PRINSEP, Henry Thoby (1792-1878), of Little Holland House, Kensington, London, Mdx.

Prinsep was one of the most distinguished East Indian civil servants of the first half of the nineteenth century, who worked closely with a succession of governors-general.1A. J. Arbuthnot, ‘Prinsep, Henry Thoby (1792-1878)’, rev. R. J. Bingle, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. His success in the Indian civil service, however, contrasted sharply with his political career in Britain. He failed repeatedly at the polls and when he was finally returned as a Conservative for Harwich in 1851, he lasted less than two months in the Commons, before being unseated on technical grounds.

He was the fourth son of John Prinsep, who had originally gone out to India in 1771 as a military cadet before resigning to become a free merchant. Thereafter Prinsep’s father pioneered the cultivation of indigo in Bengal and the printing of cotton fabrics, amassing a considerable fortune in the process. He returned to England in 1788, purchasing Thoby Park in Essex, and sat for Queenborough from 1802 to 1806 as a supporter of the Grenville ministry, though he often dissented on East India matters.2HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 892-3. John Prinsep’s formidable connections secured careers in India for all but one of his seven sons. This Member, after an education at the East India College in Hertford Castle, arrived in Calcutta in 1809, and after further training at Fort William College, entered the civil service. In 1816 he became the first holder of the office of superintendent and remembrancer of legal affairs, with responsibility for protecting government interests in the provincial courts. In 1820 his work titled A Narrative of the Political and Military Transactions of British India under the Administration of the Marquis of Hastings, 1813 to 1818, was published to widespread critical acclaim.3C. E. Buckland, Dictionary of Indian biography (1969), 344; Arbuthnot, ‘Prinsep, Henry Thoby’, Oxf. DNB; J. P. Losty, ‘Prinsep, James (1799-1840)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com.

Prinsep swiftly established a reputation as an extremely able and knowledgeable civil servant and was appointed Persian secretary to the government in 1820. For the following three years he served under Hastings, whose tenure as governor-general he came to view as a ‘glorious one’, which established the East India Company’s diplomatic influence throughout the Indian peninsula. Staunchly conservative in his political instincts, however, he viewed Hastings’ successors in a less positive light. His opposition to the policy of imposing English as the language of instruction in the courts and schools saw him clash with the modernising Lord William Bentinck, governor-general, 1833-35. He also doubted the wisdom of giving freedom to the press of India, a measure introduced by Bentinck’s successor, Sir Charles Metcalfe. Despite his apparent obstinacy to reform, his career continued to flourish. In 1835 he served temporarily as a member of the council of India, a body of four formal advisors to the governor-general, and secured a permanent appointment to the council in 1840.4Arbuthnot, ‘Prinsep, Henry Thoby’, Oxf. DNB; Pall Mall Gazette, 13 Feb. 1878.

With parliamentary ambitions in mind, Prinsep returned to England in 1843. His first three attempts to enter the Commons, however, ended in failure. Standing for a vacancy at Kilmarnock (where he had no connections) in May 1844, he issued grave warnings about the dangers of free trade, asserting that a repeal of the corn laws would plunge the working classes ‘into a state of starvation’. He was defeated by ten votes.5Standard, 25 May 1844; Glasgow Herald, 27 May 1844. The following year he offered for a vacancy at Dartmouth. Along with his younger brother William, he had recently invested heavily in the South Devon railway company, and had ties with the region through his nephew Thomas Levett-Prinsep (d. 1849).6Herapath’s railway journal (1845), 167. During the ensuing contest he presented himself to the electors as a champion of establishing railway communication between Dartmouth and London. He devoted the majority of his energies, though, to lecturing his audiences (in a rather hectoring tone) on economic policy, arguing that as long as articles of consumption were subject to duty, agricultural protection should remain. He was again defeated by a narrow margin.7Standard, 30 June 1845; Morning Chronicle, 4 July 1845; Morning Post, 5 July 1845. He fared even worse at the 1847 general election when he was brought forward by local Protectionists for Dover. Following a bitter contest he was defeated in third place.8Daily News, 30 July 1847. His stance on economic protection had barely softened by March 1851, when he offered for a vacancy at Harwich, a notoriously corrupt borough. In his address he called for a moderate customs duty on corn and the re-imposition of the navigation laws. His unequivocal condemnation of papal aggression, meanwhile, won him the plaudits of the Essex Standard.9Ipswich Journal, 1 Mar. 1851; Essex Standard, 7 Mar. 1851. Following a fiercely-fought contest, he was finally returned to the Commons, by the slim margin of five votes.

