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Introduction INTRODUCTION Sir John Salusbury Salusbury-Trelawny, the ninth baronet (1816— 85), kept a diary for the period April 1857 to July 1865, when he was the member of parliament for the Devonshire borough of Tavistock. The first volume of the diary is unfortunately now missing, but seven volumes remain, commencing early in the session of 1858.1 They present us with a detailed account of the day-to-day activities of a radical Liberal M.P. endeavouring to promote a number of measures, notably a bill for the abolition of church rates, as well as telling us of Trelawny's opinions on a wide range of other issues, both domestic and foreign. The diaries are of particular interest as a record of the impressions of a back-bencher during the period of political confusion between the fall of Palmerston's first ministry, in February 1858, and the reconciliation of the various sections of the Liberal party at the famous Willis's rooms meeting in June 1859, and they go on to illustrate the predicament of radical Liberals during the period of Palmerston's second ministry. Equally, however, Trelawny's accounts are of value for the way they add flesh to the dry bones of Hansard's Parliamentary Debates (which often, it has to be said, provide a far from complete skeleton in any case), evoking the atmosphere of the House of Commons, and throwing light on the character and mannerisms of its members, including such leading figures as Palmerston, Gladstone and Disraeli. If the diaries have a limitation, it is that they are almost entirely concerned with proceedings in parliament: more specifically still, it is the chamber and lobbies of the House of Commons which provide the venue for most of what Trelawny chose to record. He rarely alludes to debates in the House of Lords, and has little to say about his attendance on select committees. Moreover, Trelawny only occasionally mentions Tavistock, a fact that could create a misleading impression as to the importance of the relations between the M.P. and his constituents. It was in satisfying the demands of the electors of Tavistock, after all, that Trelawny found one very good reason for 'Bodleian MS Eng Hist d. 410-16. The covers of the exercise books are marked 'vol II' to 'vol VIII'. Three more volumes cover the period 1868-73, when Trelawny was the M.P. for East Cornwall. The diaries were deposited in the Bodelian Library in 1974 by Miss Caroline Harvey, now Dr. Caroline Jackson, MEP, who discovered them in the offices of the Oxford City Conservative association. It is believed that all other Trelawny papers have been destroyed. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.126, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:49:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500004530 TRELAWNY DIARIES 3 keeping a diary in the first place, as he was expected to give an account of his stewardship at a public meeting after each parliamentary session: - a custom which provided a subject for facetious treatment in a leading article in The Times newspaper in 1864.2 In fact, a brief examination of Trelawny's connection with his constituency is essential for an understanding of the course of his political career. The years 1857-65 marked Trelawny's second term as a member for Tavistock, which he had previously represented from March 1843 until April 1852.3 In many ways M.P. and constituency seemed well matched. Trelawny, who had been educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge (B.A. 1839), and called to the bar at the Middle Temple in 1841,4 was the scion of an ancient Cornish landed family, with an estate at Trelawne, near Liskeard.5 The first Trelawny to sit in parliament was returned for Cornwall in 1326; one John Trelawny was knighted by Edward III, and his son, also John, was granted a pension by Henry V for his services in the French wars (he fought at Agincourt); a later John Trelawny received a baronetcy in 1628, and his grandson, Sir Jonathan, bishop of Bristol, brought great fame to the family as one of the seven bishops imprisoned in the Tower by James II (he was duly rewarded, by the Whigs, with preferment to Exeter and finally to Winchester). Thereafter, the Trelawnys had tended to be whiggish in their politics, and Sir William, the diarist's father, had thus represented East Cornwall from 1832 until 1837. In a county characterised by the relative absence of great landed magnates, the Trelawnys were typical examples of the Cornish tradition of lesser aristocratic families with radical leanings; and it was appropriate that, in his first attempt to gain election to parlia- ment, when he tried to recapture his father's old seat at East Cornwall in 1841, the young John Trelawny should have been nominated by a neighbouring baronet, and one of the leading radicals of the day, Sir William Molesworth.6 Indeed, after his victory at the Tavistock by election, in March 1843, Trelawny described himself in Dod's Par- 2 The Times, 23 Aug. 1864, p. 6. 3 It seems likely that he kept a diary during this period as well. The Spectator, 16 June 1849, p. 561, noted that on a number of occasions when the Stranger's gallery of the House of Commons had been cleared, Trelawny had supplied the press with his accounts of the proceedings. 4He never practised law. 5Trelawny succeeded his father in Nov. 1856. Since 1840 he had been a deputy lieutenant of Cornwall and a captain in the Cornwall Rangers militia. In 1842 he married Harriet Tremayne, the daughter of J.H. Tremayne of Heligan, Cornwall. They had one son and two daughters. