CROMPTON, Samuel (1785-1848), of Wood End, nr. Thirsk, Yorks.

Crompton, the son of a Derby banker, had served as MP for that borough from 1826-30 on the Whig corporation interest, having previously represented East Retford as the nominee of Earl Fitzwilliam. He had declined to seek re-election in 1830, on the grounds that he would be unable to attend regularly at Westminster.1HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 813-14. However, in 1834 he returned to the Commons at a by-election for Thirsk, where his father had purchased the estate of Wood End, which Crompton inherited in 1810.2W. Grainge, The Vale of Mowbray: A Historical and Topographical Account of Thirsk and its Neighbourhood (1859), 295. Before his unopposed return, Crompton declared his desire to ‘reform all defects both in church and state – protect the agricultural interest – commute tithes on equitable terms – and support the best institutions of the country’, but declined to give any pledges, stating that he would act as an independent.3Hull Packet, 28 Mar. 1834. His entry in Dod’s Parliamentary Companion noted his opposition to the ballot and his support for a modified Irish poor rate.4Dod’s Parliamentary Companion, 1836, 99. Prior to his unopposed re-election in 1835, the Hull Packet reported that Thirsk’s electors appeared satisfied with his ‘conservative whig principles’.5Hull Packet, 19 Dec. 1834. Although nominally a Whig, Crompton did not wish to be considered an opponent to Peel’s ministry, explaining that ‘he was an enemy to party spirit, and would never sanction under any men to forward bad measures, or oppose good ones’.6The Times, 10 Jan. 1835. The conservative nature of Crompton’s Whiggery was such that in 1837, when he was again returned without opposition, one correspondent to The Times suggested that he should perhaps be added to the list of those MPs who were ‘far more Conservative than Whiggish’.7The Times, 14 Aug. 1837. Another commentator raised doubts about whether he should be included among the Liberal ranks.8The Times, 31 July 1837. By August 1840 Crompton had announced that he would retire at the next dissolution, a decision reputedly precipitated by the fact that he had alienated some of his supporters by his excessive demands for compensation for property which he owned on the route of the York to Berwick railway. 9Hull Packet, 28 Aug. 1840; Daily News, 15 Feb. 1849.

Crompton’s election speeches emphasised his independence and lack of party spirit, but it was alleged that his desire to secure a baronetcy led to him ‘supporting government through thick and thin’ in 1836 and 1837.10Daily News, 15 Feb. 1849. An article on ‘Whig-Radical Corruption’ in Blackwood’s Magazine listed the newly-created Sir Samuel Crompton as one of those who had ‘solid reasons for voting black white to keep Whig-Radicals in office’.11‘Whig-Radical Corruption’, Blackwood’s Magazine, Sept. 1838, 347. Yet although Crompton generally voted with the Liberal ministry – supporting them on the proposed abolition of the parliamentary freeman franchise under the 1835 Municipal Corporations Bill, 16 July, and on the 1836 Irish Church Bill, 4 July, for example – it would be wrong to suggest that he slavishly followed ministers into the lobby. In 1834, he voted for the appointment of a Select Committee into drunkenness, 3 June, to which Althorp was opposed. In 1841, he was in the minority of 58, 13 May, for an inquiry into the conduct of the Earl of Cardigan as commander of the 11th Hussars, which included the charge that he had had a soldier flogged on the Sabbath.

In his only known spoken intervention, on 3 June 1835, Crompton, who does not appear to have contributed to debate, presented a petition from one of his tenants in Staffordshire – where Crompton owned Throwley Hall12Samuel C. Hall, The baronial halls, picturesque edifices & ancient churches of England (1858), vol. ii. – who had become embroiled in a costly law suit at the Spiritual Court after the cabbages he set aside for the payment of his tithe were eaten by lambs.13Hansard, 3 June 1835, vol. 28, cc.478-84. He served on the committee on the Dungarvan election petition in 1834.14Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 5 July 1834. Outside Parliament, Crompton attended the inaugural meeting of the North Riding Liberal Registration Association in 1837, at which a district organisation for Thirsk was also formed, and the inaugural dinner of the York Liberal Association in 1839.15C.J. Davison Ingledew, The history and antiquities of North Allerton, in the county of York (1858), 134; Leeds Mercury, 2 Feb. 1839. Given the rural constituency he represented, it is perhaps not surprising that Crompton was an advocate of protection, voting in 1839 against Villiers’ motion that evidence from anti-corn law petitioners should be heard at the bar of the House.16The Examiner, 24 Feb. 1839. He continued to support the protectionist cause after his retirement, being ‘in no way identified with the destructionist and free trade delusions of the later radical coteries’.17Yorkshire Gazette, 30 Dec. 1848. After retiring, Crompton appears to have devoted his time to the continued improvement of his estates, one innovation being the installation of a steam engine.18S. Lewis, A topographical dictionary of England (1844), iv, 337. The Yorkshire Gazette’s obituary applauded the fact that ‘instead of spending his income abroad, or wasting it in expensive establishments, he delighted to see a flourishing tenantry, and a happy labouring population’.19Yorkshire Gazette, 30 Dec. 1848. Described as ‘naturally of a delicate frame, and unfit for much exertion’, Crompton died in 1848 after several years’ illness, leaving his Yorkshire estates to his daughter, Elizabeth Mary, who married her cousin, the future third earl of Cathcart, in 1850.20Yorkshire Gazette, 30 Dec. 1848; Liverpool Mercury, 2 Jan. 1849; 1820-32 volume, ‘Samuel Crompton’; Grainge, Vale of Mowbray, 295. The church of St. Leonard in Thornton-le-Street, near which Crompton was buried, was subsequently restored in his memory.21Grainge, Vale of Mowbray, 289. Family and estate papers relating to Crompton are held in the National Library of Scotland.