HICKS BEACH, Sir Michael Edward (1837-1916), of Williamstrip Park, Fairford, Glos.

It has been stated by one authority that the name of Hicks Beach has ‘lost almost all historical resonance’, yet he served in several Conservative cabinets in the last quarter of the nineteenth century, and after William Gladstone and David Lloyd George was the longest serving chancellor of the exchequer between 1823 and 1997.1R. Jenkins, The Chancellors (1998), 89-102, at 89. He has been described as a ‘political chancellor’, with ‘clear views of his own’, and his early career in the Commons can be regarded as the apprenticeship during which he developed his capacity for mastering the ‘dull and intricate detail’ of parliamentary subjects.2Ibid., 89; M. Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks, first Earl St. Aldwyn, Oxf. DNB, iv. 491-4, at 492. Hicks Beach was the subject of another recent short study, see T.G. Otte, Black Michael: Sir Michael Hicks Beach and the problems of late Victorian Conservatism (2006). The only full-length biography remains Lady V. Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach (Earl St.Aldwyn) (2 vols., 1932). These skills would in time see him on the front bench, as Arthur Balfour later remembered, ‘piloting through the rocks and currents of a hostile and critical audience some difficult Bill … conciliating foes, encouraging friends, and demonstrating his thorough knowledge of all the honourable methods of Parliamentary warfare’.3M. Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks, first Earl St. Aldwyn’, Oxf. DNB, iv. 491-4, at 492; The Times, 17 Nov. 1924.

Born in Portugal Street, London, Hicks Beach was the eldest surviving son4A brother, Ellis Henry, died an infant on 11 Feb. 1837, but is not recorded in Burke’s Peerage and Baronetage: Morning Post, 16 Feb. 1837. of a Gloucestershire landowner of ‘ancient lineage’ who sat briefly for East Gloucestershire in 1854.5Dublin University Magazine, lxxxv (1875), 654; ‘Hicks Beach, Sir Michael Hicks’: HP Commons, 1832-1868. For his antecedents, see Mrs. W. Hicks Beach, A Cotswold Family: Hicks and Hicks Beach (1909). That year he succeeded to the baronetcy, which dated from the time of James I, and an estate of 4,000 acres in Gloucestershire and 7,000 in Wiltshire. In July 1858 he obtained a first class degree in the new honours school of jurisprudence and modern history at Oxford. After graduating he toured the Middle East before settling down to the life of a country gentleman.6J. Bateman, The Great Landowners of Great Britain (4th edn., 1883), 31; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1865), 145; Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks’, 491. Not being of ‘a scholarly or even a literary disposition’, he directed his attention to county government and, as lord of the manors of Netheravon and Quenington, became a ‘devoted and careful’ estate manager.7Jenkins, The Chancellors, 90-1; The Times, 17 Nov. 1924; Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1865), 145; Dublin University Magazine, 655.

Being ‘shy, diffident, and somewhat nervous in temperament’, Hicks Beach was not impatient to enter Parliament and is said to have refused invitations to stand for North Wiltshire8In February 1861 he proposed Frederick Hutchinson Hervey-Bathurst for the Conservatives at South Wiltshire: Morning Chronicle, 15 Feb. 1861. and, in May 1864, for Cirencester.9Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks’, 491; Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 19; Lloyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 1 May 1864. However, that July his active participation in local affairs meant that he was called upon to fill a vacancy at Gloucestershire East. Although absent in Switzerland, where he had recently married, he agreed to stand as ‘an independent conservative’, who would not guarantee his vote for either party. He did, however, promise to back measures designed to improve the country’s institutions, while opposing ‘radical alterations and innovations’ from whatever quarter. He expressed little confidence in Lord Palmerston’s ministry and the relationship it had fostered with the continental powers, and although sympathetic to Danish resistance to ‘German aggression’ was against ‘armed interference in the strife’.10Birmingham Daily Post, 11 July 1864; Daily News, 13 July 1864; Standard, 12 July 1864. After arriving back in Gloucestershire, he was returned without opposition.

Hicks Beach was quietly ambitious and within a few years would become one of the Conservatives’ outstanding young members. Although he was not universally liked, he gained a reputation as a diligent and energetic politician. In March 1865 he dined with Lord Derby, and on 22 June he made his first contribution to debate by calling for a comprehensive measure to replace turnpike trusts and the parish control of highways with county administrations.11Standard, 6 Mar. 1865; Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 20. He also became involved in local business enterprises in this period, and undertook to promote the interests of the East Gloucestershire Railway before Parliament.12Birmingham Daily Post, 24 Aug. 1864; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 7 Apr. 1865.

