ELLIS I, John (1812-?), of 50 Hereford Street, Grosvenor Square, London

Of Cornish descent, John Ellis relied upon his skills as a metropolitan lawyer to build a brief parliamentary career as an active Conservative back-bencher for an Irish constituency. Although he was not connected with commercial pursuits, he was dismissed by his Irish antagonists as a ‘London haberdasher’, and was twice ‘stigmatised as a stranger’ to the constituencies for which he sought election.1Morning Post, 12, 16 Aug. 1837; Freeman’s Journal, 14 June 1841. Largely dependent upon his own resources, he failed to secure a seat after 1841. After contesting Lancaster in 1852 he faded into obscurity, being one of a handful of MPs in this period for whom there is no known record of death.

Ellis was born in London, the younger son of a barrister at Gray’s Inn, who dealt in the conveyance of Cornish land, and was for many years an active magistrate at Penzance.2Dod’s parliamentary companion (1838), 106; Royal Cornwall Gazette, 4 July 1812; The Times, 28 Dec. 1831. In his brother’s words, he ‘distinguished himself’ at Cambridge University ‘as a debater in the Union Club’ and the founder of the university’s Conservative Association.3Dod MS, ii. 393; Morning Post, 12 Aug. 1837. He then entered the Middle Temple and shortly afterwards married the eldest daughter of John Weldale Knollys, who had succeeded to the estates of Sir Francis Knollys at Fernhill, Berkshire in 1805.4Morning Post, 16 May 1835; Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 19 Dec. 1835; The Property Lawyer, iv (1827), 114-9.

Ellis claimed that it was ‘the reckless conduct’ of the Whig ministry that impelled him to seek a parliamentary seat at the 1837 general election. He believed that ‘the battle of the Constitution was to be fought’ in Ireland and had himself adopted by ‘the Protestant interest’ at Newry, insisting that it was his ‘national birthright’ to claim to represent any constituency ‘within the United Empire’.5Morning Post, 16 Aug. 1837. He beat the local Liberal member in a ‘very severe contest’ which, according to Ellis’s supporters, was marked by ‘acrimony & party spirit … priestly bigotry, … [and] bloodshed’.6The Assembled Commons; or, parliamentary biographer (1838), 84; Dod MS, ii. 393-4. Ellis should not be confused with John Ellis of Crieve House, a landlord and prominent Orangeman who had long taken an active role in the political life of Newry: Belfast News-letter, 17 July 1829, 10 May 1831, 25 Jan. 1876. Although he was an outspoken critic of the Whig ministry, Ellis accepted the need to ‘remedy the errors’ which had by degrees crept ‘into the working of the British Constitution’. At the same time, he denounced Daniel O’Connell as ‘a traitor’ to the country’s institutions, and entered parliament anticipating a ‘great contest … between the principles of unqualified democracy and the principles of limited monarchy’.7Belfast News-letter, 18 Aug. 1837, quoting the Newry Telegraph. That December Ellis’s return was challenged on grounds of his qualification, bribery and intimidation, and he interpreted the late submission of the petition as an attempt to prevent him from serving on any election committees pending its hearing.8Morning Post, 23 Jan. 1838. However, after ‘a rather short sitting’ Ellis was declared duly elected, 22 Mar. 1838.9Morning Post, 7 Dec. 1837, 23 Mar. 1838; CJ, xciii. 84-5, 382. Ellis’s elder brother, Carteret John William Ellis, of Trengwainton, Cornwall, unsuccessfully contested Bodmin as a Reformer at the same election: Dod’s parliamentary companion (1838), 106; Morning Post, 12 July 1837; Daily News, 11 Oct. 1850.

From the outset Ellis proved a reliable supporter of the Conservatives, and voted for Sir Robert Peel’s resolution on the civil pensions list, 8 Dec. 1837. Although an Englishman, he was active in taking up issues affecting his Irish backers and spoke frequently in debate. While awaiting the outcome of the petition against him he made an impromptu speech in the Commons, 5 Dec. 1837, springing to the defence of Sir William Verner, Tory MP for County Armagh. Verner had been removed from the commission of the peace for toasting ‘the Battle of the Diamond’ at a gathering which, Ellis insisted, had been an entirely private affair and ought not to have come under public scrutiny.10Hansard, 5 Dec. 1837, vol. 39, cc. 682-3. Tellingly, Ellis claimed that in responding to the toast he himself had known ‘no more of the historical incidents connected with it than he did of the Emperor of China’. On 22 December he called for the earliest possible re-assembly of Parliament in order to debate the insurrection in Canada, and later voted for Lord Sandon’s motion blaming government policy for the rebellion, 7 Mar. 1838.11Hansard, 22 Dec. 1837, vol. 39, c. 1493. At the adjournment Ellis took the first opportunity to return to Newry in order to ‘render up an account’ of his brief stewardship.12Morning Post, 23 Jan. 1838.

