FLEMING, John (1781-1844), of Stoneham and South Stoneham, Hants and Pall Mall, London.

An ‘intimate friend’ of the duke of Wellington, Fleming became notorious for his electoral shenanigans in Hampshire, where he sat as a Tory MP and was the driving force behind the local party for almost a quarter of a century.2The Standard, 28 Apr. 1842. ‘Querulous’ and ‘irrepressible’, his activities in Southampton, where he allegedly ‘ruled the electors with a rod of iron’, almost landed him in custody in 1842, after he refused to co-operate with an election committee, and ultimately led to a rift with the prime minister Peel, which prompted his resignation.3R. Foster, The Politics of County Power: Wellington and the Hampshire Gentlemen 1820-1852 (1990), 12; A Temple Patterson, A History of Southampton 1700-1914 (1966), ii. 168.

Shortly before entering the Commons in 1820, Fleming was described to the premier Lord Liverpool as ‘a gentleman of very large fortune’, who was ‘independent of any party’ but ‘generally’ a supporter of ministers.4Add. 38280, f. 103. Born John Barton Willis, Fleming owed his vast wealth and subsequent prominence in Hampshire to being the reversionary heir of his first cousin John Fleming (1743-1802), MP for Southampton 1774-80, 1784-90, like him a grandson of the celebrated antiquary Browne Willis MP (1682-1760).5He changed his name to Fleming in compliance with his cousin’s will (Prob 11/1369/105) by an Act of Parliament in 1813 (53 Geo. III, c. 78). Following the death of his cousin’s widow, Fleming inherited all his estates on the Isle of Wight and at Romsey and North Stoneham in Hampshire, where in 1818 he began work on a huge Grecian mansion to a design by Thomas Hopper, apparently with an unlimited budget. He sat as a staunch Tory for Hampshire from 1820 until 1831, when his implacable hostility to the reform bill cost him his seat.6HP Commons, 1820-32, v. 158-62.

An unrepentant advocate of using ‘a certain expenditure of cash’ to win over political opponents, following the passage of reform Fleming spent a fortune contesting the new division of South Hampshire, where the bulk of his estates lay.7Wellington mss WP 4/1/3/4/19, Fleming to Wellington, 1 May 1831. Undeterred by his defeat in 1832, when he also assisted the abortive candidacy of Wellington’s son Lord Douro in North Hampshire,8Ibid. WP4/4/3/12, Fleming to Wellington, 16 Sept. 1832. he left nothing to chance at the unexpected general election of 1835, offering tithe rebates to supporters and pressurising tenants, according to his defeated Whig opponent and former friend, the foreign secretary Lord Palmerston.9Foster, County Power, 137; The Letters of the Third Viscount Palmerston to Laurence and Elizabeth (1979), ed. K. Bourne, 259-60. See also K. Bourne, Palmerston: The Early Years 1784-1841 (1982), 540. Elected at the top of the poll as a supporter of Peel’s ministry, he was later instrumental in establishing the South Hampshire Conservative Society to attend to the registration.10Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 61; Foster, County Power, 145. He also cemented his connection with leading Tories by hosting ‘grand dinners’ for the party at his Pall Mall residence.11Hampshire Advertiser, 27 June 1835. ‘Fiercely partisan’, he was not beyond using his connection with Wellington, the county’s lord lieutenant, to promote exclusively Tory appointments to the bench.12Foster, County Power, 30. See also his letters in Wellington mss WP4/5/1/4 - 3/17. Assisted by his many acts of munificence, including his sponsorship of local hospitals, balls, regattas and race meetings, Fleming was re-elected in first place in 1837 and enjoyed an unopposed return in 1841.13See Foster, County Power, 134-5. Persistent rumours of his elevation to the peerage, wistfully noted by Palmerston in 1835, came to nothing.14See, for instance, Bourne, Palmerston, 546.

A fairly regular attender, Fleming’s voting record was predictably supportive of the Conservatives on most major issues. He broke ranks with Peel, however, to vote for repeal of the malt tax, 10 Mar. 1835, and to support relief from agricultural distress, 27 Apr. 1836. Somewhat surprisingly, he was also in the radical minority of 33 for an inquiry into the ‘most eligible site’ for the rebuilding of the Houses of Parliament, 14 June 1838. In 1836 he was accused in a petition to the Commons of manufacturing county votes on the Isle of Wight, by making ‘gifts’ of 40s. freeholds to non-residents totalling £250. In response, in his first known speech of this period, he insisted on his ‘right to dispose of his property as he pleased’ and defended the legality of the votes, which had been upheld in the revising barristers’ courts.15Hansard, 9 Mar. 1837, vol. 37, c. 16. After backing Peel’s motion of no confidence in the Whigs, 4 June 1841, he gave steady support to his reforms as premier, including his replacement of the existing corn laws with a sliding scale, in support of which he spoke briefly, 25 Feb. 1842, and the introduction of an income and property tax, 13 Apr. 1842.16Hansard, 25 Feb. 1842, vol. 60, c. 1145.

