PINNEY, William (1806-1898), of 30 Berkeley Square, London; Somerton Erleigh, Som. and Burton Pynsent, Som.

One of the last surviving Members of the first reformed Parliament, Pinney spent a fortune ‘debauching the frail electoral virtue of Lyme Regis’, supported by his family’s vast wealth from West India slave plantations. A ‘kindly, self-indulgent, undistinguished bachelor’, he sat for 28 years in the Commons as an increasingly advanced reformer, but had no qualms about engaging in electoral corruption, for which he was unseated in 1842, or waging a fierce anti-slavery campaign against an opponent.1R. Pares, A West India Fortune (1950), 171.

The ‘fortune’ amassed by Pinney’s ancestors from their West India plantations forms the basis of one of the first full-length studies of a slave-owning dynasty. In 1762 Pinney’s grandfather John Frederick Pretor (1740-1818) had changed the family name on inheriting the Nevis plantations of his cousin John Frederick Pinney (1719-62), MP for Bridport from 1747-61. Under his management sugar production and slave trading thrived and he began transferring large sums to England, purchasing property at Bristol and the Dorset estate of Somerton Erleigh in 1799. Although Pinney’s father (1773-1845) became a partner in the family’s merchant house, he proved far less capable in business than his younger brother Charles (1793-1867), on whom much of the day-to-day management devolved. A year after inheriting the family estates in 1818 he retired to the life of a rentier at Somerton Erleigh.2Ibid., 163-4, 166-7. Pinney, who read for the bar but never practised, also ‘left everything’ to Charles, with whom he enjoyed a ‘close friendship’. The West Indies were for him ‘at most a troublesome source of income’.3Ibid. 170-71.

In 1831 Pinney’s father purchased a ‘grand house set on a hill’ in Lyme Regis and announced that Pinney would stand as a reform candidate once the borough had been opened up by the Reform Act. His agents began offering loans to future electors and the family started recruiting influential supporters, among them the pioneering fossil hunter Mary Anning, who had become close friends with William’s sister Anna Maria. Anning’s brother apparently even canvassed for William.4S. Emling, The Fossil Hunter (2009), 148-9; PP 1842 (285), vi. 222-235.

Pinney’s refusal to stand aside for a more senior reformer opened the way for a serious challenge by the borough’s former Tory patron at the 1832 general election.5HP Commons, 1820-32, ii. 328. Following an extremely venal contest, however, Pinney topped the poll, aided by his family’s promises to repair the sea walls and allusions to his maternal uncle William Dickinson, a former Tory MP for Somerset, which secured him some cross-party support. On the hustings, though, he was quite radical in tone, demanding reform of the established church, an adjustment of the corn laws and the ‘laying of taxes on the capitalist, landholder and fundholder’ in order to reduce the burdens on the ‘labouring classes’. Surprisingly his call for the immediate abolition of slavery, the source of his family’s immense wealth, attracted little attention.6Dorset County Chronicle, 20 Dec. 1832.

A fairly regular but generally silent attender, Pinney gave steady support to the Whig ministry on most major issues of the day, including their Irish policy and controversial reform of the poor law. Described in one contemporary source as ‘inclining towards radicalism’, presumably on account of his hustings speech, he in fact voted against most radical motions during his first parliament, resisting calls for greater economies, 14 Feb. 1833, the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr. 1833, the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833, 15 May 1834, and a revision of the corn laws, 7 Mar. 1834.7Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 151. He was in the pious minority for improving the observance of the Sabbath, 16 May 1833, but sufficiently ecumenical to support the admission of Dissenters to the ancient universities, 17 Apr. 1834.

Speaking at a constituency dinner for local reformers later that year, shortly after the dissolution, Pinney admitted that he could have made himself ‘more popular’ had ‘he inclined more to the radical party’, but declared that he would never cast votes ‘merely for the sake of popularity’. His bid for their undivided support worked but was undoubtedly also assisted by his family’s acquisition of another ‘splendid mansion’ in the town, formerly occupied by the Dowager Countess Poulett, which effectively made his father the town’s leading proprietor.8Salisbury and Winchester Journal, 1 Dec. 1834. With many Tories ‘complacent’ about mounting a challenge, despite Pinney criticising Peel’s newly formed ministry, he was re-elected unopposed at the 1835 general election.9Western Times, 20 Dec. 1834; PP 1842 (285), vi. 231; Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 128.

