ABDY, Thomas Neville (1810-1877), of Albyns, Stapleford Abbots, Essex and 19 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, London

Abdy, the son of a navy captain and an admiral’s daughter, was a leading figure in the local Liberal associations of Essex, where he had inherited extensive family estates. After a costly and humiliating defeat at Maldon in 1841 he was returned for the venal Dorset borough of Lyme Regis in 1847, with the backing of a former Liberal MP who had been unseated for electoral corruption. He narrowly escaped a similar fate, after bribing voters with offers of employment on the railway schemes in which he had an interest, and sat as a staunchly Protestant Liberal until his retirement in 1852.

Abdy’s ancestors included three lines of baronets, all of which became extinct. In 1775 the substantial Essex estate of Albyns had passed (without the title) from Sir Anthony Abdy 5^th bt, MP for Knaresborough, 1763-75, to Abdy’s grandfather, the Rev. Thomas Abdy Rutherford (1775-98), who duly changed his surname to Abdy. Rutherford’s heir was John Rutherford Abdy Hatch Abdy, the elder brother of Abdy’s father, who pursued a distinguished naval career, commanding the brig sloop Dotterel against the French fleet in 1809.1W. James, Naval History of Great Britain (1826), v. 140. On the death of his childless uncle in 1840 Abdy, who read for the bar but never practised, added Albyns to the other Essex properties he had inherited from his father two years before, making him ‘a young gentleman of extensive landed means in the county’.2Morning Post, 3 July 1841.

At the following year’s general election Abdy came forward for Maldon as a ‘reformer of all abuses’ and ‘warm friend’ of the Liberal party. His support for a modification of the corn laws that stopped short of ‘entire repeal’ was eagerly seized upon by his Protectionist opponents, who accused him of making statements ‘suited to all parties’ in order to ’catch every fish that floats in the political ocean’, and of betraying the landed interest to which he belonged. He was also condemned for unnecessarily disturbing the peace of the borough and threatened with ‘a good thrashing’, as he wryly noted on the hustings.3Chelmsford Chronicle, 25 June, 9, 16 July 1841; Morning Post, 3 July 1841; Essex Standard, 9 July 1841. Defeated in third place, he subsequently became a leading figure in local attempts to revive Essex Liberalism, chairing the newly established South Essex Reform Association and campaigning for more attention to the registers. ‘Watch the registration’, he implored the new Maldon Reform Club in September 1841, ‘for success depends not on the day of election, but … the registration courts’.4Chelmsford Chronicle, 17 Sept. 1841, 25 June 1847.

Rumoured as a potential Liberal candidate for both the Essex divisions in 1847, Abdy surprised many by offering instead for Lyme Regis with the backing of its disgruntled former Liberal MP William Pinney, who had been unseated for electoral corruption in 1842.5Daily News, 26 May 1847; Chelmsford Chronicle, 25 June 1847; Dorset County Chronicle, 1 July 1847. Following an exceptionally venal contest he was elected by just three votes after four of the town’s leading Protectionists refused to support his Peelite opponent and polled for him instead. ‘Though untried in public life’, they explained, Abdy was ‘an old constitutional whig’ who ‘had pledged himself against … any further concessions to Romanism’.6Exeter and Plymouth Gazette, 14 Aug. 1847.

Abdy was also alleged to have bribed voters with offers of employment on railway schemes and to have engaged in treating.7The Times, 17 Feb. 1848. A petition in these terms against his return was presented later that year, but before the resulting inquiry made much head-way it emerged that his opponent’s challenge was being bankrolled by the notorious Tory boroughmonger John Attwood MP, prompting the case to be abandoned.8CJ (1848) ciii. 38-9, 299; The Times, 8 Mar. 1848. Abdy’s subequent campaign for an investigation of Attwood’s conduct, for which he brought up a constituency petition, 4 Apr. 1848, came to nothing, although Attwood was later unseated for corrupt practices at Harwich.9The Times, 5 Apr. 1848.

A frequent attender, who is not known to have spoken in debate, Abdy gave loyal support to the Liberal ministry on most major issues, backing Russell’s free trade policies and repeal of the navigation laws, although he sided with the ultra-Protestants against further Catholic claims, 8 Dec. 1847 and 19 July 1849. He gave regular support to Jewish emancipation but opposed most radical calls for further parliamentary reform and greater economies. Reporting his vote against Cobden’s proposals for military reductions, 26 Feb. 1849, the press grouped him among the ‘army and navy’ MPs, being the ‘son of a navy captain by the daughter of an admiral’.10Daily News, 1 Mar. 1849. That year he was present for 93 divisions out of 219, a figure considerably above the average.11Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849.

In March 1849 Abdy was sued by his agent for unpaid election bills at Maldon, where he had been made to ‘stump down’ £2,000 in 1841.12Daily News, 15 Mar., Chelmsford Chronicle, 4 May 1849. As a railway speculator ‘connected with a company’ that undertook railway contracts, and a director of at least four railway companies, Abdy may have incurred heavy financial losses following the collapse of the railway investment bubble.13The Times, 17 Feb. 1848. A return of 1846 listed his investments that year at £2,500: PP 1846 (473) xxxviii. 2. The expense of hiring counsel to defend his seat against a petition was also considerable. Probably by way of acknowledgement for his services to the Liberal party, at the end of that year he was given a baronetcy by Russell.14Essex Standard, 22 Mar. 1850. Abdy appears to have attended the Commons far less often in 1851 and in 1852 cast just six votes, missing the crucial division on the militia estimates that ended Russell’s ministry, 20 Feb. 1852.

At the 1852 general election Abdy retired from Lyme Regis, where Pinney had decided to reclaim the seat following Attwood’s fall from grace.15The Standard, 2 July 1852. Given Pinney’s earlier support, Abdy may well have been acting as his ‘stalking horse’ in 1847 and was possibly a mere seat-warmer thereafter. He apparently made no attempt to re-enter the Commons until 1868, when, shortly after inheriting a ‘highly profitable’ property in London from Sir William Abdy (1779-1868), the last of the old Abdy baronets, he stood for the newly created constituency of Essex East.16http://landedfamilies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/abdy-of-albyns-baronets-part-1_23.html Abandoning his earlier stance against Catholic concessions, he strongly backed Gladstone’s proposals for Irish church disestablishment, explaining that ‘as long as the clergy of the church of Rome were placed in a position of inferiority ... they would never rest’. He was defeated in fourth place.17Chelmsford Chronicle, 7 Aug. 1868. Two years later he came forward for a vacancy at Colchester, but withdrew.18Manchester Evening News, 18 Oct. 1870.

Abdy died twelve days after his wife at his residence in Grosvenor Place, London in July 1877.19Bury and Norwich Post, 24 July 1877. The bulk of his property, valued for probate at £160,000, 17 Oct. 1877, passed to his eldest son and successor in the baronetcy William Neville Abdy (1844-1910), an unsuccessful Conservative candidate in the Maldon by-election of 1878.20National Probate Calendar (1877). Albyns, a Jacobean mansion remodelled in 1754, remained in the family until 1926 and was demolished in 1954.21http://landedfamilies.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/abdy-of-albyns-baronets-part-1_23.html