Hicks Beach was returned without opposition at the 1865 general election, but encountered a personal tragedy when his wife of eighteen months died in childbirth along with their child a few weeks later.13Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 22 July, 19 Aug. 1865. In order to overcome his grief he threw himself into his work and became increasingly uncommunicative, which earned him the soubriquet of ‘Black Michael’.14Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 21. Tall, lean and of ‘almost statuesque severity of feature’, his aloof manner did little to endear him to members of his own party, some of whom dismissed him as ‘hardly more than … a country squire’.15F. Harris, Contemporary Portraits (third series, 1920), 166, 171. Others, however, found him ‘not by any means an ungenial man’ who was ‘easy of approach’: J. McCarthy, British Political Portraits (1903), 208. He had, therefore, to rely on his own ability, and the consequent patronage that he attracted from Disraeli, to rise to prominence at Westminster.16Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks’, 491.

Hicks Beach was always thoroughly prepared for debate and prone to making ‘sharp verbal attacks’ upon opponents and colleagues alike. Despite having ‘no pretentions whatever to the gift of oratory’, he possessed an ‘even strong voice’ and spoke in a clear ‘conversational tone’, and made his first important speech on the second reading of the Liberal reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866.17J. Quinn, ‘Beach, Sir Michael Edward Hicks’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, 377-9, at 378; Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks’, 491; Harris, Contemporary Portraits, 172-3. He claimed that the measure threatened to unduly strengthen urban interest in the counties and would ‘give a preponderance in boroughs to the lower classes’, and objected to a measure which might allow the rich to ‘be ruled over by the poor’ and subject ‘the intelligence and education of the nation’ to the ‘dominion of an inferior order of civilization’.18Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 21; Hansard, 27 Apr. 1866, vol. 183, cc. 53-6. Views which may have surprised later acquaintances, who believed that he could never have been ‘a genuine Tory of the old school’: McCarthy, Political Portraits, 214. At the same time, he regarded compulsory education as ‘an infringement of civil liberty’, preferring instead to see the voluntary system supported by government grants.19Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 22-3.

An ‘eminently practical’ man, Hicks Beach proved to be a valuable member of the select committee on the Thames navigation bill in June 1866.20Dublin University Magazine, 655; PP 1866 (391) (391-I), xii. 491, 871. Apparently at home with whatever subject he handled, he was drafted on to the select committee on the valuation of property bill in March 1867, which he had supported on the ground that it would benefit the ratepayer to have all his rates based upon ‘one uniform valuation’. That May he joined the inquiry into the turnpike trust bill, which he had welcomed in principle, while objecting to the premature abolition of indebted trusts.21Dublin University Magazine, 655; PP 1867 (322), xiii. 575; Hansard, 11 Mar. 1867, vol. 185, cc. 1663-4; PP 1867 (352), xii. 709; Hansard, 1 May 1867, vol. 186, cc. 1843-4.

Alert to the priorities of his largely rural constituency, Hicks Beach sought the repeal of the malt tax (for which he had twice voted), but informed a public meeting at Cirencester in February 1867 that the best that could be hoped for was its replacement with ‘a beer-tax’.22Notts. Guardian, 8 Feb. 1867. That spring he opposed plans to reform the universities, and in June served on the select committee on the Oxford and Cambridge university education bill.23Caledonian Mercury, 13 Apr. 1867; Morning Post, 26 June 1867; PP 1867 (497) (497-I), xiii. 183, 501. The following month he took the ‘unusual course’ of opposing the motion for the third reading of the university test abolition bill on the ground that by broadening the scope of the measure the government had jeopardised the connection between the universities and the established church.24Hansard, 16 July 1867, vol. 188, cc. 1655-8. Although his opposition to the bill was not successful, he was appointed vice-chairman of the Conservative committee of Oxford University in October 1868: Royal Cornwall Gazette, 29 Oct. 1868.

In May 1867 Hicks Beach attended a party meeting at Downing Street to consider parliamentary reform but quietly dissented from the ministry’s bill, which proposed to reduce the borough franchise below £10.25Standard, 6, 7 May 1867; Morning Post, 20 Nov. 1868. He took little part in the subsequent debates, other than arguing that London was ‘sufficiently represented’, and that either Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds or Bristol was ‘more worthy’ of an increase in MPs.26Hansard, 17 June 1867, vol. 187, c. 1977. Yet while his loyalty to his party’s leaders had been ‘severely strained’ by the reform bill, his potential as an ‘independent back-bench rebel’ was not realised.27Pugh, ‘Beach, Michael Edward Hicks’, 492. It was thought that he might have been an eager recruit to any Tory opposition to the bill, had one been organised: Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 23. This was largely because, having taken up social work in Stepney, he had turned his attention to matters of local administration and taxation, conducting a careful investigation of the poor law, and working as a member of the newly-constituted Metropolitan Asylums Board. Therefore, upon succeeding to the premiership, Disraeli offered Hicks Beach the post of secretary of the English poor law board in February 1868. Despite fearing that his acceptance might commit him to future ‘Radical measures’, he was persuaded to accept the position by the minister responsible for the department, Gathorne Hardy.28Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 22-3.

