Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere

Background and education

Ellesmere was born at 21 Arlington Street, Piccadilly, London, on 1 January 1800, the third son of George Leveson-Gower (then known as Lord Gower) and his wife, Elizabeth Gordon who was 19th Countess of Sutherland in her own right. He was educated at Eton and Christ Church, Oxford, and then held a commission in the Life Guards, which he resigned on his marriage. In October 1803 his father became Marquess of Stafford, having shortly before inherited the considerable wealth (but not the titles) of Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater, whose will provided that the Bridgewater estates should next pass to Francis, rather than his elder brother George.

Political career

Lord Francis Leveson Gower, MP

Egerton entered Parliament in 1822 as member for the pocket borough of Bletchingley in Surrey, a seat he held until 1826. He afterwards sat for Sutherland between 1826 and 1831, and for South Lancashire between 1835 and 1846. In 1835, a parliamentary sketch-writer said of his performance in the Commons: "He hardly ever speaks, and then but very indifferently… His voice is harsh and husky and not very strong. There is no variety either in it or in his gesture. Both are monotonous in a high degree... He is much respected by his own party, both for his personal worth, and for his high family connexions."

In politics he was a Conservative who – as he later said – 'worshipped' Wellington; on specific policies his views usually led him to support Sir Robert Peel; the most obvious exception being his support of the Ten-Hour movement. In 1823, he was a junior member of the mission of FitzRoy Somerset sent by Wellington to Madrid. On the religious issues of the day, he held that the state and its institutions should remain Anglican, but that – provided that was done – other sects should be conciliated as far as was then possible. He opposed opening the ancient universities to Dissenters, arguing that they could get equally good education elsewhere; e.g. at London University, whose formation he had supported. In 1825 he was chosen to move the Loyal Address; later in the year he made and saw carried a motion for the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, at a time when the government were pledged to seek the consent of the King before doing so: some suspected he did so at the behest of the government. Appointed a Lord of the Treasury in 1827, he was promoted to Under-Secretary of State for War and the Colonies in February 1828 at the request of William Huskisson, having first to overcome the opposition of his father. When Huskisson resigned in May 1828, Egerton's father insisted upon Egerton's resignation; on Egerton's subsequent account because he thought the Wellington cabinet had lost its more enlightened elements and would now take a hard line against Catholic Relief. Egerton, however, was convinced that Wellington intended some measure of relief and soon rejoined the government; in June 1828 he was made a Privy Councillor and appointed Chief Secretary for Ireland, a post he held until July 1830, when he became Secretary at War for a short time during the last Tory ministry. Daniel O'Connell, when alleging duplicity by the subsequent Whig administration, said "I never knew a gentleman more incapable of violating his promise than Lord Francis Leveson Gower" Sutherland was a pocket county of his family and when in 1831 his father supported parliamentary reform but Francis did not, his father presented the seat to a supporter of reform: in 1833 his father was made Duke of Sutherland.

The Bridgewater trust

His father, however, died within the year, and the estates he had inherited from Francis Egerton, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater passed to Francis, who then took, by royal licence, the surname of Egerton. The Bridgewater estates were held under trust and gave an annual income reported to be £90,000, but the trust was drawn up to exclude Egerton from its day-to-day management. The principal assets were the Bridgewater Canal, and the collieries at Worsley, which also served as the headquarters of the canal.

In a letter of 1837, Egerton spoke of the various undertakings at Worsley giving him influence over the immediate destinies of between three and four thousand people. The coal mines at Worsley were said in 1837 to employ 1,700 people. It was reported in 1842 that there had been 101 persons killed and injured in them in the previous three years One of the staff of the 1833 Factory Commission had noted that the Worsley mine "was said to be the best mine in the place" but concluded from what he saw that "the hardest labour in the worst-conducted factory is less hard, less cruel, and less demoralizing than the labour in the best of coal-mines"