Prinsep made an immediate impact at Westminster with a series of forceful interventions to debates concerning economic policy. In one lengthy contribution, he poured scorn on the Russell ministry’s failure to abolish the income tax, characterising Sir Charles Wood as a chancellor who was unable to cope with having a surplus. Distinctly unimpressed, Wood interjected, to stop Prinsep ‘from blundering on’, but he persisted, questioning the wisdom of reducing duties on coffee when those on tea, sugar, beer and tobacco remained, making articles of consumption too expensive for ‘the working man’.10Hansard, 7 Apr. 1851, vol. 115, cc. 1148-60.

After a promising start, Prinsep’s parliamentary career was brought to an abrupt halt when the Harwich election committee ruled, by three votes to two, that as the annual rent on his London home was only £300, he did not meet the property qualification. His election was declared void, 19 May 1851.11PP 1851 (396), xii. 363-636; Morning Chronicle 3, 5 May 1851; Essex Standard, 9, 23 May 1851; Morning Post, 13, 16 May 1851. He stood again at the subsequent by-election, claiming, somewhat optimistically, that the Westminster legal profession would support his property qualification, but he was defeated by six votes.12Standard, 28 May 1851. Following a petition against the return, the election committee declared the result void on the grounds that the poll had been closed before four o’clock, 15 July 1851, but Prinsep declined to stand again for the Essex port.13PP 1851 (694), xii. 643-709. Instead, he accepted an invitation from the county’s Protestant Conservative Committee to stand for Colchester at the 1852 general election. Drawn into an ugly internecine struggle within local Conservatism, however, he failed to make any impact, while his refusal to withdraw from the race prompted his rivals to accuse him of ‘personal vanity’. He was heavily defeated in fourth place, receiving only 98 votes.14Morning Post, 28 June 1852; Essex Standard, 16 July 1852. His final candidacy, at Barnstaple at the 1857 general election, was equally futile: he finished in fifth place with 35 votes.15Trewman’s Exeter Flying Post, 2 Apr. 1857.

Prinsep enjoyed far greater successes in his canvass for a seat on the court of directors of the East India Company, arguably a more natural home for his administrative talents than Westminster. He was elected a director in 1850 and following the Charter Act of 1853, he retained his seat following a vote by ballot. When the East India Company’s rule was abolished by the 1858 Government of India Act, he was one of the seven directors appointed to the new council of India, from where he staunchly opposed the government’s decision (made without consulting the council) to transfer the East India Company’s European regiments to the British army. He continued to be an active member of the council until his retirement in 1874.16Arbuthnot, ‘Prinsep, Henry Thoby’, Oxf. DNB.

Beyond his official life, Prinsep was also an established scholar of Indian history, publishing a variety of works including Origin of the Sikh Power in the Punjab (1834) and Tibet, Tartary, and Mongolia: their Social and Political Condition (1851). He also wrote verses and translated classical texts. His wife Sara, one of seven daughters of James Pattle, of the East India Company, who were known for their beauty and talents, hosted a salon at their London home at Little Holland House, which became an important artistic and literary centre, welcoming figures such as Tennyson, Browning, Thackeray and Ruskin, along with the artist George Frederic Watts, to whom the Prinseps gave their patronage.17Ibid.

Prinsep died at Watts’ house at Freshwater on the Isle of Wight in February 1878.18Essex Standard, 15 Feb. 1878. He left effects valued at under £4,000 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry Auriol Thoby Prinsep (1836-1914), who held several judicial appointments in Calcutta and was knighted in 1894.19National Probate Calendar, 26 Feb. 1878; Buckland, Dictionary of Indian biography, 344. His second son, Valentine Cameron (1838-1904), was a well-known artist of the aesthetic movement.20C. Dakers, ‘Prinsep, Valentine Cameron (1838-1904)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com. Prinsep’s East India papers are held by the British Library, London.21Mss Eur D662.