Pinney divided steadily against Peel’s short-lived ministry and with the Whigs following their return to office. He remained opposed to the radicals over the ballot and parliamentary reform, but began to lend more support to dissenting causes, including the removal of bishops from the Lords and the abolition of church rates, perhaps because Lyme’s first municipal elections in 1835 had produced an overwhelmingly Nonconformist town council.10Morning Post, 2 Jan. 1836. On 6 July 1836 he presented a petition from Lyme’s dissenters for the abolition of church rates.11The Times, 7 July 1836.

Opposed by a fanatically Protestant Tory Renn Hampden at the 1837 election, Pinney robustly defended his voting record, arguing that bishops would be better employed in their dioceses. Denounced by Hampden for views that would force his supporters to break their ‘allegiance to Christ’, Pinney retaliated with a scathing personal attack, accusing Hampden of ‘barbarous’ acts in the West Indies, including the flogging of female slaves on his Barbados plantations.12Western Times, 22 July; Dorset County Chronicle, 27 July 1837. The irony of a ‘ferocious’ anti-slavery campaign being waged by Pinney, whose family had just been granted the sum of almost £38,000 in slave compensation, was evidently entirely lost on Lyme’s electors, who duly re-elected him with a 34 vote majority.13His father received approximately £13,000 and his uncle Charles about £25,000: Legacies of British Slave Ownership: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/26645. See also N. Draper, The Price of Emancipation (2010), 159.

Pinney had hitherto avoided voting on slavery and continued to be absent for most divisions on the subject. However, he was present to support the ministerial plan of slave apprenticeships, 30 Mar., 28 May, 1 Aug. 1838, and steadily backed their Jamaica policy the following year. He changed his tune over the corn laws, casting majority votes against revision, 15 May 1838, 19 Feb. 1839, but joining the free trade minority for an inquiry, 4 Mar. 1840. His stance against the ballot and radical reform, including the Chartists’ demands for universal suffrage, however, remained unchanged. He of course sided with the beleaguered Whig ministry in Peel’s no confidence motion, 4 June 1841.

Pinney’s campaign tactics at the 1841 general election ultimately lost him his seat. With Lyme said to be ‘locked up in his purse’ another walkover was widely anticipated, but at the last minute a local Tory candidate appeared, backed by the notorious boroughmonger John Attwood. One of the most venal contests of the period ensued. Although Pinney eventually secured a slim majority, it was inevitable that the result would be challenged on petition.14Exeter Gazette, 17 July 1841. While his agents set about preparing a defence, issuing subpoenas to voters they believed had been bribed by the Tories, Pinney continued to attend the Commons, casting opposition votes against the Conservative ministry’s revision of the corn laws, 7 Apr., introduction of income tax, 13 Apr., and changes to colonial customs duties, 15 Apr. 1842. On 30 May 1842, however, his Tory opponent was seated in his place, after the committee determined that some of Pinney’s voters had been less than truthful about their residence qualifications, in a ruse organised by his agents. Significantly, the inquiry also revealed that for many years his family had been lending large sums of money to a ‘considerable proportion’ of the constituency, in return for support, and had been using these debts to sue any elector who polled against them. This practice was ‘so insidiously corrupting and demoralising’, the committee concluded, that it deserved ‘serious attention and inquiry on the part of the House’.15PP 1842 (285) vi. p. xviii and passim.

While Attwood attempted to consolidate his foothold in Lyme, Pinney began to look for another seat. Nothing materialised until March 1847, when there was a vacancy in Somerset East, the county constituency bordering his father’s Somerton Erleigh estates, which Pinney had inherited in 1845 along with personalty valued at £110,000.16Pares, West India Fortune, 328. Aided by the imminence of a dissolution, which thwarted Conservative attempts to field a candidate, Pinney was returned unopposed. On the hustings he reiterated his support for free trade, arguing that Protection had done a ‘great injury’ to the ‘grazing farmers’ of the Somerset levels, and defended the conduct of the Russell ministry. However, he refused to give any pledges, declaring, ‘If you don’t send me into Parliament unfettered by pledges, I would rather not go there at all’.17The Times, 20 Mar. 1847; Morning Chronicle, 12 Apr. 1847.

