MAUNSELL, Thomas Philip (1781-1866), of Thorpe Malsor, Kettering, Northants. and Rowell, Rothwell, Northants.

Maunsell was a protectionist who represented Northamptonshire North between 1835 and 1857. Although he sustained a lifetime of legal and military service in his locality, his activity at Westminster left a lot to be desired. One contemporary analysis of his political career raised doubts as to whether his voice had been ‘heard twice in the House of Commons, or his vote recorded half a dozen times in any session’.1Northampton Mercury, 10 June 1852. It was not far off the mark.

Details of Maunsell’s early life remain unclear. By the time he inherited Thorpe Malsor Hall from his father in 1818 (which had been in the family since 1620), he was an established member of the Northamptonshire gentry, an active committing magistrate, member of the militia and a frequent feature of the social scene, particularly around Kettering.2Ibid, 10 Aug., 14 Dec. 1811, 7 Mar., 5 Sept. 1812, 15 July 1815, 18 Sept. 1819, 23 Oct. 1824, 18 July 1829; E. Walford, County Families of England (1860), 433; R. Maunsell, History of Maunsell (1903), 80-3. He continued to cultivate his local reputation during the 1820s as a regular member of the Pytchley hunt, a steward for the Northampton races and a participant in the county’s burgeoning cattle rearing scene.3Northampton Mercury, 6 May 1820, 12 July, 23 Aug. 1828, 25 July 1829, 18 Sept. 1830, 13 July, 17 Aug. 1833, 30 Aug. 1834. He also assumed responsibility for co-ordinating the Northamptonshire yeomanry from 1831.4Ibid, 5 Mar., 21 May, 3 Sept. 1831, 5 May, 15 Sept. 1832, 7 Sept. 1833.

Maunsell’s first recorded political activity in the county came in March 1830, when he helped to organise a petition from Northamptonshire’s freeholders regarding national distress.5Ibid, 13 Mar. 1830. The reform crisis confirmed that his political allegiance lay with Northamptonshire’s Tories, and in 1832 he proposed Thomas Tryon, the unsuccessful Conservative candidate for the newly created northern division of the county, when he expressed opposition to any reform of the corn laws.6Ibid, 9 July 1831, 22 Dec. 1832. In 1835 he turned down a request to stand as a candidate for the northern division (probably due to the likelihood of his candidacy provoking a contested election), but was elected chairman of the Kettering board of guardians later that year, and avowed his toryism to a dinner of the corporation of Northampton in October 1835, when he termed the 1835 Municipal Corporations Act a ‘bill of downright robbery’. In the same month he informed the first annual dinner of the North Northamptonshire Conservative Association that he intended to stand as a candidate at the next election.7Ibid, 9 May, 3, 10, 31 Oct., 7, 14 Nov. 1835.

Shortly after, Maunsell came forward as a candidate for a by-election in the division, running a well-organised campaign. He promised to defend the constitution, the established Church and to promote any measure that provided ‘permanent and substantial relief’ to occupiers of land. With the county’s Whigs and Liberals bullish over their prospects, Maunsell confidently informed electors that his canvass had afforded ‘a sure presage of final triumph’.8Ibid, 14 Nov., 12 Dec. 1835; D. C. Moore, Politics of Deference (1976), 130. At a riotous nomination, Maunsell informed electors that he supported ‘civil equality’ for dissenters ‘so long as they trenched not’ on the established Church, while also professing to be a friend to ‘agricultural interests’ and ‘economy in every department of the state’. Maunsell termed his ensuing election by 594 votes a ‘victory of the Protestant religion’, and was chaired on a blue silk car surrounded by banners stating ‘No O’Connell’, ‘No Popery’, and ‘Maunsell, the farmer’s friend’.9Northampton Mercury, 19, 26 Dec. 1835; Northampton Herald, 19, 26 Dec. 1835.

Maunsell was silent throughout his first parliament, but maintained a slightly above average attendance in the division lobbies, where he sided with the Ultra Tories. Of note, he voted in opposition to the third reading of the Irish municipal corporations bill, 28 Mar., Harvey’s motion for a select committee to scrutinise pensions, 19 Apr., the government’s Irish church bill, 3 June, and against Peel in favour of Chandos’ motion on agricultural distress, 27 Apr. 1836. In the following year he opposed Grote’s ballot motion, 7 Mar. 1837, and Clay’s motion on the corn laws, 16 Mar. 1837. He acted as a teller in a division on the first clause of the established church bill, 14 July 1836 and presented a petition in opposition to the alteration in the poor law bill, 1 Aug. 1836, and the abolition of church rates, 26 May 1837. He does not appear to have sat on any committees during his 22 year parliamentary career.

