BRAMSTON, Thomas William (1796-1871), of Skreens, nr. Roxwell, Essex

Bramston, the possessor of a ‘talismanic name’ in Essex, represented the southern division of his native county for three decades.1Essex Standard, 4 Aug. 1837. Although a Conservative opponent of the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, he was known locally for his ‘liberal views’, and gave his support to Palmerston on domestic and foreign policy issues throughout the 1850s. His ancestors included Sir John Bramston of Maldon (1577-1654), lord chief justice, 1635-42, who had purchased the Skreens estate in 1631, and Sir John’s son and namesake, who was MP for Essex, 1660-79.2C. W. Brooks, ‘Bramston, Sir John, the elder (1577-1654)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. This Member’s great-grandfather, Thomas Bramston (d. 1765), and grandfather, Thomas Berney Bramston (1733-1813), also sat for the county.3HP Commons 1715-1754, i. 482-3; 1754-1790, ii. 111. His father, Thomas Gardiner Bramston, whose long-held parliamentary ambitions were hampered by his parsimony, finally came in for Essex at a by-election in March 1830 and supported Wellington’s ministry, but he retired nineteen weeks later at the dissolution, saying that he could not afford another contest.4HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 326-8.

Bramston, who initially pursued an academic career as a fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, improved his own financial standing through marriage to Elizabeth Harvey, daughter and co-heir of Sir Eliab Harvey, who had commanded the Temeraire at Trafalgar, and sat for Maldon, 1780-84, and Essex, 1802-12, 1820-30. On Harvey’s death in 1830, they inherited the manor of Abbess Roding, near Harlow.5HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 530-2. Following his father’s sudden demise in February 1831, Bramston succeeded to the Skreens estate and thereafter pursued the life of a county squire, becoming a magistrate, deputy lieutenant and noted cattle breeder.6Essex Standard, 26 May 1871. A prominent member of the local Tory ‘True Blue Club’, he proposed Robert Hall Dare for Essex South at the 1832 general election.7Morning Post, 17 Nov. 1832; Essex Standard, 22 Dec. 1832.

Bramston offered for Essex South at the 1835 general election. At the nomination his local pedigree was generously praised by his proposer, William Cotton, who declared that ‘he was born among us; we have watched him from his birth to this moment; and we have found him anxiously engaged in everything relating to the county and county business’.8Essex Standard, 16 Jan. 1835. Bramston presented himself as an unwavering defender of the agricultural interest and called for a repeal of the malt tax. He also stated his allegiance to the established church and his opposition to the abolition of church rates.9Ibid.; Parliamentary test book (1835), 24. With the Conservatives dominant in the division, he was comfortably elected in second place, behind Hall Dare.

Despite his long parliamentary career, Bramston never fully established himself in the Commons chamber, making only short and infrequent interventions in debate. He did, however, make important contributions to the business of the House, serving on a great number of select committees, an environment in which he proved to be an assiduous and perceptive questioner of witnesses. In his first Parliament he was appointed to select committees on printed papers, the trade in corn with the Channel Islands and the highway rates bill.10PP 1835 (61), xviii. 130; PP 1835 (289), xiii. 441; PP 1837 (457), xx. 343. A frequent attender, he generally followed Peel into the division lobby. He was in the ministerial minority on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and the Irish church, 2 Apr. 1835. He voted against the premier, though, by supporting Chandos’s motion to repeal the malt tax, 10 Mar. 1835. At the 1837 general election he defended his silence in the Commons, explaining that on critical issues such as agricultural distress, his views were more ably articulated by other speakers. He described the Whig government’s reforms of the Irish church as ‘a heavy blow’ and was re-elected at the top of the poll.11Essex Standard, 4 Aug. 1837. His handful of known contributions to debate in his second Parliament concerned local matters. He defended Chelmsford’s magistrates, who had controversially imprisoned the shoemaker John Thorogood for his refusal to pay church rates, 5 Aug. 1840, and called for increased government funding to resurrect the Essex militia, 8 Mar. 1841. He sat on the Ipswich and St. Albans election committees.12PP 1837-38 (173), x. 341; PP 1841 sess. 1 (219), ix. 10. He continued to vote with Peel, and supported his motion of no confidence in Melbourne’s ministry, 4 June 1841.