Back in the House, Pinney cast 21 votes before the 1847 dissolution, mostly on minor matters and alongside his Liberal colleagues, although he was sufficiently independent to oppose the Russell ministry’s proposed changes to the Poor Law Removal Act, 23 June 1847. Attempts by Somerset’s Protectionists to find a candidate to run against him at the 1847 general election came to nothing, not least owing to a fear that the Liberals would also retaliate with a second candidate, and he was again returned unopposed in what was widely billed as a ‘shameful’ truce. Pressed for his attitude to Catholic endowment on the hustings, about which he claimed to have written ‘no less than 120 letters’ to his constituents, he promised to consider the Protestant case, but was determined to avoid ‘injustice’ to his Catholic fellow-countrymen.18Morning Post, 20 July 1847; Morning Chronicle, 11 Aug. 1847.

Pinney continued to side with the bulk of his party on most major issues, backing further free trade measures and Russell’s policies towards Catholics and Jews, but he also began to support radical motions for further parliamentary reform, whilst remaining firmly opposed to the ballot. On 20 Feb. 1851 he was in the progressive majority for Locke King’s proposed extension of the county franchise, which briefly derailed Russell’s ministry. He was hardly an assiduous attender though, and in 1849 participated in a little under a quarter (54) of the session’s 219 divisions, a level slightly below the average.19Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. His committee work ran to one public bill each year, service on the Lancaster election inquiry, and sitting for 25 days on private bills for railways in the 1847-8 session, something which he evidently tried to avoid thereafter.20PP 1847-8 (644), xvi. 33, 37, 38, 39; 1852-3 (331), lxxxiii. 5, 14-15. In his first recorded speech, 22 Feb. 1850, he successfully moved the second reading of British electric telegraph bill, despite concerns about the project’s financial basis. His only other intervention of this Parliament, 1 Aug. 1850, was to defend the conduct and efficiency of the West Somerset militia, in which he held a commission.

At the 1852 general election it was remarked that Pinney had ‘proved he possesses every qualification for representing’ Somerset East, ‘except its Conservative principles’.21Bath Chronicle, 10 June 1852. After some dithering he withdrew from a contest against two Protectionists and accepted an invitation to stand again at Lyme, where the exposure of electoral corruption carried out by Attwood had left the borough ‘one of the miserable places in the country ... pauperised and ... in ruins’.22Dorset County Chronicle, 8 July 1852; The Times, 9 Mar. 1852. With no hint of irony he was lauded as ‘the man who would throw off the influence of Mr Attwood the boroughmonger’ and restore the borough’s reputation. He saw off a Protectionist and was apparently returned ‘free of expense’.23Dorset County Chronicle, 22, 24 June, 8 July 1852.

Pinney’s tenure at Lyme now looked set to become ‘as secure as its cobb’ and at the 1857 election he won an overwhelming majority against a Tory candidate ‘sent down’ by the Carlton Club.24Dorset County Chronicle, 19 Mar. 1857. He helped to vote the Conservatives out of office, 16 Dec. 1852, and continued to give steady support to the Liberals on most major issues, appearing in the minorities in support of the Aberdeen ministry’s handling of the Crimean war, 29 Jan. 1855, and the Palmerston ministry’s bombardment of Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, votes which he staunchly defended on the hustings.25Sherborne Mercury, 24 Mar. 1857. His general attendance in the lobbies began to falter, however, and by 1856 numbered one-fifth of recorded divisions.26Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J. P. Gassiot, Letter to J. A. Roebuck (1857), 6. The following year he was listed among a small group of MPs who had not served on a single private bill committee during the entire Parliament.27PP 1857 (0.84), xxxiv. 2. In his only other known speech, 10 Aug. 1857, he seconded a radical address calling for an inquiry into the costs of rebuilding the foreign, colonial and other public offices.

