MONCKTON-ARUNDELL, George Edward Arundell, Visct. Galway (1805-1876), of Serlby Hall, Bawtry, Nottinghamshire and 45 Lower Brook Street, London

Galway, ‘a real English gentleman’ with ‘an unswerving adherence to Conservative opinions’, represented East Retford for nearly three decades, though his brief appointment as a lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria was the only highlight of an otherwise unremarkable parliamentary career.1Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 8 Feb. 1876. He was a descendant of the Yorkshire Moncktons, whose principal estates were in the East and West Ridings until 1722, when John Monckton, the first viscount Galway in the peerage of Ireland, established himself at Serlby in Nottinghamshire. The subsequent purchase of 77 burgages at Pontefract in 1727 gave the first viscount control of the Yorkshire borough, and in 1734 he was returned to Parliament.2HP Commons, 1715-54, ii. 264. Thereafter the family dominated the representation of Pontefract. The second viscount, William Monckton, who took the additional name of Arundell after succeeding to the estates of his maternal aunt, represented the borough 1747-48 and 1754-72, while his son and nephew, the third and fourth viscounts respectively, sat for shorter periods.3Henry William Monckton-Arundell, 3rd viscount Galway sat for Pontefract, 1772-74; Robert Monckton-Arundell, 4th viscount, sat for Pontefract, 1780-83 and 1796-1802, and York, 1783-1790: HP Commons, 1754-1790, iii. 149-50. This tradition was broken by the fifth viscount, William George Monckton-Arundell, Galway’s father, who eschewed a parliamentary career and became an accomplished topographer and antiquary.4Gent. Mag. (1834), i. 437. In 1834 Galway succeeded his father in the viscountcy and inherited the Serlby estates near Bawtry, ten miles north of Retford. As a ‘very extensive landed proprietor’, he was an active member of the Nottinghamshire Chamber of Agriculture.5Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 8 Feb. 1876. In 1838 he married his cousin, Henrietta, the daughter of Robert Milnes, MP for Pontefract, 1806-18.

Galway’s entrance into political life was a hesitant one. After initially indicating to the 4^th duke of Newcastle, East Retford’s dominant landowner, in 1846 that he would offer for the borough,6Unhappy reactionary: the diaries of the fourth duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, 1822-1850 (2003), ed. R.A. Gaunt, 142. on the eve of the 1847 general election he appeared to equivocate about his candidature, prompting Newcastle to complain in his diary that:

He has behaved in the shabbiest and most harassing manner, he will and he will not [stand]. I shall be very glad if another shall be chosen instead of him – he does not merit an honor which he does nothing to obtain. I suspect that he will seldom vote as we should wish.7Unhappy reactionary, 147.

Galway, however, eventually opted to stand, and with little prospect of securing an alternative Conservative candidate, Newcastle, after further meetings with Galway, gave him his support.8Ibid., 147. After staunchly advocating the merits of agricultural protection, he was returned unopposed.9The Times, 29 July 1847.

Despite Newcastle’s concerns about his voting habits, Galway’s loyalty to the leadership of Disraeli and Derby was unquestionable. He was present at a private dinner hosted by Disraeli in July 1848 which sought to heal Conservative rifts, and in the Commons he followed him into the division lobby on all major issues.10The dinner in question was the first time Derby and Disraeli met socially: A. Hawkins, The forgotten prime minister: the 14th earl of Derby (2007), i. 347. A steady attender in his first Parliament, his occasional interventions in debate were noteworthy only for their brevity and his propensity for moving adjournments.11In the 1849 session he was present for 42 out of 219 divisions: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. It was later said that ‘his parliamentary career was not marked by any brilliancy of oratorical ability’.12Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 8 Feb. 1876. He spoke in support of the short-lived Derby ministry’s county elections bill, 26 Apr. 1852, but insisted that persons travelling great distances to vote (which was the case in the large agricultural borough of East Retford) should be allowed to be given some refreshment, 7 May 1852.

Following his appointment as a lord-in-waiting to Queen Victoria in March 1852, Galway stood for re-election and declared his unwavering loyalty to Derby, whose ministry ‘had the right to ask [for] fair play at the hands of the county and its opponents’. Although dismissive of the benefits of free trade, he admitted that it would be a ‘folly’ to reintroduce agricultural protection. He saved his vitriol on the issue for an attack on Cobden, whom he labelled ‘an almost bankrupt calico printer’.13Nottinghamshire Guardian, 25 Mar. 1852. He was returned unopposed and re-elected four months later at the 1852 general election, when he reiterated his support for the government and attacked the effects of the equalisation of sugar duties.14Ibid., 1, 8 July 1852.

