BENBOW, John (1769-1855), of 26 Mecklenburgh Square, London

On entering Parliament John Benbow declared that he would be thoroughly independent ‘of any ministry or any party of men’.1Standard, 8 Aug. 1844. However, his subsequent career raises questions about the extent to which self-professed ‘independent members’ exercised their own judgment in the reformed House of Commons. On being returned for Dudley he told the electors that he would never be made ‘the tool of any man, however great his rank or station, power or fortune’, and would go to Westminster ‘as independent as the proudest and wealthiest person in the land’.2Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Aug. 1844. His claim to ‘be as free as the air’ did not convince his opponents, who regarded him as ‘a decided Tory in politics’, who ‘looked upon all reforms and progressions with alarm and distrust’. They claimed that he maintained his position in Parliament ‘entirely on the sufferance’ of his patron, and therefore frequently treated his constituents ‘with the most supercilious indifference’.3C. F. G. Clark (ed.), The Curiosities of Dudley and the Black Country from 1800-1860 (1881), 103, 191. Whether he acted for party, according to his own conscience, or as a proxy for the shifting political allegiances of his eccentric and impulsive aristocratic patron, Lord Ward, who cautiously moved from orthodox Conservatism to Palmerstonian Liberalism during the 1840s and 1850s, remains open to question.4R. Trainor, ‘Peers on an industrial frontier: the earls of Dartmouth and of Dudley in the Black Country, c. 1810 to 1914’, in D. Cannadine (ed.), Patricians, power and politics in nineteenth-century towns (1982), 69-132, at 86, 88.

Benbow was said to have been ‘the kindred’ of the celebrated naval commander Admiral John Benbow (1653?-1702), and was the son of a gentleman who resided near Bewdley, Worcestershire.5P. Burke, Celebrated Naval and Military Trials (1866), 18; J. B. Hattendorf, ‘Benbow, John’, Oxf. DNB, v. 52-8. He trained as a lawyer in London, where he married, and by 1805 was practising as a solicitor at Lincoln’s Inn, where he later established the firm of Benbow and Tucker.6W. R. Williams, The Parliamentary History of the County of Worcester (1897), 181; Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 96. He became a widower in November 1825, and in 1833 was appointed by the will of the late earl of Dudley as an executor and legal adviser to the trustees of the family’s highly valuable estates in Staffordshire and Worcestershire.7Gent. Mag. (1825), ii. 476; Hardwicke’s Annual Biography (1856), 110; Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 96. In his capacity as an executor he acted jointly with Lord Hatherton and the bishop of Exeter: South Staffordshire Advertiser, 8 July 1837. Upon the accession of William Ward (1817-85), Lord Ward, to this property in 1845 Benbow was appointed the sole manager and auditor of the estate, and in addition to holding two railway directorships was for many years the receiver of the Thellusson estates of Lord Rendlesham.8 Hardwicke’s Annual Biography (1856), 110.

At the 1837 general election Benbow was selected as a Conservative candidate for Wolverhampton. He was regarded as ‘a sworn enemy’ of the government, and endeavoured to ‘excite the populace’ of the borough against the Whigs by denouncing the poor laws, which he argued were ‘cruelly inflicting punishment upon poverty and distress’.9Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Apr. 1837; Hatherton Journal, Staffs. RO, D1178/1 (29 June 1837). He was opposed to the ballot and any extension of the franchise, and defended the constitutional position of the House of Lords. A ‘firm and unflinching supporter’ of church and state, he called upon electors to assert the independence of the borough by securing the return of a representative whose principles were, he claimed, ‘liberal, but Conservative’. However, he lacked personal popularity and found himself placed ‘very far at the bottom’ of the poll.10South Staffordshire Advertiser, 8 July 1837; Hatherton Journal, Staffs. RO, D1178/1 (1, 25 July 1837).

