HENNIKER-MAJOR, John, 4th Bar. Henniker [I] (1801-1870), of 6 Grafton Street, London; Thornham Hall, Eye, Suffolk

Henniker-Major, who was known by his Irish title Baron Henniker, was one of the ‘free trade converts’ who resigned their seat in 1846 after struggling with ‘both their consciences and constituents’.1N. Gash, Sir Robert Peel (1972), 571. Born into a family with a long record of parliamentary service, he was the great-grandson of Sir John Henniker (1724-1803), MP for Sudbury then Dover, who in 1781 had succeeded his father-in-law, Sir John Major, MP for Scarborough, 1761-68, and in 1800 had been made an Irish peer.2HP Commons, 1754-1790, ii. 607-9; iii. 99. Sir John Henniker’s son, John Henniker-Major (1752-1821), had sat for Steyning, Rutland and Stamford, and it was his unwavering loyalty to Pitt that had secured an Irish barony for his father.3G. Goodwin, ‘Major, John Henniker-, second Baron Henniker (1752-1821)’, rev. R. H. Sweet, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 179-80. In 1821 Henniker-Major was succeeded in the barony by his nephew, John Minnet Henniker, this Member’s father, who assumed the additional surname of Major by royal licence, 27 May 1822. Following an education at Eton and Cambridge, where he excelled as an oarsman, Henniker was called to the bar in 1824, but, completely content pursuing the existence of a ‘country gentleman’ on the family’s Suffolk estates, he never practised, though he ingratiated himself further into county life by serving as a magistrate for Suffolk, Norfolk and Essex.4 Ipswich Journal, 23 Apr. 1870.

At the 1832 general election Henniker accepted a requisition from 1,200 electors to stand in the Conservative interest for the newly-created division of Suffolk East.5 Bury and Norwich Post, 5 Dec. 1832. He presented himself as a moderate, pledging his support for church and state while insisting that he was ‘not averse to certain alterations’, particularly a reform of the tithe system. He also called for the abolition of slavery and championed the amelioration of the labouring classes, ‘an object he had greatly at heart’.6Ibid., 12 Dec. 1852. However, returned at the top of the poll, his votes in his first Parliament did little to suggest that he had progressive tendencies. He voted against the removal of Jewish disabilities, 22 May 1833, and was absent for the vote on shortening slave apprenticeships, 24 July 1833.7R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834), 22-3. He did, though, backcurrency reform, 24 Apr. 1833, and, through the presentation of petitions and in the division lobby, was consistent in his support for a repeal of the malt tax. Echoing his stated concern for the plight of the rural labourer, he moved the second reading of a bill respecting the employment of the poor in Bosmere, Suffolk, 19 Feb. 1833. He sat on the 1833 select committee on the state of agriculture.8PP 1833 (612), v. 2.

At the 1835 general election Henniker stated that he had not been a factious opponent of the late Whig government, a claim given some credence by his vote for Lord Althorp’s motion to replace church rates with a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834. However, his opposition to a motion to allow dissenters to graduate at universities belied his insistence that he had ‘an honest sympathy for the conscientious dissenter, and would vote for the redress of his real grievances’.9 Parliamentary test book (1835), 80; Bury and Norwich Post, 14 Jan. 1835. Re-elected at the top of the poll, he divided with the ministerial minority on the speakership, 19 Feb, 1835, and the address, 26 Feb. 1835. He opposed Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue which brought down Peel’s short-lived ministry, and thereafter voted with the Conservative opposition on all major issues, a trend that continued following his unopposed return at the 1837 general election.10 Ipswich Journal, 29 July, 5 Aug. 1837.He very rarely spoke in his second and third Parliaments, intervening in debate only to support two churchwardens in Bungay, Suffolk, whose pursuit of a local man who had refused to pay his church rates had been criticised, 25 May 1835, and to defend the actions of the 1837-38 select committee on the Shaftesbury election petition, on which he had sat, 9 Apr. 1838.11PP 1837-38 (290), xii. 440.

Henniker backed Peel’s motion of no confidence in Melbourne’s ministry, 4 June 1841, and at the subsequent general election was uncompromising in his attack on the fallen administration, describing them as ‘vacillating, inconsistent, weak and unworthy’.12 Standard, 10 July 1841. He was particularly critical of their behaviour towards the agricultural interest, and unequivocally opposed a repeal of the corn laws. Following a bitter contest, he was re-elected in first place.13Ibid. Local matters were at the heart of his handful of contributions to debate in his fourth Parliament. Addressing a recent spate of arson in rural Norfolk and Suffolk, he rejected any social explanations as to their cause. He denied that the crimes were due to the low level of education in those counties and asserted that ‘it had no more to do with the Poor Laws than it had with any honourable Member of the House’, 13 July 1844. He also insisted that in the areas where the conflagrations were most numerous, ‘the greatest kindness had prevailed towards the labouring class’, 19 July 1844. He continued to follow Peel into the division lobby on most major issues, including for the Maynooth grant, though he voted for Philip Miles’s amendment to the sugar duties bill, 17 June 1844.

