WILLOUGHBY, John Pollard (1799-1866), of Baldon House, Oxfordshire.

A long-serving East Indian civil servant and director of the East India Company, Willoughby’s brief parliamentary career, during which he spoke at length on the 1857 and 1858 government of India bills, displayed his expertise on the subject and led to his appointment to the newly-formed council of India. Alluding to Willoughby’s boasting about his extraordinary administrative work ethic, John Bright commented ‘everyone knew that the hon. gentleman had written more despatches than any many living, but had any one ever read those despatches?’1Hansard, 11 June 1858, vol. 150, c. 1980., 11 June 1858. Willoughby’s colleague, Gathorne Hardy, a future Conservative cabinet minister, later reflected that ‘he was better with his pen than with his tongue, [and] too fat to canvass comfortably, but we were excellent friends while our association lasted’.2A.E. Gathorne-Hardy, Gathorne Hardy, first earl of Cranbrook, a memoir (2 vols., 1910), i. 108.

The son of a Bristol merchant turned landed gentleman, after a brief spell in the navy Willoughby attended the East India Civil Service (E.I.C.S.) college at Haileybury, where he won numerous prizes.3Memorials of old Haileybury college (1894), 539. He entered the E.I.C.S. in 1817, and resided in Bombay for the next thirty-five years, serving as assistant resident and acting resident at Baroda, 1819-29, then secretary to the Bombay government, 1835-46, which he subsequently joined as a member, 1846-51. ‘At a very early age he attained a very high reputation as one of the best civil servants in India’. He was ‘a man of extraordinary industry and energy, most earnest in redressing wrongs and exposing misconduct, and clever beyond most in his power of gleaning information and of condensing facts’.4Gent. Mag. (1866), ii. 691.

Willoughby returned to Britain in 1851. The following year he offered for the venal borough of Leominster, on Conservative, protectionist and Protestant principles.5Hereford Journal, 25 Feb. 1852. He declared that ‘free trade without reciprocity ... is suicidal and destructive of the permanent interests of the British empire’.6Ibid. He also denounced the Pope’s establishment of a Catholic hierarchy in England, or ‘papal aggression’. He denied that the East India Company (EIC) possessed a monopoly, which had been largely abolished in 1813, and ‘wholly ceased’ in 1833.7Hereford Times, 10 July 1852. He was, however, beaten to second place by a Liberal lawyer John George Phillimore.

Willoughby became a director of the EIC in 1854, and was returned unopposed for Leominster at the 1857 general election, ousting Phillimore after a rancorous campaign. Phillimore, a leading parliamentary critic of the Company, described his vanquisher as a ‘monopolist’.8Hereford Journal, 25 Mar. 1857. Willoughby carped that Phillimore’s animus against the EIC arose from his being passed over for the professorship of law at Haileybury, and was therefore motivated by personal pique rather than political principle.9Hereford Times, 28 Mar. 1857. He rejected his opponent’s claim that the authorities had sanctioned the use of torture by native troops in Madras. He also objected to the secret ballot as ‘opposed to the manly feeling of the Saxon mind’, and advocated law and penal reform, and a compromise settlement to the church rates question.10Ibid.

In his first session Willoughby cast votes against the Maynooth grant, Jewish relief and the ballot, 21 May, 15, 30 June 1857. He made his maiden speech in support of the Palmerston government’s Indian judicial reforms, 26 June 1857, caustically remarking that the ‘three evils which most seriously afflicted India were English law, English lawyers, and English language as the medium for the administration of justice’. He also backed the government’s conduct of the Persian war and defended the Company’s record in promoting railway development, 16, 17 July 1857.

Willoughby was a staunch parliamentary spokesman for the EIC. Indeed, it is likely that he entered the Commons for a venal borough so that he would be in a position to defend and promote the East India interest. After the Indian mutiny had been suppressed, he praised Lord Canning, governor-general of India, for his ‘calm and unruffled’ handling of the crisis, 8 Feb. 1858. However, he offered his ‘decided opposition’ to the Palmerston ministry’s government of India bill, which proposed placing India directly under the Crown, ending the system of double government by the board of control and the Company, 18 Feb. 1858. In a lengthy defence of Company rule, Willoughby argued that the EIC was independent of party machinations and unaffected by changes of government. Even though he had been singled out for appointment to the proposed council, he argued that such a body, selected by the government, would be a poor substitute for the check traditionally provided by the independently-elected court of directors of the EIC. Accordingly he divided against the bill, but was absent from the division on the conspiracy to murder bill the following day which ousted Palmerston’s government.

However, as Derby’s new administration quickly introduced its own proposals to end Company rule, Willoughby took a more constructive line, perhaps also because the measures came from his own party. Noting that India had had three presidents of the board of control in the last three months, 14 June 1858, Willoughby argued that the council would assume great significance in maintaining continuity in policy and administration between governments. Accordingly, the council required men of ‘knowledge, experience and independence’. He later argued that it would be inconvenient if only the secretary of state, rather than any of the new council, could sign despatches, 2 July 1858, and called for the government to assume the liabilities of the EIC. Willoughby was also active on committees relating to India. He served on the 1858 select committee on colonisation and settlement, which produced four reports but no recommendations, and in the same year on the inquiry that commended the EIC for its prompt transportation of troops to put down the mutiny.11PP 1857-58 (261), vii, pt. I, p. 3; 1857-58 (326), vii, pt. I, p. 3; 1857-58 (415), vii, pt. I, p. 375; 1857-58 (461), vii, pt. II, p. 3; 1857-58 (382), x. 511-41.

The new structure of Indian government prompted private doubts from Disraeli, however. He wrote to the Indian secretary Lord Stanley, 10 Aug. 1858 that

The more I think over yr Indian Council, the more I feel convinced it will mortify yr party & the House of Commons. No ministry ever slighted either with impunity. The Ho. of Comm. is not in the least considered in the matter.

Both Rawlinson & Willoughby wd., in all probability, have been appointed, if they had not been MPs. They are MPs because they are Directors; & are quite new men in St. Stephens.12Benjamin Disraeli to Lord Stanley, 10 Aug. 1858, qu. in Benjamin Disraeli letters, ed. M.G. Wiebe et al, vii. 227.

However, Willoughby was appointed to the new council that September, which terminated his Commons career. In 1865 he succeeded his elder brother, Sir Henry Pollard Willoughby, Conservative MP for Newcastle-under-Lyme, 1831-5, and Evesham, 1847-65, as 4th baronet. On his own death the following year the family seat of Baldon House, Oxfordshire, his personal effects sworn under £100,000, and the title passed to his only surviving son by his second marriage, Sir John Christopher Willoughby (1859-1918), 5th baronet.13National Probate Calendar, 30 Nov. 1866. On his death the baronetcy became extinct.