One trustee lived in Worsley Old Hall and was the effective manager of the estates, but after he resisted inspection of the books by Egerton's auditor and man of business James Loch MP he was forced out and replaced by Loch. Egerton then made Worsley New Hall one of his principal residences, but soon demolished it and replaced it with a larger hall in Elizabethan style. He set about making Worsley a model estate village; within ten years a national newspaper, deploring the 'ignorance of the collier class' claimed "What may be done by a proprietor, what should be done by every proprietor, is illustrated in the case of Lord Francis Egerton and the Worsley colliers". Until Egerton had taken up residence at Worsley it had been "imperfectly provided with the means of moral and intellectual improvement for the people" but now "The population is nearly 6,000. For their use, two churches have been built, and a third is now in course of erection. Five clergymen have been provided, in addition to the one original incumbent. Seven-day schools have been established, with trained masters and mistresses, fully supplied with the best books and apparatus. A reading-room has been opened, containing the best periodicals of the day, and a considerable circulating library. The room is provided with fire and lights; is open every evening; and is much frequented by the labouring people, as an agreeable resort after their day's work. A large field, of not less than sixty acres, has been set apart as a recreation ground… Cricket, quoits, and other athletic games are encouraged; and the private band occasionally attends there on pay-days. In the centre, an ornamental building has been erected, in which the wages of all the labourers on that part of the estate are paid fortnightly. There are few public-houses and no beer-shops on the estate. The houses built for the workmen are convenient; most of them have four rooms and a pantry, back-yard and garden, at a rent of about £3 per annum, including rates"

The Right Honourable Lord Francis Egerton, MP

The Bridgewater estate was commercially important in South Lancashire; its landholdings and associated tenant farmers also made it a major power in South Lancashire parliamentary elections and Egerton's succession of his Whig father as beneficiary changed the political arithmetic of the constituency. At the 1835 general election, he and another Conservative candidate defeated the two sitting pro-Reform MPs; Egerton topped the poll. At the 1837 election, the Manchester Guardian pointed out that Egerton had voted in only twenty-seven of the 171 divisions in the preceding session of the Commons: nonetheless, Egerton again headed the poll, with his Conservative colleague second. In 1841, his election address claimed he was guided by the interests of manufacturing rather than agriculture: "I presume that the man who is in the centre of a strictly rural population will look to its wishes and apparent interests. I shall do likewise: and if he looks to his ricks I shall look to my chimnies and those of my neighbours"

He opposed repeal of the Corn Laws but thought it time for a 'full careful and dispassionate' revision of the current 'sliding scale'. He was returned unopposed and his victory speech put less stress on the need for revision, but deprecated cries of 'No surrender' on the Corn Law question; it was not a constitutional issue.

Egerton was Major commanding the Duke of Lancaster's Yeomanry, who were called out to support the civil power during the Plug Plot riots of 1842; Egerton and a troop of yeomanry served in Preston in the aftermath of the riot and fatal shootings there. He later intervened in a Commons debate to defend the conduct of the Preston magistrates and of the military whilst noting that Preston was an exceptional case: in the Lancashire disturbances there had been a "general absence of a sanguinary disposition, or a spirit of wanton violence"

In June 1844, Egerton's eldest son George came of age, and a rumour was promptly reported that Egerton was soon to be made Duke of Bridgewater, with George then to stand for South Lancashire. (However Egerton was not the nearest descendant of the last Duke and it was therefore unlikely that that title would be revived for him.) Later in the year, the electoral register was revised; consequently the Anti-Corn Law League which had coordinated a registration drive of voters favouring repeal of the Corn Laws became confident that they had secured a majority for 'free trade' in South Lancashire, and that Egerton would not be re-elected.

Earl of Ellesmere

In Peel's resignation honours (June 1846), Egerton was the only person raised to the peerage. He became Earl of Ellesmere and Baron Brackley (a revival of titles formerly held as subsidiary titles by the Earls of Bridgewater). The Times commented on Egerton's elevation: "The only other circumstance of a Ministerial 'going out' worth mention is the reported elevation of Lord Francis Egerton to the Upper House. His Lordship's position by birth and inheritance is so splendid, and so thoroughly sustained by his character and talents, that his accession to the Peerage seems little more than the correction of an accidental anomaly. He adds, at least, as much to the credit of the order as he can possibly receive in return."

Ellesmere served on the Commons Select Committee on the affairs of New Zealand in 1844, and was a member of the Canterbury Association from 27 March 1848. In 1849, the chief surveyor of the Canterbury Association, Joseph Thomas, named Lake Ellesmere in New Zealand after him.