As Conservative Member for a predominantly rural county, Henniker had a strong relationship with Suffolk’s influential agricultural interest and he consistently voted to maintain the corn laws, 26 June 1844, 10 June 1845. However, following Peel’s introduction of the bill for their repeal, 27 Jan. 1846, Henniker too began to have a change of heart, and he was notable by his absence from a mass open air meeting of the East Suffolk Agricultural Protection Society held the same month. He sent a letter of apology, but unlike the other correspondence from those unable to attend, he did not give his support to the meeting.14 Ipswich Journal, 17 Jan. 1846. In February 1846 he issued an address stating that having heard Peel’s arguments, he was now ‘doubtful in regard to my previous convictions’, and having previously pledged himself to maintain the corn laws, he could no longer ‘conscientiously perform my duty’ and had ‘no alternative but to resign’.15Ipswich Journal, 7 Feb. 1846. He duly took the Chiltern Hundreds, 5 Feb. 1846.

Away from the Commons, Henniker, from his estates at Eye, remained a permanent fixture of county life, and in December 1856, with the corn law question long settled, he was the natural choice of candidate for the vacancy at Suffolk East, created by the death of the sitting Member Edward Gooch, who had himself replaced Henniker in 1846. Resurrecting his earlier image of a politician who would uphold the constitution while favouring ‘progress and reform’, he described himself as a ‘Liberal Conservative’ who would ‘go perfectly free and independent to the House of Commons’.16Ibid., 6 Dec. 1856; Bury and Norwich Post, 31 Dec. 1856. Alluding to his resignation ten years earlier, he explained that he had been ‘determined not to betray those who had sent me to represent them in Parliament’.17Ibid. He was returned unopposed and swiftly re-elected, again without opposition, at the 1857 general election when, despite his vote in favour of Cobden’s censure motion concerning the events at Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, he insisted that he had not intended to rebuke Palmerston’s ministry, to which Britain was indebted for successfully terminating the Crimean war.18 Daily News, 2 Apr. 1857.

Though he described himself as a ‘Liberal Conservative’, Henniker followed Disraeli into the division lobby on all major issues, including for the Derby ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859. Henniker condemned the bill’s defeat in his subsequent election address, laying the blame squarely on a ‘dexterous party manoeuvre’ by the Liberal opposition.19 Bury and Norwich Post, 26 Apr. 1859.The ensuing campaign, in which he was noticeably evasive on the question of the 40s.freeholder franchise, was a hostile one, but he was comfortably returned at the top of the poll.20 Ipswich Journal, 7 May 1859. Thereafter he divided with the Conservative opposition on most major issues. He was in minorities for Du Cane’s motion criticising the commercial treaty with France, 24 Feb. 1860, Puller’s amendment to Gladstone’s resolution to equalise the customs and excise duty on paper, 6 Aug. 1860, and Disraeli’s censure of the government’s policy on the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864. An occasional attender during his second spell as Member for Suffolk East, his only contribution of note was to successfully insert a clause into the tithe commutation bill, which aimed to eradicate the problem of rent being double charged owing to disputed boundaries between adjoining parishes, 15 June 1860.

At the 1865 general election Henniker, who had seemingly given up any pretence of being free from party ties, launched a scathing attack on the Liberal government for its failure to address the reform question, though beyond praising the Derby ministry’s defeated 1859 reform bill, he declined to offer his own thoughts on the issue.21 Daily News, 18 July 1865. Returned unopposed, he voted against the Russell ministry’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and backed Stanley’s amendment to postpone its county franchise clause, 7 June 1866. He was absent for the critical vote on the Adullamite amendment in favour of a rating clause, 18 June 1866. Following the return of Derby to the premiership, his loyalty was rewarded by the upgrading of his Irish barony to a United Kingdom title: he entered the Lords as Baron Hartismere, 13 July 1866.

Hartismere died at his London residence in April 1870, following a sustained bout of bronchitis and congestion of the lungs.22 Ipswich Journal, 23 Apr. 1870. He was remembered as a benevolent landlord and for his ‘certain, clear-headed common sense and a genuine conscientiousness’.23Ibid.His death was also the opportunity for some historical revision by the local Conservative press. In its obituary of Hartismere, the Ipswich Journal praised his 1846 resignation as ‘an act of manly political consistency and honesty’, having, at the time, described it as ‘distasteful’.24Ibid; Ipswich Journal, reported in the Morning Post, 27 Dec. 1845.

Hartismere left effects valued at under £50,000 and was succeeded in the barony by his eldest son, John Major Henniker-Major, who on his elevation to the Lords had replaced him as Conservative Member for Suffolk East.25England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administrations, 10 Aug. 1870. Hartismere’s correspondence with Peel is held by the British Library, London.26Add. 40409, ff. 137, 138; 40503, ff. 80, 82; 40516, ff. 157, 159; 40554, f. 179; 40584, f. 206.