Although Ellis divided against O’Connell’s motion to stop the Irish poor law bill, 9 Feb. 1838, he subsequently argued that ‘the able-bodied poor’ ought to be admitted into the workhouses, on the ground that ‘every state was bound to provide for all of its members who were in a state of destitution, without making distinctions as to age and sickness’.13Hansard, 19 Feb. 1838, vol. 40, cc. 1280-1. He voted against the ballot, 15 Feb. 1838, 18 June 1839, later explaining ‘that those who have no votes should know how the electoral body exercises the franchise’.14Lancaster Gazette, 19 June 1852. His maternal grandfather had once owned a 928 acre coffee and sugar plantation in Jamaica, and he voted for Sir George Strickland’s motion that slave apprenticeships should end on 1 August 1838, 30 Mar. 1838.15K.M. Butler, The Economics of Emancipation: Jamaica and Barbados, 1823-1843 (1995), 95.

Ellis was a staunch defender of the Established Church, but was anxious to ‘keep all those within the Pale of the Constitution who have gained admittance into it’, and while he was in favour of a committee to inquire into ‘the state of education’ at Maynooth, in July 1838 he opposed calls to ‘reject the grant’.16Belfast News-letter, 20 Dec. 1839; Hansard, 30 July 1838, vol. 44, cc. 815-6. That month he made an unsuccessful attempt to postpone the third reading of the post office bill, arguing that to take ‘affairs out of the hands of the Postmaster-General and vest them in those of three commissioners’ would incur unnecessary expense.17He later objected to the Shannon navigation bill on the similar grounds and moved an unsuccessful amendment, for ‘two instead of three commissioners, so that there should be no paid commissioner at all’: Hansard, 28 June 1839, vol. 48, c. 1015; 17 July 1839, vol. 49, c. 434. He also pointed to the need for having someone in the Commons to answer questions relative to the department.18Hansard, 31 July 1838, vol. 44, cc. 844-6.

Ellis continued to be hostile to the Whig administration, arguing that it was too weak and untrustworthy to instil any confidence in its proposals for Irish municipal reform, and believing that the government’s bill was ‘calculated to endanger the dearest rights and interests of the Protestant subjects of these kingdoms’, he joined the small minority which opposed its third reading, 8 Mar. 1839.19Hansard, 8 Mar. 1839, vol. 46, cc. 197-9. In 1852 Ellis would claim that he had ‘always been a Free Trader’, but he voted against Villiers’s motion for a committee of the House to consider the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839, (and would do so again, 26 May 1840).20Lancaster Gazette, 19 June 1852. He divided in favour of the Lord’s day bill, 21 Mar. 1839, and, as a regular attender, was on hand to vote against Lord John Russell’s motions on the conduct of the Irish administration, 19 Apr. 1839, and the Jamaica government bill, 6 May, (dividing against its third reading, 19 June), and voted for Henry Goulburn to take the speakership, 27 May.

While convinced that there had not been any ‘want of generosity on the part of England towards Ireland’, in July 1839 Ellis described the bill for the navigation of the Shannon as ‘exceedingly obnoxious’, and argued that instead of extending its patronage with ‘a whole corps of placemen’, the government ought to have placed the scheme under the responsibility of the Irish board of public works.21Hansard, 17 July 1839, vol. 49, cc. 431-3. Having given notice of his determination ‘to take the sense of the House’ on the third reading of the bill, he was thwarted when the measure was, as he complained, ‘smuggled through the House at two o’clock’ on a Saturday morning’.22Hansard, 29 July 1839, vol. 49, c. 935. He was in favour of factory reform and voted in favour of 58 rather than 69 hours as the maximum limit for a working week, 1 July 1839.

