FOLJAMBE, Francis John Savile (1830-1917), of Osberton, Nottinghamshire of Aldwarke, nr. Rotherham, Yorkshire

Described as ‘an ardent sportsman, tall, broad-shouldered and clean of limb’, Foljambe, who possessed ‘one of those English surnames, the right pronunciation of which is the despair of all foreigners’, was a member of a politically distinguished Nottinghamshire family.1L. Jacks, The great houses of Nottinghamshire and county families (1881), 92; Evening Telegraph, 8 Feb. 1917. His great-grandfather, born Francis Moore, had taken the name Foljambe in 1758 in compliance with the will of his uncle, Thomas Foljambe, to whose estates at Aldwarke he succeeded. He was subsequently MP for Yorkshire in 1784 and Higham Ferrers 1801-07, and inherited Osberton from his wife’s uncle, Sir George Savile.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 782-3. Foljambe’s great-uncle, Henry Savile Foljambe, a banker, had been agent to the 2^nd Earl Fitzwilliam, patron of East Retford in the 1820s, while his father, George, high sheriff of Nottinghamshire in 1826, was a prominent figure in the local Reform movement and was narrowly defeated at Nottinghamshire North at the 1837 general election.3HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 800-8. Following the death of Foljambe’s mother, Harriet, his father was remarried in 1845 to Lady Selina Charlotte Jenkinson, daughter and heir of Charles Jenkinson MP, 3^rd earl of Liverpool, half-brother of the 2^nd earl, Robert Banks Jenkinson, prime minister from 1812 to 1827. Lady Selina was the widow of William Charles Wentworth Fitzwilliam, viscount Milton, Whig MP for Malton, 1832-33, and Northamptonshire North from 1833 until his death in 1835.

At the 1857 general election Foljambe stood for East Retford in the Liberal interest. He immediately established himself as a moderate, declaring that ‘he had been born and bred in the school of the Whigs and from a child to a man he had seen and admired their principles’. He defended Palmerston’s handling of events at Canton, and insisted that the ‘Chinese were the aggressors and that the insult was one which we ought not to submit to’. A staunch supporter of the established church, he opposed the abolition of church rates and warned that the opening of the British Museum on the Sabbath would be ‘disgusting to the great masses of people’.4Nottinghamshire Guardian, 2 Apr. 1857. Backed by the constituency’s dominant landowner, the Liberal 5^th duke of Newcastle, he was elected unopposed.

An occasional attender, Foljambe generally followed Palmerston into the division lobbies. He voted for the premier’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, explaining later that ‘Englishmen abhor assassination, and that bill was intended to give expression to that abhorrence’.5Nottinghamshire Guardian, 5 May 1859. At the 1859 general election he reiterated his support for Palmerston and Lord John Russell, pledging that he would support them so long as they ‘followed the hereditary school of advancement’. He appeared, though, to have little time for parliamentary reform, arguing that it was ‘not now the question of the day’ as the ‘working classes were now happy and prosperous’.6Ibid. However, following his unopposed return, he voted for Locke King’s county franchise bill, 13 Mar. 1861, and later the borough franchise bill, 8 May 1865.

Foljambe rarely spoke in the Commons and is not known to have sat on any select committees. In his first intervention in debate, he insisted that the operation of the industrial schools bill could be safely left to the discretion of magistrates, 17 June 1857. Thereafter his speeches mostly addressed local concerns, particularly electoral issues that stemmed from East Retford’s peculiar position of being a large agricultural borough. He questioned the chancellor of the exchequer over whether proposals to remove the county vote from borough freeholders would extend to cases in which ‘hundreds’ were within the limits of parliamentary boroughs (as was the case with East Retford), 10 Mar. 1859, and although he backed the Liberal ministry’s conveyance of voters bill, he warned that allowances were needed for large agricultural boroughs where voters had to walk long distances to the poll, 26 Feb. 1862.

Returned unopposed at the 1865 general election, Foljambe voted steadily with Russell’s newly formed ministry. He backed the government’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and reflecting a modification of his previous stance on church rates, he voted for their abolition, 7 Mar. 1866, and supported the tests abolition (Oxford) bill, 13 June 1866. He followed Gladstone into the division lobby on the major clauses of the Conservatives’ representation of the people bill, save for the proposal on cumulative voting, which he supported, 5 July 1867. His motion to include Doncaster in schedule B of the legislation was subsequently withdrawn, 6 June 1867. Intervening in the debate on the registration bill, he moved a clause to remedy the situation in East Retford where occupiers had been disenfranchised owing to overseers rating owners not occupiers, but this was defeated, 2 July 1868. He backed Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868.

Returned for East Retford without opposition at the 1868 general election, Foljambe continued to represent the borough, largely as a silent member, until its abolition in 1885. In 1886 he switched his political allegiance to the Liberal Unionists and sought a seat in the West Riding of Yorkshire, home of his Aldwarke estates, but was defeated at Rotherham in 1886 and Barnsley in 1892.7The Times, 6 Feb. 1917. He was made a privy councillor in November 1895.8London Gazette, 22 Nov. 1895.

Away from the Commons, Foljambe, in addition to his passion for hunting, became known as a ‘man of refined taste and established culture’, and in 1872 employed the eminent architect John Macvicar Anderson to substantially remodel Osberton Hall. He was also a successful and well-renowned breeder of Shorthorn cattle.9Jacks, The great houses of Nottinghamshire, 92.

Foljambe died at Osberton in February 1917, leaving effects valued at £45,291 5s. 9d. He was succeeded by his eldest son, George Savile, who unsuccessfully contested the Rushcliffe division of Nottinghamshire as a Liberal Unionist in 1886. Foljambe’s half-brother from his father’s second marriage, Cecil George Savile Foljambe, was Liberal MP for North Nottinghamshire 1880-85, and Mansfield 1885-92. In 1893 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Hawkesbury and in 1905, following the revival of the earldom, was made 1^st earl of Liverpool.