In December 1837 Benbow gave evidence at the bar of the House concerning the Pontefract election petition, for which he had helped to arrange the sureties.11Mirror of Parliament (1837-38), ii. 935-8 (19 Dec. 1837). He stated that he was then ‘almost eighty years of age’, and ‘occupied in no business or profession whatever’. In May 1839 he considered offering at the next election for South Staffordshire, but was regarded by local party leaders as ‘a snake in the grass’ who had used ‘underhand means’ to secure a seat for one of the sitting members.12R. Jeffrey (ed.), Dyott’s Diary, 1781-1845: A selection from the journal of William Dyott (1907), ii. 295-6. However, as Lord Ward’s agent, Benbow remained a force in the politics of the constituency and helped to broker a compromise under which the Whigs and Conservatives shared the representation at the 1841 general election.13E. Monckton to T.W. Giffard, 16 June 1841: Staffs. RO, D590/724.

Benbow’s politics were said to be those of ‘a liberal Conservative’ or ‘pure Peelite’, and upon the resignation of the sitting Tory member in August 1844 he was adopted as a candidate by the Dudley Conservatives.14Gent. Mag. (1855), i. 64; Morning Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1844; Standard, 5 Aug. 1844. Although the Liberals regarded him as the nominee of Lord Ward, who was then a firm supporter of the Conservatives and at the height of his political influence in the borough, Benbow denied that he was acting in the interests of his employer.15R. Trainor, Black Country Elites. The Exercise of Authority in an Industrialized Area 1830-1900 (1993), 211-2; idem., ‘Peers on an industrial frontier’, 87; Standard, 8 Aug. 1844; Morning Post, 8 Aug. 1844. He was not the first choice of many local Conservatives and was only ‘very slightly known’ in the borough. Furthermore, he issued an address of which the Morning Chronicle commented that nothing could have been ‘more antique than the tone of its style, or the frizzled look of its paragraphs’.16The Times, 5 Aug. 1844; Morning Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1844. However, he received the enthusiastic backing of Richard Godson, the influential MP for Kidderminster, and although he was ‘not a fluent speaker’ he still managed to convince the electors that in spite of his ‘advanced’ years, his experience of parliamentary business would compensate for any lack of youthful vigour.17Standard, 5 Aug. 1844; Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 96; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 8 Aug. 1844. He called for ‘the due protection of agriculture’ but also wanted support to be given to trade and commerce, yet did not suggest ‘any particular mode’ of balancing those interests.18The Times, 5 Aug. 1844. A warm advocate of ‘universal education’, he continued to argue for the amelioration of the poor laws, and after promising to use his local knowledge to promote the borough’s interests he easily defeated the ‘popular’ free trade candidate.19Standard, 8 Aug. 1844; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Aug. 1844; T.C. Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century (1852), 54.

A silent member, Benbow did not take a prominent part in the proceedings of the House and, having entered parliament at the advanced age of 75, was immediately excused from all attendance on parliamentary committees.20Hardwicke’s Annual Biography (1856), 110. Although he had informed the electors that he was not ‘personally or politically attached’ to Sir Robert Peel’s ministry, he endorsed the government’s efforts to improve the public finances and regulate the banking system.21Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Aug. 1844. He divided against Russell’s motion to equalise duties on all foreign sugar, 26 Feb. 1845, and Cobden’s motion for a select committee on agricultural distress, 13 Mar. 1845.22He also backed Bentinck’s attempt to maintain duty on sugar produced by slave colonies, 28 July 1846, and voted for Pakington’s motions against government policy on sugar duties, 29 June, 3 July 1848: J.B. Conacher, The Peelites and the Party System (1972), 222. Having become embroiled in a local dispute over the relative merits of building a broad or narrow gauge railway through Dudley, he upheld the interests of Lord Ward against the ‘vast majority of his constituents’ by voting in the minority against the adoption of the Oxford, Worcester and Wolverhampton scheme, 20 June 1845, and subsequently threw ‘every obstacle … in the way of its progress’.23Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 98, 102, 104.