Ellis returned to Newry in December 1839, and shortly before departing to vote against the ministry in the confidence vote, 31 Jan. 1840, criticised the government’s efforts to maintain order in Ireland. In what the Conservative press described as a clear and sound speech by ‘an able and spirited representative’, (but which was derided by one Liberal newspaper as ‘the tomfoolery of a stage-struck grocer’),23Freeman’s Journal, 18 Dec. 1839. Upon issuing his address in 1837 he had been wrongly described as the son of a London merchant: Standard, 14 July 1837. he told local Conservatives that, notwithstanding O’Connell’s recent denials, he was convinced that ‘English Chartism and Irish Ribbonism’ were ‘connected with each other’.24Belfast News-letter, 3, 20 Dec. 1839; Standard, 9 Dec. 1839, quoting Dublin Evening Mail. He attended a deputation to the chancellor of the exchequer on behalf of Irish distillers to discuss the malt drawback, 11 Feb. 1840, and voted for the bill to secure the publication of parliamentary papers, 6 Mar.25Freeman’s Journal, 14 Feb. 1840. He was opposed to preserving the ‘vast and exclusive privileges’ of the Bank of Ireland, under which, he argued, towns like Newry, which conducted most of their commercial transactions with England and Scotland, were disadvantaged, and in August 1839 he set aside his hostility towards O’Connell and supported his effort to obstruct government legislation on the issue by having the House counted out.26Hansard, 14 Aug. 1839, vol. 50, cc. 283-4; 15 Aug. 1839, vol. 50, cc. 358-61; Morning Post, 15 Aug. 1839; Standard, 16 Aug. 1839. For Ellis, ‘the greater the number of banks’ that were established, the ‘more limited became the district of each, and the less the shock to public credit when failures took place’, and he objected to the treasury’s proposal to continue to allow the Bank of Ireland to issue banknotes, 10 Mar. 1840.27Hansard, 26 July 1839, vol. 49, cc. 905-9; 10 Mar. 1840, vol. 52, c. 1121. That month he gave notice of a motion concerning the occupation of Cracow by foreign troops, the purpose of which, his opponents surmised, was simply to vilify the government’s foreign policy. Ellis, however, was absent for the reading of the motion, 25 Mar., the discussion of which was postponed in favour of the second reading of Lord Stanley’s Irish registration bill, a measure to which Ellis gave his full support.28Freeman’s Journal, 21 Mar. 1840; Standard, 26 Mar. 1840. Around this time it was rumoured that James Emerson Tennant, despairing of retaining his Belfast seat, was ‘trying to circumvent’ Ellis at Newry.29Morning Chronicle, 14 Jan. 1840. The latter maintained his support for the Conservatives in the House, voting against the government over its policy in China, 9 Apr. 1840. He continued to display little appetite for free trade, voting for Sandon’s motion condemning the reduction of duty on foreign sugar, 18 May 1841, and backed Peel’s motion of no confidence in the government, 4 June 1841.

After local Conservatives concluded that Francis Needham, Viscount Newry and Mourne, would be better able to fend off a Liberal challenge at Newry, Ellis retired at the 1841 general election.30Morning Post, 12 June 1841. He had engaged in commercial pursuits during his time as an MP, becoming a director of the new corn market at Kingston-upon-Thames, Surrey, and laying its cornerstone in November 1840.31The Era, 22 Nov. 1840. Little is known of his activities thereafter, and it is possible that he began to encounter financial difficulties.32In July 1850 a proclamation of outlawry was issued against a John Ellis of 4 Elm Court, Temple at the suit of James Henderson, who may have been a member of the grand jury at Newry: Morning Chronicle, 9 July 1850. He nevertheless offered for Lancaster on ‘conservative free-trade principles’ at the 1852 general election and arrived there from London claiming to have a letter of introduction ‘from Lord Derby himself’.33Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 June 1852. He duly praised the premier’s agnosticism on the question of protection, while at the same time recommending measures to alleviate the burden on agriculture. Opposed to the abolition of church rates, he appealed to the ‘sound Protestant feeling’ of the electors and, abandoning the position he had held in 1838, advocated ‘the total and immediate repeal’ of the grant to Maynooth on the ground that the Catholic priesthood in Ireland had continually sought to undermine the nation’s ‘Protestant foundations’. Although alert to ‘incongruities’ in the parliamentary system, he opposed an extension of the franchise and continued to denounce the ballot, which he judged to have been a failure in other countries. He was, however, in favour of legal reforms, and argued that ‘law must be rendered cheap, and be swiftly administered’.34The Era, 27 June 1852; Huddersfield Chronicle, 19 June 1852; Lancaster Gazette, 19 June 1852. Although he proved ‘an eloquent and energetic’ candidate, he came fourth in the poll.35Lancaster Gazette, 24 July 1852.

Having fought the election in a ‘straightforward’ manner, and taken his defeat with a ‘gallant bearing’, Ellis passed into obscurity and little is known of his later life.36Ibid. He ceased to be a member of the Middle Temple in 1869, but no death certificate or will has been traced in England or Ireland.37Information from Stephen Lees. Two of Ellis’s brothers were also barristers. Francis Ellis served in the West Indies as a stipendiary magistrate at Turks Island, 1852-70, and Henry Wilfred Ellis practised before the supreme court at Sydney, New South Wales.38J. Foster, Men-At-The-Bar: a biographical hand-list of the members of the various Inns of Court (1885), 140-1. It is therefore possible that Ellis joined one of his brothers and spent his later years abroad.