COOKES, Thomas Henry (1804-1900), of Bentley Hall, Worcs. and 10 Cambridge Place, London

The Cookes ‘came into England with the Conqueror’ and had for centuries been highly respected in Worcestershire, where they possessed ‘considerable estates’.1Burke’s Extinct and Dormant Baronetcies (1844), 129-30; Burke’s Landed Gentry (1855), i. 235; The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 47. Cookes was from a junior branch of the family of Sir Thomas Cookes, 2^nd bt., of Norgrove, the founder of Worcester College, Oxford.2J. Sambrook, ‘Cookes, Sir Thomas’, Oxf. DNB, xiii. 176-7. One of nine children of a clergyman of ‘considerable fortune’, he appears to have done little of note during his early life.3Burke’s Commoners of Great Britain and Ireland (1838), iv. 519-21; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 Mar. 1875. After inheriting estates in Worcestershire worth £5,400 a year in 1829, he served as a steward of Worcester races and sat on the committee of the Worcestershire fox hounds.4Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 27 Mar. 1875; Morning Post, 12 May 1830; Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 18 Aug. 1831. The committee boasted four other serving or future MPs: Henry Jeffries Winnington, Thomas Henry Foley, Edward Holland, and John Somerset Pakington: Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 14 June 1832. He assisted in raising the Worcestershire yeomanry, of which he was made a captain in June 1831, and was presented to the king in that capacity by Lord Foley in March 1833.5Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 16 June 1831; W.R. Williams, The Parliamentary History of the County of Worcester (1897), 65; The Times, 14 Mar. 1833.

A relative of Sir Francis Knowles MP, Cookes had for many years been a friend of Sir Thomas Winnington, the Whig MP for Droitwich, who would nominate him at the general elections of 1832 and 1835.6Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832. He was approached by a ‘highly influential body of freeholders’ to offer himself for East Worcestershire in the reform interest in 1832, when he coalesced with a fellow Liberal, William Congreve Russell. Trusting that the Reform Act would destroy ‘the annihilating gripe (sic) of corruption’ in the county, Cookes promised to obtain relief for ‘the Agricultural and Commercial Interests’, viewing the prosperity of trade, manufacturing and agriculture as ‘indissolubly linked’.7Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 2 Aug., 29 Nov., 20 Dec. 1832. At the hustings he declared himself a sincere friend to the established church, but favoured reforms that might see the institution ‘restored to her ancient beauty and chasteness’. He denounced slavery as ‘a disgrace to humanity and the Christian religion’, but held ‘no decided opinion’ on the currency question. Moreover, he argued that it was ‘unconstitutional’ to give pledges to electors as they impeded the free and impartial discussion of issues before parliament. Having lost the show of hands, he was returned in second place at the poll.8Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832.

Listed as being of ‘Whig principles’, Cookes proved to be a strong reformer, voting in favour of the removal of malt tax and the immediate abolition of slavery.9Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 103. A silent member, he backed the ministry over Irish coercion, 5, 11 Mar. 1833, and voted in favour of Thomas Attwood’s motion for a select committee on the causes of distress, 21 Mar. He prided himself on giving every vote ‘honestly, independently, and conscientiously’, opposing the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr., and Matthias Attwood’s currency motion, 24 Apr.10Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Jan. 1835. He remained committed to his electoral promise to seek a reduction in general taxation, and supported Sir John Key’s proposal to repeal house and window taxes, and Sir William Ingilby’s motion to reduce malt duty, 26 Apr., voting with the minority in support of Ingilby’s subsequent amendment to Lord Althorp’s resolution on taxation, 30 Apr. That month he served on the committee on the Salisbury election petition, and divided in favour of Fowell Buxton’s motion to shorten slave apprenticeships, 24 July 1833.11CJ, lxxxviii. 328.

Although he had argued on the hustings that the Whig administration’s ‘pruning knife’ should be used more freely to alleviate distress, he did not divide on Hume’s retrenchment motions in 1833, and was absent for Harvey’s motion for a select committee to scrutinise the pension list, 18 Feb. 1834.12Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832; The Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 42. That month Cookes was given leave, along with William Congreve Russell, to bring in a bill to improve the water supply to Dudley.13CJ, lxxxix. 65. Being required to represent the needs of agriculture within his constituency, he supported Lord Chandos’s motion on agricultural distress, 21 Feb., and, despite having told his electors that he was ready to support improvements to the existing state of the corn laws, opposed Hume’s motion for an inquiry into them, 7 Mar.14Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 20 Dec. 1832. The following month he attended a meeting of local MPs to consider petitioning parliament on the ‘ruinous state’ of agriculture and the need to maintain protection.15Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 10 Apr. 1834. Cookes had been absent for the divisions on the Irish Church temporalities bill in 1833, but he supported Daniel O’Connell’s motion for the appropriation of surplus Irish tithes for public use, 23 June, and endorsed the admission of Dissenters to the universities, 28 July 1834.16Standard, 25 June 1834.

