STANLEY MASSEY STANLEY, William Thomas (1806-1863), of Melton Mowbray, Leics. and 10 Hill Street, Berkeley Square, London, Mdx.

Remembered by Lord William Pitt Lennox as ‘one of the most popular men of his day’ and ‘a true sportsman in every sense of the word’,1W. Pitt Lennox, Celebrities I have known (2 vols., 1876), ii. 164. Massey Stanley’s cursory parliamentary career as Liberal MP for Pontefract was noteworthy only for being one of just half a dozen English Catholics to sit in the 1837 Parliament.2Derby Mercury, 30 Aug. 1837. His penchant for generous hospitality and equestrian pursuits meant that he ran up colossal debts, forcing him to sell the family’s Cheshire estates, and he died in poverty in France, where he had been confined to a lunatic asylum for many years.3N. Caine, History of the Royal Rock Beagle Hunt (1895), 135.

The Stanley family had been established at Hooton, Cheshire, since the beginning of the fifteenth century, and were ‘the parent-stock whence have sprung the noble house of Derby, and the numerous branches of the name now settled in the north of England’.4The assembled Commons (1838), 213. Sir John Stanley, 6th bt., this MP’s great-grandfather (d. 1794), had added the names Massey and subsequently Stanley to his own, giving the family the rather cumbersome title of Stanley Massey Stanley.5Burke’s peerage, baronetage and knightage (1828), 584. William Massey Stanley was usually referred to in the shorter form, which the parliamentary division lists curtailed even further, listing him as ‘Stanley, Massey’. His father Thomas inherited the baronetcy and estates at Hooton upon the death of his older brother William in 1800.6Burke’s peerage, baronetage and knightage (1890), 1289. Some accounts erroneously give the date of Sir Thomas Massey Stanley’s succession to the baronetcy as 1803, which was the year he attained his majority. Following Catholic emancipation Sir Thomas served as high sheriff of Cheshire in 1831, the first family member to do so since the seventeenth century.7Morning Post, 2 Feb. 1831.

Educated at Stonyhurst, Massey Stanley shared his father’s sporting passions. A relative wrote of Sir Thomas in 1835 that he ‘braves all wind and weather, which he never allows him to stop from hunting and shooting every day’.8P.E. Stanley, The house of Stanley: the history of an English family from the 12th century (1998), 84-5. Massey Stanley’s younger brother, Rowland Errington (a name he had taken in 1820 in accordance with the will of their maternal great-uncle) was master of the Quorn hunt, 1835-8,9W.C.A. Blew, The Quorn hunt and its masters (1899), 162. and the brothers shared ‘a remarkably good and tolerably large house’ at Melton Mowbray, renting another for the benefit of visiting friends.10W. Pitt Lennox, Drafts on my memory (1866), ii. 247. They were among those depicted in Sir Francis Grant’s acclaimed painting, The Melton Breakfast, exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1834.11S.C. Hutchison, History of the Royal Academy 1768-1968 (1968), 122.

In 1837, when he was described as ‘a gentleman of liberal principles’, Massey Stanley came forward as a candidate for Pontefract, where he was accompanied on his canvass by the retiring Liberal member, John Gully, who shared his enthusiasm for the Turf.12Leeds Mercury, cited in Preston Chronicle, 22 July 1837. On the hustings, where Gully proposed him, Massey Stanley gave ‘an able and manly defence’ of the Melbourne ministry’s policies.13Ibid.; Morning Chronicle, 26 July 1837. He secured the second seat behind a Conservative, and well ahead of the second Liberal candidate, Sir Culling Eardley Smith.