Writings, travels and art patronage

Ellesmere's claims to remembrance are founded chiefly on his services to literature and the fine arts. Before he was twenty he printed for private circulation a volume of poems, which he followed up after a short interval by the publication of a translation of Goethe's Faust, one of the earliest that appeared in England; a further volume containing some translations of German lyrics and a few original poems soon followed. Egerton's translation of Faust ( which predates the publication of Faust (part two) by Goethe) was criticised by a subsequent translator as betraying incomprehension of the original and having sacrificed Goethe's sense and artistic judgement to Egerton's preference for a pretty rhyme. The Examiner seized on this, asking 'Why did he not learn German, and translate into prose?'.

Other literary translations by Egerton included Wallenstein's Camp, Hernani, and Catherine of Cleves (from the elder Dumas's Henri III et sa cour): although these were published they had been originally made for use in Egerton's private theatricals. In 1831, Egerton put on in a private theatre at Bridgewater House (his town house) a production of his Hernani in which both he and Fanny Kemble appeared; Queen Adelaide and 'most of the Royal Family' attended. Egerton took the chair at the farewell dinner given by the Garrick Club to Charles Kemble when the latter retired from the stage.

A persistent sufferer from gout and lumbago, he spent the winter of 1839 in Rome for his health (and that of his eldest son), and in the spring and summer of 1840 visited the Holy Land, Egypt, and Greece subsequently recording his impressions in Sketches on the Coast of the Mediterranean (1843). He published several other works in prose and verse, including a translation of Raumer's History of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, illustrated by original documents: a review in Fraser's Magazine spoke favorably of it and of Egerton's oeuvre to date. When in 1838 he became rector of King's College, Aberdeen, the official speech of welcome claimed that even ignoring his illustrious birth, his literary reputation would still give him a good claim to the post; however Egerton eventually withdrew his literary works and forbade their re-printing. He was the first president of the Camden Society.

As an admirer of the Duke of Wellington, he became very interested in the historical writings of the Prussian military theorist General Carl von Clausewitz (1789–1831). He was involved in the discussion that ultimately compelled Wellington to write an essay in response to Clausewitz's study of the Waterloo campaign of 1815. Ellesmere himself anonymously published a translation of Clausewitz's The Campaign of 1812 in Russia (London: J. Murray, 1843), a subject in which Wellington was also deeply interested.

Family

On 18 June 1822, at St George's, Hanover Square he was married to Harriet Catherine Greville, a daughter of Charles Greville (1762–1832), a great-great-granddaughter of the 5th Baron Brooke. The Archbishop of York officiated and the Duke of Wellington (whose private secretary was a brother of the bride) was one of the witnesses.

They had eleven children, including:

George Egerton, 2nd Earl of Ellesmere (15 June 1823 – 19 September 1862);

Hon. Francis Egerton (15 September 1824 – 15 December 1895), who became an admiral, and was a Member of Parliament for two constituencies; he married in 1865 (Lady) Louisa Caroline née Cavendish, daughter of the 7th Duke of Devonshire (by marriage); they had issue;

Hon. Algernon Fulke Egerton (31 December 1825 – 14 July 1891), who was a Member of Parliament for three constituencies, and married in 1863 Hon. Alice Louisa Cavendish, a niece of the 7th Duke of Devonshire; they had issue;

Hon. Arthur Frederick Egerton (6 February 1829 – 25 February 1866), who became Lieutenant-Colonel, and married in 1858 Helen Smith, daughter of Martin Tucker Smith and his wife, Louisa Ridley; they had issue;

Lady Alice Harriet Frederica Egerton (10 October 1830 – 22 December 1928), who married George Byng, 3rd Earl of Strafford in 1854; they had no issue;

Lady Blanche Egerton (22 February 1832 – 20 March 1894), who married John Montagu, 7th Earl of Sandwich in 1865 as his second wife; they had no issue;

Hon. Granville Egerton (baptised 28 October 1834 – 1851), who was killed by the bursting of his gun when shooting in California - at the time he was a midshipman on HMS Maeander returning from the East India station via California to collect treasure; unmarried, seemingly no issue.