Cookes came forward on ‘Liberal principles’ for East Worcestershire again in 1835, promising to be ‘scrupulously careful to promote the local interests’ of the constituency. He pointed to the benefits derived by ‘the middling classes of the community’ from reductions in taxation effected by the Whig government, and expressed support for the future reduction of county and highway rates. He continued to seek church reform, arguing for the abolition of pluralities and the better payment of ‘the working clergy’ by drawing ‘from the revenues of those idle drones in the Church, who though they did no duty, received so much’.17Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 15 Jan. 1835. He was again returned in second place. A petition against his election was unsuccessful.18Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 22 Jan. 1835, 26 Mar. 1835.

After duly supporting the Whig government over the speakership and the address, 19, 26 Feb. 1835, he once again demonstrated his support for the agricultural interest by voting for Chandos’s motion to repeal the malt tax, 10 Mar. In April he supported Lord John Russell’s motions on the Irish Church, and subsequently divided against Conservative amendments to the municipal corporations bill.19Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1836), 97.

Cookes was apparently unable to vote in support of the address, 4 Feb. 1836, owing to ‘a violent inflammatory attack’ and remained ill for the greater part of that session.20Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 11 Feb. 1836. Nevertheless, he is listed as having voted on the side of the government: Hansard, 4 Feb. 1836, vol. 31, c. 105; Morning Post, 5 Feb. 1836. He voted in only five of the 195 divisions, joining the O’Connellites in opposing the Irish constabulary bill, 23 Mar., and supporting the second reading of the Irish Church bill, 3 June. Having voted in favour of the third reading of the Irish municipal corporations bill, 28 Mar., he backed Russell’s motion to disagree with the Lords’ amendments to the bill, 10 June. He opposed the motion that it was contrary to the independence of the House for members to become paid advocates for outside interests, 30 June, and, late in the session, backed Russell’s motion to postpone consideration of the Lords’ amendments to the Irish church and tithe bill, 6 Aug. 1836.21Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 1, 8 Sept. 1836.

Cookes was a supporter of the ballot and voted for Grote’s motion, 7 Mar. 1837. He also continued to back church reform, dividing in favour of the first and second readings of the government’s church rates abolition bill, 15 Mar., 23 May. However, faced by another challenge from his wealthy Conservative rival, he retired at the 1837 general election. Citing ill health and the considerable expense that his parliamentary duties had imposed on him, he complained to his constituents about the ‘incessant contests’ by which ‘the rich and powerful’ were endeavouring to have ‘the real political sentiment of the country smothered’.22Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 13 July 1837.

Following his withdrawal from public life Cookes subsequently encountered financial difficulties. In June 1836 he had become a director of the newly-established Borough of St. Marylebone Bank. The bank was dissolved five years later and in February 1843 he became a defendant in a suit brought by shareholders for fraud, misrepresentation and the mismanagement of the company.23Standard, 16 June 1836; The Times, 17 Dec. 1841, 24 Feb. 1843. The previous year he had sold 700 acres of land at Tardebigg and Feckenham, and two years later disposed of his ancestral estates at Bentley and Norgrove.24Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 7 July 1842, 5 Sept. 1844. In 1858 he was forced to apply to the insolvent debtors’ court for protection, and the following year became embroiled in sixteen years of expensive but ‘ridiculous and unworthy litigation’ with his two brothers over the family’s remaining property at Astley.25Morning Post, 11 Feb. 1858. One of the brothers, J.R. Cookes, was ‘a staunch Conservative of the old school’ and an influential figure in the constituency of West Worcestershire. See Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 4 Apr. 1857. This dispute was not settled until two years after their mother’s death in 1873, after which Cooke’s retained the property. In later years he became a patron of Worcester Grammar School.26Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 28 Dec. 1872, 30 Aug. 1873, 27 Mar. 1875, 25 June 1892.

Cookes’s wife died at the beginning of 1891 and later that year, possibly in order to disinherit his brothers, he married the 19 year-old daughter of a local butcher, who had been sent to nurse him during a serious illness. Cookes’s solicitor intially refused to draw up the marriage settlement arguing that, at 88 years of age (and with two of his sisters known to be ‘lunatic’), his client was ‘mentally incapable’, but this claim was subsequently dismissed by a sympathetic judge.27Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 23 Jan. 1892. He died aged 95 at The Old Hill at Astley, Worcestershire in September 1900, by which time he was believed to be the oldest surviving former MP and the last survivor of the 1832 Parliament.28Worcestershire Chronicle, 6 Oct. 1900; information from Stephen Lees. His wife, Gertrude, remarried the artist Francis Kinnaird the following year.29Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 12 Sept. 1891. Kinnaird died of wounds sustained in France in June 1915. Gertrude died in 1929: ‘Francis Kinnaird: Worcestershire Artist’: www.worcestershire.greatbritishlife.co.uk.