence: two by-elections in South Nottinghamshire in the mid-nineteenth century’, Historical Journal, 24 (1981), 155-65. Backed by the influential earl of Chesterfield and, most controversially, Lincoln’s own father, the duke of Newcastle, Hildyard was unrelenting in his denunciations of repeal of the corn laws, and enjoyed the active support of the local Protectionist society.4The Times, 11, 14, 21, 23 Feb. 1846. After a convincing performance at the nomination, Newcastle noted in his diary that:

This will help stop Lincoln’s mouth with regard to him and he will make no more scurrilous remarks upon him and his youth.5Unhappy reactionary: the diaries of the fourth duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1822-1850 (2003), ed. R.A. Gaunt, 124.

Following an extremely bitter campaign that captured national attention, Hildyard was elected with a commanding majority. He duly voted against repeal of the corn laws, 27 Mar. 1846, 15 May 1846.

Hildyard’s maiden speech in the Commons was a direct response to the continuing fallout from his election campaign. Following newspaper reports that Lincoln (who after his defeat had quickly come in for Falkirk Burghs) had accused Hildyard of imputing bribery to him on the hustings, Hildyard denied that he had implied that Lincoln was personally involved, but accepted he had charged the Nottingham Free Trade Committee with bribery, and ‘I ought not to have done so’. In the same speech, he remained defiant towards Lincoln, however, and mocked his allegiance to Peel’s ministry:

I have only to add, that I trust my fate, which he seems so much to pity, may be the fate of many of my friends at the next general election. I trust then to see them with majorities of 500 or 600 over many of the 112 Conservative supporters of the Government—over many who are now sitting on the Treasury benches against the will of their constituents.6Hansard, 12 May 1846, vol. 86, cc. 416-21.

Returned unopposed at the 1847 general election when he restated his support for protection, Hildyard was largely a silent member thereafter, intervening only in a debate on the budget to ask a technical question concerning the window tax, 17 Feb. 1851.7Morning Post, 6 Aug. 1847. His attendance was also lacklustre, and he is not known to have sat on any select committees.8In the 1849 session he was present for 36 out of 219 divisions: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. Reflecting his strong attachments to Protestantism and the agricultural interest, he voted against the Catholic relief bill, 8 Dec. 1847, and supported repeal of the malt tax, 8 May 1851. On most other major issues he followed Disraeli into the division lobby.

With two Conservative candidates already in the field for South Nottinghamshire, Hildyard announced his intention to ‘retire into private life’ at the dissolution in 1852.9Nottinghamshire Guardian, 1 Apr. 1852. Thereafter he committed himself to the Italianate extension of Flintham Hall, under the direction of the architect Thomas Chambers Hine, but his exuberant spending forced him to live abroad, and let Flintham Hall out to tenants.10http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/family/thorotonhildyard/biographies/biographyofthomasblackbornethorotonhildyard(1821-1888).aspx. With his financial affairs somewhat stabilised, he had returned to England by the beginning of the 1860s, and was appointed high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1862.

In June 1866 Hildyard came in for the vacancy at South Nottinghamshire created by the succession of Lord Stanhope as the 7^th earl of Chesterfield. At the nomination he reiterated his earlier calls for repeal of the malt tax, and argued that the Liberal ministry’s reform bill was simply the work of John Bright.11The Times, 19 June 1866. Remaining a silent member, he voted with Disraeli on the major clauses of the representation of the people bill, and opposed Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868.

Hildyard was re-elected for South Nottinghamshire at the 1868 general election and continued to sit for the division until its abolition in 1885, whereupon he retired from public life. He had never, though, fully escaped from his financial difficulties, and in 1884 he sold the remaining family estates at Winestead. Flintham Hall was put up for sale in 1885 but no buyer was found. With his health failing, he spent the majority of his retirement ‘on the shores of the Mediterranean’.12Nottingham Evening Post, 19 Mar. 1888.

Hildyard died at his London residence of 11 Moreton Gardens, South Kensington, in March 1888, leaving estate valued at £4,555, 12s. 11d.13England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 10 May 1888. By coincidence, George Storer, who had represented South Nottinghamshire alongside him from 1874 to 1885, died the same day. Hildyard was remembered as ‘a thorough sportsman of the old type’ who ‘rode straight to the hounds, and was regarded as a capital shot’.14Nottingham Evening Post, 19 Mar. 1888. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas, who moved back into Flintham Hall in 1895, but spent much of his life paying off the mortgages.15http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/manuscriptsandspecialcollections/collectionsindepth/family/thorotonhildyard/biographies/biographyofthomasblackbornethorotonhildyard(1821-1888).aspx. Hildyard’s papers are in the Thoroton Hildyard Collection, held by the University of Nottingham.16Nottingham Univ. Lib., Special Collections, THF.