Benbow was opposed to the endowment of the Catholic clergy, but did not vote on the Maynooth College bill in 1845, a matter on which Lord Ward’s views were not publicly known.24Benbow’s opponents were prepared to concede that on this occasion he may for once have acted ‘to please himself!!’: Ibid., 104. It was said that in early life Benbow had been in favour of free trade.25Hardwicke’s Annual Biography (1856), 110. However, in fighting his 1844 contest, in which this issue had been paramount, he concluded that the country’s advance towards free trade had not been ‘quite consistent with prudence’.26Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Aug. 1844. He rejected any system that was not ‘based upon the real principles of reciprocity’, and put it to the electors that British industries, such as the glass and nail trades of Dudley and the glove industry at Worcester, had been ‘most materially injured’ as a result.27Morning Post, 8 Aug. 1844; Standard, 8 Aug. 1844; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Aug. 1844. He had criticised the Whig ministry’s reduction of duty on Brazilian and Cuban sugar at Dudley in 1844, but in accordance with the views of Lord Ward, he voted for the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, and backed Peel over the Irish coercion bill, 25 June 1846.28Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Aug. 1844; Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 104; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 5 Mar., 2 Apr., 21 May 1846; Jones & Erickson, The Peelites, 226. Yet he showed no inclination to follow the premier into opposition, and his votes between 1847 and 1852 were cast largely with the followers of Lord Derby.29Conacher, Peelites and the Party System, 230.

Between 1844 and 1850 Benbow moved from opposing to supporting legislation to protect factory workers.30W.D. Jones & A.B. Erickson, The Peelites 1846-1857 (1972), 226. He also took an inconsistent line on religious issues, and after failing to divide on the question of Catholic relief in 1845-7, voted against William Watson’s bill, 8 Dec. 1847. He divided for the second reading of the Jewish disabilities bill, 12 July 1845, but voted against Lord John Russell’s motion on the issue, 17 Dec. 1847.

At the 1847 general election Benbow overcame popular resentment of Lord Ward’s interference in Dudley by conciliating the borough’s ‘respectable’ Liberals. Attempting to balance the interests of trade and agriculture, he advocated the gradual removal of all duties and offered the somewhat opaque claim to have ‘supported those measures which the exigencies of the times and the conflicting claims of the various interests of our free but complicated state seemed to me to demand’.31Morning Post, 15 July 1847. He emphasised his championship of ‘local interests’ and the improvements he had secured for the town since his return, most of which had depended on Lord Ward’s largesse.32Daily News, 29 July 1847; Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 102. These included a new burial ground, school-houses, improved accommodation for the borough magistrates and the promise of a new gaol. Now regarded as a ‘Conservative free-trader’, he was returned after his Chartist opponent proved unable to meet the expenses of a poll.33Daily News, 12 Nov. 1849; Morning Chronicle, 27 July 1847; Turberville, Worcestershire in the Nineteenth Century, 54.

On the hustings Benbow professed a ‘complete abhorrence’ of Chartism and he consistently opposed parliamentary reform, voting against Hume’s ‘little charter’, 6 July 1848.34Daily News, 29 July 1847. Although he claimed to favour a more equitable system of taxation, he had voted against Roebuck’s proposal to extend income tax to Ireland, 19 Feb. 1845, and Buller’s resolution that the tax should be made less unequal and inquisitorial, 10 Mar. 1845. However, he divided with the minority in favour of Horsfall’s motion to relieve taxation on professional incomes, 3 Mar. 1848, and voted with the majority against Hume’s amendment to the income tax resolutions, 13 Mar. 1848.

By now Benbow had acquired a reputation as ‘one of those members who rarely record their opinions by a vote in parliament’.35Daily News, 12 Nov. 1849. After dividing 80 times in 1848, he voted in only 5 of the 219 divisions in the 1849 session, when he backed measures to improve the navigation of the river Severn, 23 Apr. 1849.36Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849. He returned to Westminster in 1850 to vote for Grantley Berkeley’s motion for a reconsideration of the corn laws, 15 May, but did not advocate the re-imposition of a duty, and voted with the Protectionists in support of Buxton’s motion on the question of free-grown sugar, 31 May 1850.37Worcestershire Chronicle, 28 Feb. 1855; Conacher, Peelites and the Party System, 226; Jones & Erickson, The Peelites, 226. He was, however, prepared on occasion to support Lord Palmerston, and paired in favour of Roebuck’s confidence motion regarding the government’s foreign policy, 28 June 1850, thus standing in opposition to a coalition of Peelites and Derbyites.38Morning Post, 1 July 1850. He voted for the second reading of the ecclesiastical titles bill, 25 Mar. 1851, sided with the government against Urquhart’s motion criticising its handling of the measure, 9 May, and backed its extension to Ireland, 20 June. Thereafter he voted with the Conservative opposition, backing Disraeli’s amendment on agricultural distress, 11 Apr. 1851, dividing for the second reading of the militia bill, 26 Apr., and voting against an equalisation of the county and borough franchises, 27 Apr. 1851. In the following session he joined the Derbyite minority on the redistribution of seats bill, 10 May 1852, and divided in favour of an inquiry into Maynooth, 25 May 1852.39Conacher, Peelites and the Party System, 226.