Bramston was unwavering in his defence of agricultural protection at the 1841 general election, warning against the dangers of a fixed duty on corn and asserted that he was ‘not one of those who are gulled by specious motions of free trade’.13Essex Standard, 2, 9 July 1841. Returned at the head of the poll, he divided for a sliding scale on corn duties, 9 Mar. 1842, and against free trade motions, 15 May 1843, 26 June 1844, 10 June 1845. In private correspondence with Peel, he urged the premier to consider additional spending on agricultural relief.14Bramston to Peel, 26 Aug. 1844, Add. 40550, ff. 288-93. He continued to be an active parliamentarian, serving on the Reading and Cambridge election committees, and select committees on postage, medical poor relief, union workhouses (Ireland) and metropolitan sewage.15PP 1842 (548), v. 25; PP 1843 (564), viii. 2; PP 1844 (312), ix. 2; PP 1844 (441), xiv. 496; PP 1846 (474), x. 536. He spoke briefly on the recent spates of arson sweeping rural Suffolk and Essex, arguing that the attacks were not caused by distress or poverty, but by young boys and girls, and therefore an inquiry was unnecessary, 19 July 1844. His motion to keep the customs duty on grease came to nothing, 19 Mar. 1845.

Bramston initially remained loyal to Peel on commercial and religious matters, voting with the premier on the ecclesiastical courts bill, 28 Apr. 1843, sugar duties, 14 June 1844, the dissenters’ chapels bill, 28 June 1844, and the Maynooth grant, 19 July 1844, though he opposed him on the factories bill by voting against defining ‘night’ as 8 p.m. to 6 a.m., 18 Mar. 1844. He supported the permanent endowment of Maynooth College, 18 Apr. and 21 May 1845, but, surprisingly, was one of the 46 MPs who voted against the colleges (Ireland) bill, 2 June 1845. He voted against Peel’s repeal of the corn laws at the critical second and third reading, 27 Mar. 1846, 15 May 1846, and against Peel in support of the factories bill, 22 May 1846, but voted with the premier in support of Irish coercion, 25 June 1846.

On the eve of the 1847 general election a leading article in the Conservative-supporting Essex Standard strongly rebuked Bramston for his votes in favour of the 1844 dissenters’ chapels bill and the 1845 Maynooth college bill, stating:

on all the essentially Conservative questions, [he] has as effectually supported the enemies of constitutional principles as if ... he had, at the time of his election, mounted the Yellow cockade of the Whig-Radical party.16Essex Standard, 9 July 1847.

The newspaper went on to condemn his ‘gross misapplication of the representative trust’.17Ibid. Bramston’s response suggested a new, less tolerant approach to Catholicism. In his address he declared that the payment of the Roman Catholic clergy by the British state was ‘inconsistent with the spirit of our Protestant constitution’ and at the nomination he announced that he would ‘never vote for the endowment of Roman Catholics’.18Essex Standard, 6 Aug. 1847. Despite the concern expressed in the local Conservative press, he was comfortably re-elected at the head of the poll, assisted by significant support from local Liberals.19Ibid.

Bramston’s early votes in his fourth Parliament reflected his recently-found desire to be seen as a zealous defender of the established church. He voted against the Roman Catholic relief bill, 8 Dec. 1847, and the Jewish disabilities bill, 17 Dec. 1847. His continuing suspicion of free trade was evident when he opposed the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, and supported a motion to reconsider the corn laws, 14 May 1850. He consistently backed motions to consider agricultural distress and voted for the repeal of the malt tax, 8 May 1851. He was appointed chair of the 1848 Horsham election petition committee.20PP 1847-48 (200), xii. 259. In 1852 he moved for a new writ for Harwich, but withdrew it in the face of firm opposition, 27 Feb. At the 1852 general election he offered general support to Derby’s ministry and was again re-elected at the top of the poll.21Daily News, 13 July 1852. He voted against Villiers’s motion praising corn law repeal, but backed Palmerston’s subsequent motion in favour of free trade, 26 Nov. 1852.