His vote against the Derby ministry’s abortive reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, almost cost Pinney his seat a second time. At the ensuing general election he was widely criticised for preferring Russell’s scheme of reform, which had proposed to disfranchise Lyme Regis, over Disraeli’s bill, which had preserved its ‘ancient rights’.28The Times, 12 Apr. 1859. Charged with putting party before constituency, he was said to have ‘forfeited the confidence of his constituents’ at a widely-attended public meeting. His Tory opponent had no qualms about billing him as a traitor, who ‘constantly votes for the disfranchisement of this borough’, even though Russell’s measure had never gone to a vote.29Sherborne Mercury, 19 Apr. 1859; The Times, 21 Apr. 1859. After an extremely bitter campaign, Pinney was controversially returned with a one-vote majority after the Liberal mayor permitted an elderly elector to record his vote following the close of the poll. ‘If you don’t’, Pinney was heard telling the mayor, ‘you will lose me my election’.30The Times, 5 May 1859; Morning Chronicle, 30 May 1859. The mayor’s lame excuse that he had thought his watch was fast solved nothing and the result was challenged both on petition and in the law courts.31CJ (1859), cxiv. 223; Morning Chronicle, 30 May 1859.

Whether or not Pinney came to some form of agreement with his Tory opponent about stepping aside at the next election is unclear, but in early 1860 all the proceedings against his return were dropped, without explanation.32CJ (1860), cxv. 70. In his last Parliament he continued to follow a standard Liberal line, but remained an indifferent attender. He served for a solitary day on the militia estimates committee in 1860, and on railway bills for three days in 1862 and 16 days in 1864.33PP 1860 (0.128), lvi. 7; 1862 (0.98), xiv. 6; 1864 (0.131), xlviii. 7. One of his last known votes was against Protestant amendments to the Catholic oaths bill, 12 June 1865.

It having been ‘long understood that Pinney would not seek re-election’, he retired from Lyme at the 1865 general election and offered instead for Bath, where he had been invited to stand alongside the sitting Liberal. Finding his request for a ‘requisition’ signed by 1,200 voters was considered ‘exorbitant’ by the local party, however, he withdrew rather than risk an uncertain contest.34Bristol Times, 3 June 1865; Bristol Mercury, 17, 24 June 1865. Standing again for Somerset East at the 1868 election, as a firm supporter of Gladstone and Irish church disestablishment, Pinney won the show of hands but finished bottom of the poll.35Bristol Mercury, 21 Nov. 1868. He is not known to have sought election elsewhere.

Pinney, dismissed as a ‘self-indulgent, undistinguished bachelor’ in the study of his family, spent much of his retirement continuing to improve Somerton Erleigh, purchasing the neighbouring property of Catsgore Farm in 1865.36Pares, West India Fortune, 171; Country Life, 8 Apr. 2010. An ‘enthusiastic archaeologist’, he was a leading figure in the Somerset Archaeological and Natural History Society, which he had co-founded in 1848, and is known to have overseen the restoration of a number of historic buildings, such as the 17^th century ‘Cross House’ in Somerton. He also served as a vice-president of the Royal Archaeological Institute and the Royal Agricultural Society.37The Times, 2 June 1898; VCH Somerset, iii. 129-53.

One of the last surviving Members of the first reformed Parliament, Pinney died a few weeks before his 92^nd birthday in 1898 at the grand house in Berkeley Square where he had ‘lived all his life’.38The Times, 2 June 1898. His personal estate was valued at almost £99,000.39National Probate Calendar, 6 July 1898. The bulk of his property, including Somerton Erleigh, later renamed Somerton Randle, passed to his cousin Frederick Wake Pretor-Pinney (1834-1909) and his heirs.40VCH Somerset, iii. 129-53. The family archives are held by Somerset Heritage Centre. A separate collection of Pinney’s political and electoral correspondence is housed in Bristol University Library.41Papers of British Politicians 1782-1900 (1989), 84.