A more frequent attender in his second Parliament, Galway voted against Villiers’s resolution praising corn law repeal, but backed Palmerston’s subsequent resolution on free trade, 26 Nov. 1852.15In the 1853 session he was present for 98 out of 257 divisions and in 1856 he was present for 66 out of 198: Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 14. He was in the minority for Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852, and thereafter divided with the Conservative leader on all major issues, including his criticism of the prosecution of the Crimean war, 25 May 1855, and his motion to abolish income tax in 1860, 23 Feb. 1857. He voted for Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.

Galway’s speeches increased a little in length in this period, but lacked any impact. He spoke out in opposition to the Aberdeen ministry’s succession duty bill, which proposed to increase the tax placed on the acquisition of property by inheritance, calling it ‘downright robbery’, 16 June 1853, but his amendment to limit the operation of the proposed legislation until 1860 was defeated by 195 votes to 125, 7 July 1853. He also spoke at greater length in opposition to the poor law amendment (no. 2) bill, criticising the move to abolish Gilbert Unions and the transfer of additional powers from boards of guardians to the poor law board, 3 July 1856.

At the 1857 general election Galway was unequivocal in his support for the Conservative leadership, describing himself as ‘a party man’ who ‘could not act independently’ but behaved ‘honestly’. He had little time for those who were not party men, as ‘they never know where they had him’.16Nottinghamshire Guardian, 2 Apr. 1857. He criticised Palmerston for dissolving Parliament ‘on a paltry miserable Chinese squabble’, and declared that the premier only adhered to the principle of ‘keeping himself in office’. He called for a re-adjustment of the income tax, the voluntary principle in education and the abolition of the Maynooth grant.17Ibid. Re-elected without opposition, he opposed Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858.

Galway’s fervent loyalty to Derby extended to a deep mistrust of the Peelites. Following the fall of the Liberal government in February 1858, he privately warned against bringing Gladstone into a newly-formed Derby ministry, writing to William Jolliffe, ‘what rascals these Peelites are, a thorn in the side of both parties. Shall we lose much by G. not joining?’18Galway to Joliffe, 24 Feb. 1858?, cited in Hawkins, The forgotten prime minister, ii. 162. He backed the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, and at the 1859 general election stated his opposition to a separate £10 county franchise.19Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 May 1859. Returned unopposed, thereafter he consistently voted against proposed changes to the county and borough franchises, opposed church rate abolition, 14 May 1862, and backed Disraeli’s censure of government policy during the Danish war, 8 July 1864. His handful of interventions in debate during Palmerston’s second administration reflected a staunch defence of the landed interest. He spoke out against the railways construction facilities bill as he felt it put the wishes of the railway companies above those of the landowner, 9 June 1864, and he chaired the select committee which rejected the South Kensington new road bill on the grounds that ‘it did not justify such interference with property’, 16 June 1865.20Galway also sat on the Bath election committee, and select committees on the railways (guards’ and passengers’ communication) bill, and the metropolis subways bill: PP 1857 sess. 2 (240), v. 19; PP 1866 (465), xi. 613; PP 1867 (495), xi. 205.

Re-elected for a sixth consecutive time without opposition at the 1865 general election, Galway gave lukewarm support to an extension of the franchise, arguing that ‘mere numbers’ must not be allowed to ‘predominate over the just claims of education, intelligence, and property’.21The Times, 1 July 1865. He voted against the Liberal government’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and followed Disraeli into the division lobby on most major clauses of the Derby ministry’s representation of the people bill. On the question of women’s enfranchisement, he urged John Stuart Mill to withdraw his motion, arguing that it would ‘place many gentlemen who were great admirers of the fair sex in an embarrassing position’. Arguing that that ‘every one acquainted with elections was aware of the influence which was exercised by women’, he urged Mill to ‘stick to the Ballot, and leave the women alone’. He ultimately abstained from voting on the issue, 20 May 1867. He also backed the ultimately successful proposal to exclude East Retford, along with three extensive rural boroughs, from the clause to prohibit payment of expenses in boroughs for the conveyance of voters, 4 July 1867, and in a subsequent debate on the boundary bill, successfully argued that his borough’s parliamentary boundaries could not be altered ‘in justice to all the inhabitants’, 11 June 1868.

Galway was returned unopposed at the 1868 and 1874 general elections before dying in harness at the family seat of Serlby Hall in February 1876. His immediate cause of death was inflammation of the bladder, though one obituary suggested that his unwavering ‘relish’ for fox hunting ‘in all kinds of weather’ had ultimately broken ‘his ordinarily athletic frame’.22Sheffield and Rotherham Independent, 8 Feb. 1876. He had been master of the Grove hunt from 1848 until his death. Galway was succeeded by his only son, George Edmund Milnes Monckton-Arundell, Conservative MP for Nottinghamshire North 1872-85, who in 1887 was created Baron Monckton of Serlby. Galway’s correspondence is held in the Manuscripts and Special Collections at the University of Nottingham.23Nottingham Univ. Lib., Special Collections, Ga C and Ga 2.