BOWYER-SMIJTH, Sir William, 11th bt. (1814-1883), of 18 Great Russell Street, London and Hill Hall, Epping, Essex

As Conservative MP for Essex South, Bowyer-Smijth adopted a persona of deep piety, but his personal life after leaving Parliament showed little moral restraint. After hoodwinking a 16 year old into a sham marriage, he fathered 13 illegitimate children, before the death of his first wife, with whom he also had three children, enabled him to make their union legal. A member of one of Essex’s most illustrious families, he was a descendant of Sir Thomas Smith (1513-77), who served as principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I in 1572.1HP Commons, 1558-1603, iii. 400-1. His grandfather, William Smyth, 7^th bt. (1746-1832), had changed the spelling of the family name to Smijth in 1796, probably to distinguish the family line.2Burke’s peerage (1909), ii. 1661-3. After the death without issue of the seventh baronet’s first two sons, the family estates passed to his third son, this Member’s father, Edward Smijth, a chaplain to George IV and later rector of Theydon Mount, Essex. On succeeding to the baronetcy, Edward Smijth also inherited from his mother, Anne, only daughter of John Windham Bowyer, of Waghen, Yorkshire, the Bowyer family estates, assuming the additional surname by royal licence, 10 June 1839. This Member, born William Smijth, took the additional surname the same day. 3Ibid. Educated at Eton and Cambridge, Bowyer-Smijth was admitted to the Middle Temple in 1837, but was not called.4Register of admissions to the honourable society of the Middle Temple (1949), ii. 475, where he is listed as William Smyth. Alumni Cantabrigienses, 1752-1900 (1953), v. 581, incorrectly states that he was called to the bar, 20 Nov. 1840.

Bowyer-Smijth’s zealous attachment to the established church was evident when he was brought forward in the Conservative interest for Essex South at the 1847 general election. Attacking Lord John Russell’s support for the extension of religious liberties, he warned ‘if that principle has no limit, Jews, Turks, Infidels, and Heretics may be Prime Minister’. For him, the established church was ‘the sheet anchor of the state’ and ‘as necessary as a state army’. He argued that without state religion, Britain would end up like France, ‘where the legitimate births are nearly equalled by the illegitimate’, a statement that would later become particularly ironic.5Essex Standard, 6 Aug. 1847. Unsurprisingly, he was unyielding in his condemnation of Roman Catholicism, declaring that ‘the time will come when Popery shall have ceased’.6Ibid.. His campaign, however, was weakened by divisions within the local Conservative ranks and he was defeated in third place by a narrow margin. Undeterred, he stood again at the 1852 general election. He offered his support to the ‘eminently Protestant’ Derby ministry, and despite being accused by his Liberal opponents of being ‘an exaggerated high Tory’, he was returned in second place by a commanding majority.7Ibid., 9, 16 July 1852.

Bowyer-Smijth made little impact in his only Parliament. An irregular attender, he was present for 60 out of 257 divisions in 1853, and 32 out of 198 divisions in 1856.8Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 7. He made no known speeches and does not appear to have sat on any select committees. He voted against Villiers’s motion praising corn law repeal and abstained from Palmerston’s subsequent motion endorsing free trade, 26 Nov. 1852. Thereafter he generally followed Disraeli into the division lobby. He was against the Aberdeen ministry’s resolution to increase the malt tax, 9 May 1854, voted for an inquiry into the condition of the army, 29 Jan. 1855, and supported Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet over its handling of the Crimean war, 10 July 1855. He later commented that ‘I never have given a vote in my life with so much satisfaction as the vote I gave to turn Lord Aberdeen out as Prime Minister’.9Essex Standard, 1 Apr. 1857. Unsurprisingly, he voted consistently against the abolition of church rates and backed Spooner’s anti-Maynooth motion, 19 Feb. 1857. He was against Cobden’s censure motion over the controversial bombardment of Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.

At the 1857 general election he described Cobden’s motion as ‘an apology to a parcel of atrocious barbarians’, arguing that its success would have been a threat to national security. Compared to his previous campaigns, he struck a softer tone on the Maynooth grant, stating that if Roman Catholics throughout the world were as ‘kind and liberal’ as those in Essex, he would reconsider his position. He also called for the abolition of the malt tax and the income tax. His support for Palmerston over the Canton issue, though, upset a section of the local Conservative party, and following an extremely bitter contest, he was defeated in third place, by just seventeen votes.10Ibid.

Out of Parliament, Bowyer-Smijth appeared to abandon his moral scruples. Despite remaining married to his first wife, in July 1858 he proposed to the sixteen year-old Eliza Malcolm, whom he had first met three years earlier while on a fishing holiday at Blair Atholl, Perthshire. According to the later testimony of his illegitimate children, Eliza, knowing him only as ‘William Smith’, agreed to the proposal, and the next month, whilst driving in a cab in Leith, he reportedly produced a ring and declared ‘with this ring I thee wed’, adding to Eliza ‘you are now my lawful wedded wife’.11The Times, 6 Dec. 1917. They subsequently resided in Paris. In 1859 Bowyer-Smijth admitted that he was a baronet and already had three children, but insisted that he was a widower. It was not until 1873 that Eliza learned that his wife was still alive, by which time she had borne him six sons and seven daughters. She nevertheless continued to live with him and eight days after the death of Bowyer-Smith’s first wife in March 1875, they married at Cheltenham. Thereafter they lived at Twineham Court, near Brighton, and two further daughters were born.12Ibid.

Bowyer-Smijth died at Twineham Court in November 1883. He was buried at Theydon Mount churchyard, near Hill Hall, Essex.13Essex Standard, 1 Dec. 1883. He was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, William Bowyer-Smijth (b. 1840), an attaché to the embassy at Constantinople, who died without issue in 1916.14Ibid. In 1917 seven of Bowyer-Smijth’s illegitimate children launched an action in the Scottish courts, asserting that they were his lawful children. The action was opposed by the two daughters born after the 1875 marriage, who claimed that as Bowyer-Smijth was a domiciled Englishman, the Scots court had no jurisdiction. In 1918 the court legitimised their births, but ruled that the English baronetcy and estates could not pass to these children.15Scots Law Times (1918), i. 156. A small selection of Bowyer-Smijth’s correspondence with Charles Yorke, fourth earl of Hardwicke, postmaster-general during Derby’s 1852 administration, is held by the British Library, London.16Add MS 35798, f. 537; 35800, f. 419; 35803, f. 184.