In spite of his ‘extreme age’, Benbow’s professional connection to Lord Ward made his re-election ‘all but certain’ at the 1852 general election.40The Times, 16 Apr. 1852. Although some electors continued to dismiss him as Ward’s ‘lump of Political Capital’, and regarded his claim to independence as a ‘farce’, his further advancement of local interests secured the electors’ continued ‘but increasingly reluctant, tolerance of this imposed octagenarian’.41Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 158; Trainor, ‘Peers on an industrial frontier’, 87. He promised to give ‘independent support’ to Lord Derby’s ministry, short of acceding to a re-imposition of duty on foreign corn to which ‘the general feeling of the country’ was, he accepted, now opposed.42Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 154-5; Morning Chronicle, 28 June 1852; The Times, 28 June 1852. Facing a last minute challenge from a Birmingham radical, he easily topped the poll and was listed as one of 36 ‘supposed neutrals’ returned at that general election.43Spectator, 31 July 1852, quoting The Globe; The Times, 8 July 1852.

Benbow divided against Villiers’s free trade motion, 26 Nov. 1852, but backed Lord Palmerston’s subsequent amendment and voted for Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852. However, perhaps reflecting the changing party political position of Lord Ward, who was seeking to revive the family earldom, he subsequently lent support to the Aberdeen coalition, being one of 43 Conservatives who were ‘won over from Derby’ to vote for Gladstone’s budget, 2 May 1853.44Cannadine, Patricians, power and politics, 8; J.B. Conacher, The Aberdeen Coalition 1852-1855. A Study in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Party Politics (1968), 72. He was also one of 39 Derbyites who broke with the party over the income tax and voted for the third reading of the government’s bill, 6 June 1853. He likewise supported the government’s motion to go into committee on the succession duty bill, 13 June, and divided in favour of the second reading of the government of India bill, 30 June 1853.45Ibid., 75, 558. He voted in 32 of the 257 divisions of that session, which was typical of his annual attendance at the House, but he barely attended during the 1854 session, voting only three times.46Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 19 Aug. 1854. By then Benbow was classed as an ‘Independent Conservative’, but in July 1854 he joined other MPs who ‘generally’ supported the government and attended a meeting at Downing Street called by Lord John Russell.47Conacher, Peelites and the Party System, 234; The Times, 18 July 1854.

During his time in Parliament Benbow lived in London with his unmarried daughter, Eliza, and remained for some years in legal practice with his son-in-law, William Alban, and younger son, John Henry Benbow, who had become solicitor to Lord Ward in 1843.48alban-benbow.blogspot.co.uk. He had ‘long since retired’ from this business by the time of his death, but still continued to act as Lord Ward’s principal agent.49Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 3 Mar. 1855. In April 1854 it was reported that a ‘fine mansion’ at Winterdyne in the neighbourhood of his native Bewdley was being prepared for him by his employer, but he died aged 85 at Hastings in February 1855.50Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 22 Apr. 1854, 3 Mar. 1855. By this time he was the oldest member of the Commons and, recorded one local obituary, it had for some time been ‘keenly felt’ in Dudley that ‘he was of no use’ to that ‘enterprising and increasing Borough’.51Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 19 Aug. 1854; Clark, Curiosities of Dudley, 191. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Clifton Benbow (1798-1881), a colonel in the Indian Army, who had by then retired to Bath.52Hardwicke’s Annual Biography (1856), 110.