Maunsell had maintained a strong presence in the county as a magistrate (and would continue to do so until his retirement as an MP) ahead of the 1837 election, and attended Conservative dinners in Northampton in October 1836 and February 1837, when the £50 tenants of Thrapston presented him with a candelabrum.10Northampton Mercury, 8 Oct. 1836, 25 Feb. 1837. The contest in 1835 had been expensive for him, and the division’s Liberals were hopeful of defeating him in 1837 due to the positive state of their candidates’ finances.11Ibid, 15 July 1837. Maunsell came forward on ‘unchanged’ principles and topped the poll.12Ibid, 5, 12 Aug. 1837. In the aftermath of the election, he presided over the establishment of the North Northamptonshire Agricultural Association, 28 Sept. 1837.13Ibid, 30 Sept. 1837.

Maunsell’s attendance in the division lobbies during the subsequent parliament remained slightly above average, and he maintained his Ultra Tory stance. In doing so he voted against Peel and in the minority in favour of the factory bill defining adults as being aged eighteen, rather than twenty-one, 1 July 1839, in the small minority that opposed the third reading of the Irish municipal corporations bill, 9 Mar. 1840, in the minority that favoured Plumptre’s motion to end the Maynooth grant, 23 June 1840, and in the failed opposition to extended tenures for the poor law commissioners, 22 Mar. 1841. He broke his parliamentary silence in 1838 to second the motion of his fellow North Northamptonshire MP, Viscount Maidstone, that O’Connell be reprimanded for a breach of privileges, 26 Feb. 1838, and made his second and last recorded parliamentary speech to praise the admiralty for providing speedy reinforcements in the Syrian war, 1 Mar. 1841. He presented a number of petitions throughout the parliament including several that opposed any alteration of the corn laws, as well as the government’s plan of national education.

Maunsell expressed continued support for protection at pro-corn law meetings at Market Harborough and Northampton in February 1839, and the Northamptonshire North Conservative dinner and North Northamptonshire Agricultural Association in September that year.14Ibid, 16, 23 Feb. 1839, 28 Sept. 1839 During 1839, he became further embedded in county life through the purchase of the Rowell estate, near Kettering, becoming lord of the hundred and manor of Rowell, and court baron of the manor court.15Ibid, 8 Apr. 1843, 15 Dec. 1866. Liberal hopes throughout 1840 that they would ‘snuff out Maunsell’s candle’ at the next election proved over optimistic, however, and he was returned without a contest in 1841.16Ibid, 15 Feb. 1840, 29 Feb. 1840, 14 Mar. 1840, 13 June 1840 On the hustings, he reminded electors of his opposition to the poor laws as well as his support for agricultural protection, and criticised the Whig ministries of the 1830s for having ‘wasted the revenue of this country in every possible manner’, particularly in relation to the war in China.17Ibid, 10 July 1841.

Maunsell apologised to Sir Robert Peel for his poor attendance of division lobbies during the first session of the subsequent parliament, citing ‘violent rheumatic pains in the head’, but assured him that the chief whip, Thomas Fremantle, had identified a pair to negate his absence.18BL. Add. 40511, T. P. Maunsell to R. Peel, 1 July 1842, f. 187. His attendance remained poor throughout the parliament. He stayed loyal to Peel until 1845, when he divided in the minorities against all three readings of the Maynooth college bill, as well as the second and third readings of the 1846 corn importation bill. Nevertheless, he failed to join the hard line protectionist wing of the party when they combined with Whig and Irish MPs to oust Peel from office over the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846. His petition activity also reduced, although he did present 30 petitions from Northamptonshire opposing corn law repeal, 4 June 1844, and joined with other protectionist MPs to present 2,262 petitions opposing the Maynooth grant, 11 Apr. 1845. During the following administration he voted in the minority that opposed the reduction in sugar duties on foreign slave-grown sugar, 28 July 1846, but was absent from the lobbies when Lord George Bentinck’s Irish railways bill was rejected on its second reading, 15 Feb. 1847.19Northampton Mercury, 20 Feb. 1847.

