HOBHOUSE, Henry William (1791-1868), of Farley House, Farleigh, Somerset

The younger brother of the Whig cabinet minister Sir John Cam Hobhouse, 2nd baronet, Hobhouse was finally returned to Parliament at the fifth attempt, in 1841, but had to retire barely three months later due to the collapse of his bank. Descended from Wiltshire gentry, Hobhouse is not to be confused with his Tory cousin and namesake (1776-1854), a government clerk and state archivist, whose diary, from 1820-7, was published by Arthur Aspinall in 1947.1The diary of Henry Hobhouse (1820-27), ed. A. Aspinall (1947).

Hobhouse’s bank, known as Messrs. Henry Wm. Hobhouse and Co., of Bath, had been founded 1768, and most of its business was with local gentry. Hobhouse’s father Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, 1st baronet, was associated with the firm from 1796 until his retirement in 1830.2M. Dawes and C. N. Ward-Perkins, Country banks of England and Wales: private provincial banks and bankers, 1688-1953 (2 vols., 2000), ii. 35. Hobhouse served as president of the Association of Country Bankers.3Bankers’ Circular, quoted in Hereford Times, 25 Sept. 1841. Through marriage he became a partner in the Calcutta bank of his father-in-law John Palmer, the ‘richest East India merchant’.4A. Webster, The richest East India merchant: the life and business of John Palmer of Calcutta, 1767-1836 (2007), 57. When the bank became insolvent in 1830, relations between Hobhouse and Palmer, long strained irreparably broke down. Palmer blamed his son-in-law and other former partners for ‘illicit practices’, including using government securities held by account holders to underwrite loans to the firm, and siphoning money out of the bank for their personal gain.5Ibid., 135-6. Hobhouse, Palmer bitterly reflected, was a ‘crafty knave’.6Ibid., 136.

Having suffered defeat at Great Grimsby in 1831, Hobhouse came forward as a Reformer for Bath, where his bank was based, at the 1832 general election.7HP Commons, 1820-1832, ii. 648. He promised support for the reduction of taxes, especially house and window tax, the revision of the corn laws, the abolition of slavery and the commutation of tithes. During the campaign both his brother and Sir Francis Burdett, MP for Westminster, visited the constituency to speak in his favour.8Bath Chronicle, 13 Sept. 1832. However, after an increasingly rancorous campaign, in which he was portrayed as a ‘Tory in disguise’ by a Radical rival, he was beaten to second place.9McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 15; S. Brooks, ‘Bath and the great reform bill’, in J. Wroughton ed., Bath in the age of Reform (1972), 25-30. He finished bottom at Finsbury at the 1835 general election, when his opinions were deemed too mild for the radical borough.10McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, 113.

Hobhouse lost the 1836 Warwick by-election by an agonising thirty votes, when his conduct incensed the influential Liberal agent and native of the town, Joseph Parkes, who wrote to the government whip Edward John Stanley that ‘the shabbiness of H. Hobhouse & the way I find he left this boro’ is almost beyond credit - but is fact. He … never offered to advance a farthing (& never did)’. Having evaded contributing to his election committee’s expenses, Hobhouse paid for his personal servants’ bill, but not before complaining that he had been wrongly charged for two cups of tea. This prompted Parkes to comment:

Now was there ever such a fellow? … There is but one feeling of contempt for him, & if he ever changes horses in the town they will soak him with Leamington water. I call it a swindle, & had he won (which he would have done with pluck) I dare say he would have behaved as ill.11Joseph Parkes to Edward John Stanley, 27 Mar. 1837, MS Kingsland, in P. Salmon (comp.), ‘The letters of Joseph Parkes’ (1993), transcript.

Although he was derided as an ‘itinerating vagabond’ and a ‘perfect stranger’ to the city, Hobhouse was returned in second place for Hereford at the 1841 general election.12Hereford Journal, 16, 30 June 1841. His address favoured the ballot and shorter parliaments, while expressing support for free trade in general and the Whig government’s proposed revision of sugar duties and a low fixed duty on corn in particular.13Hereford Times, 19 June 1841. He promised to back alterations to the new poor law to permit ‘conditional’ outdoor relief, which was presumably a sop to local opinion, and the Liberal Hereford Times commended Hobhouse as ‘every inch an English gentleman and a man of the people’.14Ibid.

Despite his backing advanced reforms, Hobhouse entered Parliament as a firm supporter of the Whig leadership. Shortly after his return he declared that his ‘great Polar Star in the House of Commons’ was Lord John Russell.15Hereford Times, 3 July 1841. In what proved to be the only significant act of his long-awaited but ultimately brief parliamentary career, Hobhouse divided in the minority against the motion of no confidence that voted Melbourne’s government out of office, 27 Aug. 1841.

Less than a month later the London papers published the sensational news that Hobhouse’s bank had stopped payments.16Hereford Journal, 22 Sept. 1841. The firm’s difficulties arose from two large loans to Bradford wool manufacturers, one of which was later declared bankrupt.17Hereford Journal, 22 Sept. 1841; Hereford Times, 25 Sept. 1841. Once bankruptcy proceedings were initiated, Hobhouse was forced to resign his seat, much to the chagrin of the Hereford Times, which remarked, ‘easy of access, with a kind and gentlemanly bearing, he had become a kind of general favourite among the inhabitants of this city’.18Hereford Journal, 29 Sept. 1841; Hereford Times, 2 Oct. 1841. In contrast, the Hereford Journal expressed disbelief that Hobhouse’s defenders claimed that he ‘knew nothing of that establishment of which he was the head and was unaware of the bank’s connection to the textile firms that triggered its collapse’.19Hereford Times, 25 Sept. 1841.

Hobhouse made no known attempt to re-enter Parliament. He became heir to his childless elder brother, who was created 1st Baron Broughton in 1851, but predeceased him by a year. On Broughton’s death in 1869, the barony became extinct but the baronetcy passed to Henry William’s surviving son, Sir Charles Parry Hobhouse (1825-1916), 3rd baronet, a lawyer and judge. His son, Sir Charles Edward Henry (1862-1941), 4th baronet, was MP for Devizes, 1892-5, and Bristol East, 1900-18, and held office in the Liberal governments of 1892-5 and 1905-15, serving as postmaster-general from 1914-15, prior to the formation of the wartime coalition.20Burke’s peerage (1949), 1020.