Nearly all of Fleming’s remaining speeches related to the Southampton election of 1841. Accused by an election petition of funding bribery and corruption, and summoned to give evidence before the ensuing inquiry, 26 Apr. 1842, Fleming admitted organising the settlement of outstanding debts after the election, but insisted that they were ‘strictly legal expenses’ and refused to provide details of subscribers to the Conservatives’ election fund, saying that his communications had been confidential. Pressed again, he protested that ‘the money had been raised six weeks after the election had taken place and (striking his hand energetically upon the table), he would not under any circumstances betray the names of the parties from whom he had in confidence received the money’.17Morning Chronicle, 27 Apr. 1842. The committee referred his refusal to the House, which on the advice of the attorney-general ruled that he must answer or face possible arrest.18Hansard, 26 Apr. 1842, vol. 62, cc. 1118-27. ‘So satisfied did the sergeant [at arms] feel that Mr. Fleming would be handed over to his charge, that his best room was put in order to receive him’, recalled one reporter.19Hampshire Advertiser, 30 Apr. 1842.

When Fleming was called again the next day, however, ‘out of regard to his personal feelings’ the petitioner’s counsel Alexander Cockburn, later Liberal MP for Southampton, did not persist with his question. After denying any involvement by the Carlton Club, to which he belonged, Fleming was allowed to stand down.20Morning Post, 28 Apr. 1842; Hampshire Advertiser, 30 Apr. 1842. Thereafter he continued to defend the conduct of the election at every opportunity, rallying to the defence of another recalcitrant witness, 28 Apr. 1842, and bringing up petitions against the committee’s verdict, which unseated both the Conservative members.21Hansard, 1 June 1842, vol. 63, cc. 1057, 1060. Praised by local Tories for his ‘unbending firmness’, it was again rumoured that he was about to receive a peerage, prompting satirical reports that his crest would feature ‘Conservative bludgeon men’ and his motto would be ‘legal expenses’.22Hampshire Advertiser, 30 Apr. 1842; Hampshire Telegraph, 6 June 1842.

A peerage, however, was probably not what the premier Peel had in mind. Concerned that so many ‘foul transactions had been disclosed through the parliamentary inquiry’, as one local paper put it, Peel delayed the issue of a new writ, against Fleming’s wishes, and backed the appointment of another inquiry into whether Southampton should be disfranchised.23Hampshire Telegraph, 13 June, 13 Aug. 1842; Hansard, 15 June 1842, vol. 63, cc. 1586-9. In the event the committee ruled that there was insufficient evidence for this, 15 July 1842, and Fleming was again conspicuous in the return of two new Tories at the ensuing by-election.24Morning Post, 16 July 1842. Lampooning his involvement, a Liberal squib signed ‘Stoneham’ declared:

Southampton borough and county have always been mine; for years and years I have nominated the members ... Independent electors, I rely upon your public spirit to assist me in resisting this vile attempt of the Liberals to wrench your borough from me. If such things are to be submitted to, there is an end to freedom and independence.25http://www.willisfleming.org.uk/collections/family-and-estate-papers/pieces/electioneering-broadside-by-stoneham-1842/

After introducing the new MPs on 10 Aug., Fleming unexpectedly took the Chiltern Hundreds, citing the ‘increasing claims of my family’.26Hampshire Advertiser, 13 Aug. 1842. He ‘retires in disgust, having been rumped by Sir Robert Peel in the delay of the writ’, suggested a local paper, adding that he would now ‘give a few years to foreign travel’.27Hampshire Telegraph, 15 Aug. 1842. Writing to Fleming, Peel regretted his resignation, but added ‘I cannot be surprised at your to wish to be relieved ... from the conflicts and contention of the House of Commons’.28Add. 40513, ff. 226-7, Peel to Fleming, 11 Aug. 1842.

Fleming died two years later of ‘malignant fever’ whilst on board his yacht Syren in the Mediterranean. He had been sailing there for over a year, leaving his properties, as he informed Peel, ‘forlorn and forsaken’.29J. Vane, ‘The County Homes of Southampton’, Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club Archaeological Society (1983), xxxix, 181; The Times, 13 Sept. 1844; Add. 40530, f. 419; 40542, f. 145. His will, dated 25 Nov. 1842, made ample provision for his wife and younger sons, but although his personal estate was proved under £50,000, 9 Oct. 1844, the debts on his entailed properties rendered him ‘insolvent’.30PROB 11/2006/755; IR26/1674/468. In 1852 his eldest son and successor in the family estates, John Browne Willis Fleming (1815-72), obtained an Act of Parliament enabling him to sell them off (15 & 16 Vict., c. 19).

According to an obituarist, Fleming’s expenditure ‘in the town and neighbourhood’ of Southampton had ‘averaged’ a staggering £18,000 per year, and on his leaving England ‘the loss of such an expenditure’ was ‘most sensibly felt’. His ‘splendid mansion’ at North Stoneham, which was never completed, was also ‘supposed to have cost him £100,000’.31Gent. Mag. (1844), ii. 544. The family abandoned the house in 1854 and following its use as a hospital and as flats it was demolished in 1939.32http://www.northstoneham.org.uk/park/chronology.html. Fleming’s second son Thomas James Willis Fleming (1819-90), who later purchased Fleming’s house at South Stoneham from the estate, unsuccessfully contested the Isle of Wight as a Protectionist in 1847, before sitting briefly as Conservative MP for Winchester, 1864-5. Documents relating to the Fleming family and Stoneham estates are being collated at http://www.willisfleming.org.uk.