Massey Stanley is not known to have spoken in debate, and does not appear to have served on any select committees. Doubts were raised shortly after his return by a correspondent to The Times as to whether his politics were in fact ‘far more Conservative than Whiggish’, as he was believed to number among those MPs who opposed Daniel O’Connell and supported the Anglican church.14The Times, 14 Aug. 1837. A correspondent to The Standard likewise suggested that he should be considered a doubtful rather than a Whig-Radical.15The Standard, 15 Aug. 1837. However, while not an assiduous attender, Massey Stanley’s voting habits dispelled any notion that he did not support Melbourne’s ministry. He backed ministers over their Canadian policy, 7 Mar. 1838, on the education question, 20 June 1839, and against the no confidence motions of Sir John Yarde Buller, 31 Jan. 1840, and Sir Robert Peel, 4 June 1841. On the Irish church question, he voted in support of the appropriation of its surplus revenues, 15 May 1838. Dod’s parliamentary companion for 1839 confirmed that he was indeed ‘of Liberal politics’.16Dod’s parliamentary companion (1839), 164. Despite this, some obituaries inaccurately reported that he had sat for Pontefract as a Conservative: Morning Post, 30 June 1863; Gent. Mag. (1863), ii. 247. He did not, however, slavishly follow ministers into the division lobby, voting against them on the question of when slave apprenticeships should cease, 30 Mar., 28 May 1838. He divided for the ballot, 15 Feb. 1838, 18 June 1839, but opposed Charles Villiers’s motion for reconsideration of the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839. He was in the minority in support of a bill to abolish capital punishment, 5 Mar. 1840.

In May 1841 it was reported that Massey Stanley was unlikely to seek re-election at Pontefract.17The Times, 26 May 1841. There was evidently some anger that he ‘has never condescended to show his face in the borough since his election’,18Morning Post, 12 June 1841. despite having regularly spent time only a few miles away, presumably in pursuit of his sporting enthusiasms.19Morning Post, 26 June 1841. At that year’s general election he instead offered ‘on the Liberal interest’ for Berwick-upon-Tweed.20The Times, 18 June 1841. He had family connections with the area through his mother, the daughter and heiress of the late Sir Carnaby Haggerston, of Haggerston Castle, who came from ‘an ancient Roman Catholic family of great local power and influence’.21Morning Post, 15 June 1841. However, he quickly abandoned his candidature.22Newcastle Journal, 19 June 1841. This marked the end of his political ambitions, although his name was mooted as a possible candidate for Chester at the 1847 general election.23Liverpool Mercury, 22 Jan. 1847.

In August 1841, upon his father’s death ‘after a protracted illness’, Massey Stanley succeeded to the baronetcy.24The Times, 24 Aug. 1841. He inherited the family’s entailed property, centred on Hooton, and reportedly enjoyed an income of £15,000 a year. (His younger brother Rowland received the unentailed property; his sister, who was married to the Welsh MP Sir Richard Bulkeley Williams Bulkeley, 10th bt., received £10,000; and his youngest brother John received £2,000.) ^{25The Era, 5 Sept. 1841.} Pitt Lennox, a regular visitor to Hooton, contrasted Massey Stanley’s conduct as ‘a good-humoured indolent man of fashion’ in London with his life in Cheshire, where he ‘became a practical country gentleman, entirely conversant with the management of his estate’.26Pitt Lennox, Drafts on my memory, ii. 246. He noted with amusement that ‘here was a man that in London would have gone home to change a soiled glove, or boots with a speck of dirt upon them, grubbing up dead roots... or feeding his pigs from a very unsavoury bucket’.27Pitt Lennox, Celebrities I have known, ii. 171.

Massey Stanley’s developments on his estates included building a hotel in 1845 by the Eastham Ferry, which took passengers to Liverpool and Chester.28N. Pevsner & E. Hubbard, The buildings of England. Cheshire (1971), 206. In 1847 he sold off eighty acres at Eastham, where he was impropriator of the living,29S. Lewis, A topographical dictionary of England (1844), ii. 128. for building plots.30Liverpool Mercury, 22 June 1847. His main activity, however, remained his sporting pursuits. At a dinner in May 1846 he wryly admitted when referring to John Laird, the founding father of Birkenhead, that ‘where he (Sir William) would have raised a gorse cover, Mr. Laird had founded a city’.31Caine, History of the Royal Rock Beagle Hunt, 138. Two years earlier, at the laying of the foundation stone for Birkenhead’s new docks, Massey Stanley had observed of the area’s rapid development that ‘they had somewhat interfered with his sport, for they had built houses in all directions’, but since stone from his estates was being used for construction, ‘although he might be a loser of his sport he should be a gainer in his pocket’.32Liverpool Mercury, 25 Oct. 1844. His sporting interests included acting as master of the Hooton hounds,33Caine, History of the Royal Rock Beagle Hunt, 136. keeping ‘a small, but neat stud’ of horses,34The Museum of Foreign Literature and Science (1833), xxiii. 430. and building a private racecourse at Stourton, a few miles from Hooton.35Cheshire Observer, 10 July 1875. He served as high sheriff of Cheshire in 1845.36London Gazette, 4 Feb. 1845. He regularly went shooting in the Scottish Highlands,37It was reported in 1846 that he had left Scotland earlier than planned that year, suffering from ‘inflammation of the eyes, supposed to have been occasioned by the discharge of his gun’: Morning Post, 2 Oct. 1846. and also attended horse-racing events in France.38The Times, 23 Apr. 1846; Morning Post, 25 Jan. 1847.