Poor health had prevented Maunsell from attending North Northamptonshire’s Agricultural Association meetings in 1842 and 1843, but he was well enough to attend the inaugural meeting of the Northamptonshire Agricultural Protection Society in January 1844, when he accused the Anti-Corn Law League of endeavouring to ‘reduce the poor man to the condition of serfs on the Continent’.20Ibid, 1 Oct. 1842, 23 Sept. 1843, 27 Jan. 1844. He was appointed as commanding colonel of the Northamptonshire militia in May 1845, following which he styled himself Colonel Maunsell. He held the position until his death.21Morning Post, 8 May 1845. Maunsell was a regular fixture at the county’s numerous agriculturist meetings in 1845 and 1846, but his speeches at each event were short in comparison to his fellow local MPs.22Northampton Mercury, 28 Sept. 1844, 25 Jan., 11 Oct. 1845, 3 Jan., 7 Feb., 3, 10 Oct. 1846. His parliamentary inactivity sparked rumours that he would retire in 1847, but these proved unfounded and he was elected unopposed again at that year’s general election.23Ibid, 5, 12 June 1847. On the hustings, Maunsell refused to make any concessions to Catholics, and declined to give any pledges, vowing to ‘follow that independent course that looked to measures not men’. When pressed by a Liberal member of the crowd, he was forced to deny that he had ever sought to prosecute any of his tenants for poaching game on his land.24Ibid, 7 Aug. 1847.

His attendance in the division lobbies continued to be well below average, until the last year of the subsequent parliament, when he attended more often. He remained in the protectionist wing of the party, voting in the minorities that opposed the removal of Jewish disabilities, 17 Dec. 1847, 4 May 1848, as well as the repeal of the navigation laws, 12 Mar. 1849, 23 Apr. 1849. He was also in the minorities that favoured Berkeley’s motion to reconsider the corn laws, 14 May 1850, and the relief of the distress of owners of land, 13 Feb. 1851, as well as in the majorities that defeated all three of Milner Gibson’s motions to abolish the taxes on knowledge, 12 May 1852. He is recorded as presenting a solitary petition during this parliament, in favour of a reduction in naval and military expenditure, 16 Feb. 1848.

Although unable to attend the 1849 annual meeting of the Northamptonshire Protection Society, he promised to give ‘his best exertions … in favour of agriculture’.25Ibid, 24 Mar. 1849. Despite a severe cold making his speech ‘barely audible’, he warned local protectionists in January 1850 that free trade ‘would bring irreparable evils’ to ‘all classes of men’.26Ibid, 26 Jan. 1850. Seeking re-election in 1852, he promised to continue ‘to uphold the Protestant religion’ and ‘to endeavour to procure for Native Industry, Agricultural and of every other description, the justice due to them’.27Ibid, 3 June 1852. He did not escape criticism, however, and ‘An Elector’ writing to the Mercury lambasted Maunsell’s lack of parliamentary activity, terming him a man of ‘such small position in the House’ that he doubted if he knew ‘how many stages a bill passes through’ and whether ‘his voice has been heard twice in the House of Commons, or his vote recorded half a dozen times in any session’.28Ibid, 10 June 1852. On the hustings he reaffirmed his past principles in ‘a low voice’ that was barely audible to the crowd. He was re-elected following a nominal contest.29Ibid, 17, 24 June 1852.

Maunsell attended only 5% (45) of the 900 recorded divisions during his final parliament, but his relatively high attendance of major divisions revealed his continued support for the fledgling protectionist wing of the party. He voted in the minority to oppose Villiers’ motion praising free trade, 26 Nov. 1852, in the minorities in favour of Disraeli’s 1852 budget, 16 Dec. 1852, and Spooner’s anti-Maynooth motion, 23 Feb. 1853, and opposed the Jewish disabilities bill at every reading in 1853. He also voted in the minority that opposed Gladstone’s budget resolutions, 2 May 1853, the majority against the abolition of church rates, 21 June 1854, and the minority in favour of Disraeli’s motion criticising the prosecution of the Crimean war, 25 May 1855. His final recorded activity was a vote in the majority for Cobden’s censure motion over the Chinese war, 3 Mar. 1857.

Reports ahead of the 1857 election that a number of the division’s electors ‘had expressed themselves very strongly about Mr Maunsell’s inattention to his duties as a member of parliament’ were followed by the announcement of his retirement, aged 75.30Morning Post, 10 Mar. 1858; Carlisle Journal, 13 Mar. 1857; Daily News, 14 Mar. 1857. His retiring address was very brief, and the usually gushing Tory Herald offered no tribute to his two-decade parliamentary career.31Northampton Herald, 14 Mar. 1857. The lack of a Liberal candidate to oppose his replacement led to accusations in the Liberal Mercury that the division was being ‘transferred like some trumpery Pocket Borough, to Lord Exeter’s eldest son, Lord Burleigh’.32Northampton Mercury, 14 Mar. 1857. Following his retirement Maunsell quickly fell out of public view, and his death on 4 Mar. 1866 at Thorpe Malsor occasioned no obituary in the Mercury.33Unfortunately the British Library does not hold a copy of the Northampton Herald for 1866. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, George Edmund Maunsell, who was also the rector of Thorpe Malsor (1816-1875).34Gent. Mag. (1866), i. 606. His will was proved at less than £5,000.35National Probate Calendar, 1866, 110-1.