After sitting briefly on the select committee on the admiralty accounts in March 1868, Hicks Beach began to master the complicated question of rating and poor relief.29Ibid., 23; Examiner, 21 Mar. 1868; PP 1867-68 (469) (469-I), vi. 1, 681; Pall Mall Gazette, 10 Mar. 1868. He was an active member of Ayrton’s committee which reported against the restoration of the compound householder, and planned (but was unable to present) a measure for the uniform valuation of rateable property in the metropolis. He also attempted to devise a uniform means of dealing with vagrancy and prepared a bill for the administration of the poor law in Salisbury, before taking his place as chairman of the inquiry into poor rates assessment.30Hicks Beach, Life of Sir Michael Hicks Beach, i. 23-4; PP 1867-68 (231), iv. 155; PP 1867-68 (342) (342-I), xiii. 107, 485. Having demonstrated an ‘acute understanding’ of workhouse administration, he displayed ‘great aptness and tact’ during the committee stages of the mines assessment and poor relief bills in July. He was rewarded with the position of under secretary for the home office in October 1868, an office for which his knowledge of county business ‘especially fitted him’.31Dublin University Magazine, 655; Hansard, 20 Mar. 1868, vol. 190, cc. 2048-9; The Times, 1 May 1916; Pall Mall Gazette, 4 July, 19 Aug., 26 Sept. 1868.

Outside Westminster, Hicks Beach considered trade unionists as ‘the most dangerous men … at the present time in England’, and in May 1868 presided over the inauguration of the Gloucester Working Men’s Conservative Association.32Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16 May 1868; Morning Post, 20 Nov. 1868. He was also an officer of the militia, which he wished to see assume a ‘more decidedly local character’, explaining to the Commons that recent recruits ‘were mostly the dregs of the towns and the counties’ who, unlike the agricultural labourers, had ‘no proper local connection’ with their officers.33Hansard, 25 July 1867, vol. 189, c. 102.

Nevertheless, by this time Hicks Beach had begun to show signs of the moderation that would mark his later career. Although a high Churchman, he approved of the ‘very satisfactory compromise’ achieved by Gladstone’s church rates abolition bill.34Quinn, ‘Beach, Sir Michael Edward Hicks’, 378; Hansard, 19 Feb. 1868, vol. 190, cc. 979-80. However, he spoke out against Liberal plans for the Irish Church, suggesting that the onus was on those who proposed to alter its status ‘to show that such a change was desirable’, rather than for their opponents ‘to prove that the existing state of things could be defended’.35Hansard, 30 Apr. 1868, vol. 191, cc. 1584-90. In September 1868 Hicks Beach chaired a large Conservative meeting at Cheltenham, at which he appeared to accept the new Reform Act, admitting that while he had ‘not exactly liked’ the measure it was preferable to provoking ‘an excitement’ that might endanger the constitution.36Standard, 9 Sept. 1868. Having demonstrated ‘great natural ability’ and a ‘remarkable aptitude for political life’, he was returned for East Gloucestershire without opposition for the third time in four years at the 1868 general election.37Dublin University Magazine, 655.

After five frustrating years in opposition, Hicks Beach resumed office in 1874 as chief secretary of Ireland, and was swiftly recognised as one of the ‘rising generation of public men’. The brilliant public career predicted for Hicks Beach subsequently came to pass when he became a ‘skilful and enlightened’ member of several Conservative cabinets between 1876 and 1902, during which time he pursued ‘a politics of intellectual quality and austere principle’.38Dublin University Magazine, 655; McCarthy, Political Portraits, 211; Jenkins, The Chancellors, 90.

After leaving the Commons as Father of the House in 1906, he was created a peer that year. He died at Eaton Place, London, on 30 April 1916 and was buried at Coln St. Aldwyn, Gloucestershire, his effects being proved at £34,309.39The Times, 1 May 1916; Nat. Probate Calendar, Index of Wills, 1858-1966 (19 July 1916). His only son Michael Hugh Hicks Beach (1877-1916), who had sat as a Unionist for the Tewkesbury division of Gloucestershire from 1906, was killed in action in France one week before his father’s death. Hicks Beach was therefore succeeded in his title by his grandson, Michael John Hicks Beach (1912-92), who served as Conservative chief whip in the House of Lords, 1957-78.40Burke’s Peerage (1906), 1758-9; M. Garnett, ‘Beach, Michael John, second Earl St. Aldwyn’, Oxf. DNB, iv. 494-5.