FOLEY, Edward Thomas (1791-1846), of Stoke Edith, Ledbury, Herefordshire

A Conservative scion of a famously Foxite family, Foley offered solid support for ‘constitutional principles’ during his decade in the reformed Commons, but was well-respected by all parties in Herefordshire. The Liberal Hereford Times confessed that if one of the county’s three MPs had to be a Tory it might as well be Foley, given his character and popularity, although it added that ‘it was a grievous sight to see a Foley at the head of the Tory band’.1 His widow, Lady Emily Foley, continued to exercise significant electoral influence in the county after his death.

A direct descendant of Richard Foley, a Stourbridge ironmaster who had amassed a ‘considerable fortune’, Foley’s father Edward (1747-1803) was Whig MP for Droitwich, 1768-74, and Worcestershire, 1774-1803.2The Assembled Commons (1837), 73; HP Commons, 1754-1790, ii. 445; HP Commons, 1790-1820, iii. 781. Foley passed up the opportunity to stand on his family’s Whig interest for Worcestershire in 1818 and Herefordshire in 1820, but sat as a Tory for the rotten borough of Ludgershall, from 1826 until 1832 when it was disenfranchised.3HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 163. His younger brother, John Hodgetts Hodgetts Foley was Whig MP for Droitwich, 1832-5, and Worcestershire East, 1847-61.

Foley was returned unopposed for Herefordshire at the 1832 general election, after promising to uphold the agricultural interest.4Hereford Times, 1 Dec. 1832. He was greatly respected by his opponents. The local Reformer Sir Samuel Rush Meyrick described him as a ‘perfect gentleman’, while Foley’s Whig colleague Sir Robert Price praised his ‘amiable and excellent disposition’.5Hereford Journal, 19 Dec. 1832.

Foley does not appear to have spoken or served on any select committees after 1832. His voting behaviour in the first two sessions of the reformed Commons is difficult to discern, as he rarely appears in the surviving lists of minorities. He did, however, support Ingilby’s motion for the repeal of malt duty, 27 Feb. 1834. Charles Dod described him as a Conservative in favour of agricultural protection, while another contemporary parliamentary guide categorised him as a Tory.6Dod’s Parliamentary Companion (1833), 113; The Assembled Commons (1837), 74. Foley was re-elected in second place at the 1835 general election, and was praised for his ‘independent conduct’ regarding his influence over his tenants and his refusal to back a challenge to his two Whig colleagues.7Hereford Times, 17 Jan. 1835.

Foley divided with Peel’s Conservatives in the key party divisions of the ensuing session on the speakership, the address and Russell’s Irish church resolutions, 19, 26 Feb., 2 Apr. 1835. He supported the marquess of Chandos’s motions for agricultural relief, 25 May 1835, 27 Apr. 1836, and paired off in favour of Edward Stillingfleet Cayley’s proposal for a silver standard, 1 June 1835. He opposed Irish church and municipal reform and the Whig ministers’ scheme to settle church rates in 1837.

Returned unopposed at the 1837 general election, thereafter Foley offered staunch opposition to repeal of the corn laws and Irish church appropriation, as well as supporting Henry Goulburn for the speakership, 27 May 1839. He retired at the 1841 dissolution, citing ill-health, after voting in the majorities which defeated Baring’s budget and passed the no confidence motion in Melbourne’s administration, 18 May, 4 June 1841.8Hereford Journal, 23 June 1841.

Foley died in 1846, having ‘for some time been in a declining state of health, which baffled the skill of the most eminent physicians, and terminated in a general breaking up of his constitution’.9Hereford Journal, 1 Apr. 1846. As he had no heirs, his estate, including the family seat of Stoke Edith, passed to his long-lived widow Lady Emily Foley (1805-1900), who also became lady of the manor of Malvern, Worcestershire. The estates comprised 8,205 acres, of which 5,561 were in Herefordshire, producing an annual rental of £8,207 in the 1870s.10J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland, ed. D. Spring (1971), 170.

These land holdings enabled the ‘excellent and noble proprietoress of Stoke Edith’ to wield considerable electoral influence in county elections.11Hereford Times, 20 Nov. 1858. A mark of her influence came in 1858, when her brother Lord Montague William Graham, whose campaign was supported by her agents and steward, was returned unopposed for Herefordshire, despite not owning an acre in the county.12Hereford Times, 20 Nov., 4 Dec. 1858. The episode prompted one local observer to write that ‘it is well-known that her ladyship exercises great political influence ... it is for the electors of Herefordshire to accept or reject her nominee’.13A. P., letter, Hereford Times, 11 Dec. 1858. The Hereford Journal noted that:

The high esteem in which his lordship’s noble sister, the Lady Emily Foley, is so universally held, has been found to operate as a most potent influence, not only in the district immediately around this city, but in a more distant parts of the county, where her ladyship’s deserved “popularity” has stood her brother in good stead.14Hereford Journal, 8 Dec. 1858.

On the death of Lady Emily in 1900, Stoke Edith and a personal estate of £48,994 passed to Paul Foley, her great-nephew, whose father, Henry John Wentworth Hodgetts Foley, was Liberal MP for Staffordshire South, 1859-68.15National Probate Calendar, 3 May 1900. See Birmingham Daily Post, 2 Jan. 1900 for a good obituary of Lady Emily Foley. The family papers and correspondence of the Foleys of Stoke Edith are held by Herefordshire Record Office, but at the time of writing (July 2013) they are closed.16Herefordshire Record Office, F, BD98, BG46; NRA 29103 Foley.