BURR, Daniel Higford Duvall (1811-1885), of Gayton Hall, Herefordshire

A Conservative landed gentleman, Burr did little of note in his only parliament after his return for Hereford in 1837. Liberal critics sarcastically commented on his silence in the House, saying that ‘Hereford has made him honourable, but … he has not made himself audible’.1Hereford Times, 19 June 1841. Elected on an anti-new poor law cry, it was Burr’s misfortune that his voting record on this issue was subjected to searching scrutiny by a famous critic of the measure and found wanting. This proved to be a contributing factor to Burr’s defeat in 1841. This episode provides a good example of how the systematic recording of parliamentary divisions (as well as speeches and committee attendance) and the expansion of print culture after 1832 allowed the media and electors to monitor and hold MPs to account to a greater extent than ever before.

The son of a soldier in the East India Company’s army, Burr inherited a portion of the Herefordshire estates of Frances, dowager duchess of Norfolk, on the death of his mother in 1836.2Reading Mercury, 5 Dec. 1885; W.R. Williams, The parliamentary history of the county of Hereford, 1213-1896 (1896), 105. The following year he came forward as a Conservative for Hereford and was elected in second place. He accused the Whigs of seeking to ‘ruin and subvert’ the established church, promised support for established institutions and objected to the ballot as ‘unmanly’.3Hereford Journal, 26 July 1837. The Liberal Hereford Times lamented the return of a ‘nullity’, who was an ‘ultra-Tory’ and a ‘thorough Lyndhurstite’.4Hereford Times, 29 July 1837.

Burr does not appear to have made any speeches nor to have served on any select committees. He divided with the Conservatives in the key party votes on Canadian policy and Irish church reform, 7 Mar., 15 May 1838, and supported Henry Goulburn for the speakership, 27 May 1839. He repeatedly cast votes against the repeal of the corn laws and also the ballot. He opposed the second reading of the poor law amendment bill, 8 Feb. 1841, and also that every order of the commissioners should be ‘deemed a general rule’, 26 Mar. 1841. After voting in the majorities that defeated Baring’s budget and Melbourne’s government on the motion of no confidence, 18 May, 4 June 1841, Burr stood for re-election at Hereford.

Burr’s voting behaviour was little different to other Conservative MPs who had been elected on an anti-poor law platform in 1837, and who had contented themselves with occasional votes against the commission’s powers. Unfortunately for Burr, his parliamentary record on this issue was subjected to searching scrutiny and criticism by George Robert Wythen Baxter, a native of Hereford and author of the famous anti-new poor law tract The Book of the Bastilles (1841). Spurred into action by a handbill issued by Burr’s party declaring ‘No Bastilles’, Baxter published a comprehensive summary of Burr’s absences from important divisions on the poor law.5Hereford Times, 19 June 1841. Indeed, Baxter noted that Burr had opposed Fielden’s motion to give the committee of the whole House the power to repeal the 1834 Act, 29 Mar. 1841. Concluding his scathing critique, Baxter declared to the electors, ‘I only ask you to read the forgoing, and then vote for the NULLITY, Higford Burr – if you can’.6Hereford Times, 26 June 1841. Burr received a poor hearing at the nomination, despite having denounced the Whigs’ proposed low fixed duty on corn as amounting to ‘nothing more than taking three pence off the bread and six pence off the wages’.7Hereford Times, 29 May 1841, 26 June 1841. He was, however, roundly defeated.

In 1849 Burr purchased the Aldermaston estate in Berkshire from the Congreve family and erected a ‘magnificent new mansion in the antique style’.8The Times, 2 Dec. 1885. He served as high sheriff of Berkshire in 1851 and the following year offered for Salisbury as a Derbyite Conservative, although by then he had abandoned agricultural protection as he did not think reinstating the corn laws was practical.9Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 24 Apr. 1852, 1 May 1852. He finished bottom of the poll, but came forward for Abingdon at a by-election in December 1852, when he was narrowly defeated.10McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 3, 256; Reading Mercury, 13, 20 Nov. 1852, 4 Dec. 1852.

Burr made no further attempt to re-enter Parliament. On his death in 1885 after a ‘painful surgical operation’, he was succeeded by his eldest son Higford, who assumed the old family name of Higford, and inherited Aldermaston and a personal estate sworn under £106,083.11Reading Mercury, 5 Dec. 1885; National Probate Calendar, 6 Jan. 1886.