Although Bramston supported Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1853, the defeat of which caused the collapse of Derby’s short-lived ministry, he voted for Gladstone’s alternative fiscal policy, 2 May 1853, and thereafter endorsed Aberdeen and Palmerston’s first ministry on most commercial matters. He backed Roebuck’s motion for an inquiry into the condition of the army at Sebastopol, 29 Jan. 1855, but opposed Disraeli’s motion criticising the war, 25 May 1855, and Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet, 19 July 1855. He was in the majority against Disraeli’s motion to abolish income tax in 1860, 23 Feb. 1857. Reflecting his previous committee experience, he was appointed chair of the Chatham, Athlone and Durham election inquiries.22PP 1852-53 (210), xi. 210; PP 1852-53 (321), viii. 2; PP 1852-53 (588), xii. 347. He subsequently argued in debate that the House of Commons was, to a degree, complicit in the corruption evident at Chatham, as the division was a dockyard where many voters were under direct government influence, 3 May 1853. He also sat on select committees on the office of speaker, medical relief, metropolis turnpike roads, Westminster Bridge and the House of Commons library.23PP 1852-53 (478), xxiv. 54; PP 1854 (348), xii. 433; PP 1856 (333), xiv. 81; PP 1856 (389), xiv. 228; PP 1856 (426), vii. 570.

Despite his admiration for Palmerston, Bramston voted for Cobden’s censure motion on the bombardment of Canton, 3 Mar. 1857. At the 1857 general election he explained that the country had been ‘hurried unnecessarily into a war by the violent and hasty measures of our authorities’.24Essex Standard, 18 Mar. 1857. Nevertheless, he insisted that he would continue to support the government on ‘foreign and domestic policy’.25Daily News, 31 Mar. 1857. At the nomination he defended his independent approach, asserting that he was not a Member who ‘had nothing to do but vote according to the directions of the whipper-in of his party’.26Ibid. Returned once again by a commanding majority, he supported Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, but confirmed his loyalty to Derby by voting for the Conservative ministry’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, and subsequently attacked the ‘dirty party manoeuvre’ that he felt had caused its defeat.27Morning Chronicle, 19 Apr. 1857. After being persuaded by local supporters not to retire from Parliament at the 1859 dissolution, he gave his staunch backing to Derby’s leadership and topped the poll at the subsequent general election.28Essex Standard, 4 May 1859.

Bramston generally supported Derby thereafter. He was in the minority against the amendment to the address, 10 June 1859, and consistently opposed the abolition of church rates. He voted for Disraeli’s censure of government policy on the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864. He made very brief interventions to debates on the artillery ranges bill, 2 June 1862, and the Roach river fishery bill, 8 June 1865, but, as had been the case throughout his career, he declined to comment on the major issues of the day. He was appointed to select committees on the board of admiralty, the Thames embankment, standing orders and the Piccadilly and Park Lane new road bill.29PP 1861 (438), v. 2; PP 1863 (219), xii. 414; PP 1864 (140), x. 904; PP 1865 (260), viii. 648. After three decades in Parliament and ‘somewhat broken in health’, there was little surprise when he finally retired from the Commons at the 1865 general election, though he continued to be an active figure in county politics, chairing Conservative election committees.30Standard, 26, 29 June 1865; Essex Standard, 5 July 1865, 26 May 1871.

Bramston died at his London residence, 30 Eccleston Square, in May 1871. The death of his wife, Elizabeth, the previous October, had left him devastated and he had been in poor health for some months.31Essex Standard, 26 May 1871. He left effects valued at under £16,000.32National Probate Calendar, 3 July 1871. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Thomas Harvey Bramston (1831-1911), a former lieutenant-colonel in the Grenadier Guards. His papers are held by the Essex Record Office.33Essex RO, D/Deb 90-93. His correspondence with Peel, mainly on matters relating to farming in Essex, is held by the British Library, London.34BL Add. 40413, f. 215; 40506, f. 284; 40523, f. 166; 40530, ff. 415-7; 40550, ff. 288-93; 40555, f. 163; 40569, f. 69.