Massey Stanley was evidently a generous host at Hooton, where his guests included Prince George of Cambridge,39Morning Post, 12 Nov. 1845; Freeman’s Journal, 13 Jan. 1847. and the exiled Louis-Napoleon Bonaparte (the future Napoleon III), ‘an intimate friend’.40Daily News, 16 Oct. 1872. Pitt Lennox recalled that it ‘was second to no other ancestral home of England. The establishment, both in house and stables, was excellent, the living faultless. There was no want of amusement for the guests’.41Pitt Lennox, Drafts on my memory, ii. 246-7. He was also a benevolent landlord, distributing five oxen, 1,500 loaves and £100 worth of warm clothing on his estates at Christmas 1846.42Morning Post, 25 Dec. 1846. However, his extravagant lifestyle, combined with gambling debts, landed him in serious financial difficulties.43Stanley, House of Stanley, 85. As early as 1842, while at Epsom races, he narrowly avoided being arrested at the behest of one of his creditors by the sheriff of Surrey.44The Times, 6 June 1842. In December 1847, being ‘irretrievably’ indebted,45Morning Post, 27 Feb. 1852. it was reported that he had left for France, and a receiver of rents was appointed for his estates.46The Times, 24 Dec. 1847; Liverpool Mercury, 31 Dec. 1847. Avoiding his creditors and seeking ‘the more genial climate of the south of Europe’ for the benefit of his health, he is not known to have returned to England thereafter.47Gent. Mag. (1863), ii. 247. Having spent the summer of 1848 in Paris, he visited Genoa that August: Morning Post, 9 June 1848, 31 Aug. 1848. In November 1848 he was proclaimed an outlaw at Middlesex sheriffs’ court.48The Times, 10 Nov. 1848. A court case involving his former solicitor – who made a claim for £20,000 against him – indicated that his debts in 1847 stood at between £300,000 and £400,000.49The Times, 27 Feb. 1852.

In 1848-9 Massey Stanley’s estates were sold off in various portions, with Hooton Hall and 800 acres being purchased by a Liverpool banker, R.C. Naylor, in November 1849 for £80,000.50The Times, 29 Jan. 1849; Morning Post, 22 Nov. 1849; Liverpool Mercury, cited in The Standard, 28 Nov. 1849; Cheshire Observer, 10 July 1875. The house at Hooton was demolished in 1932: http://lh.matthewbeckett.com/houses/lh_cheshire_hootonhall.html Restored to power in France, Louis-Napoleon assisted his friend by giving him ‘a position of trust and responsibility in connection with the royal hunt at St. Cloud’. However, failing health and ‘indications of mental weakness’ left Massey Stanley unable to perform this role,51Cheshire Observer, 10 July 1875. and in 1850 it was reported that he was ‘confined in a lunatic asylum in Paris’.52Liverpool Mercury, 16 July 1850. He does not appear to have been released from this establishment,53Reports in 1852 indicated that he was still in ‘a Maison de Santé in France as a lunatic’ at that date: Morning Post, 27 Feb. 1852. for reports of his death in Paris in June 1863 after a short illness54The Times, 30 June 1863. noted that ‘at his death and long previously his mind was much impaired’.55The Standard, 30 June 1863. His will was proved ‘under a nominal sum’ by his youngest brother John, 25 Dec. 1871, to whom he left what little remained of his estate.56Daily News, 29 Dec. 1871. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his younger brother Rowland Errington (1809-1875), upon whose death the title passed to John (1810-1893), who also adopted the name Errington in 1876. The title became extinct when John died in 1893.57Stanley, House of Stanley, 86.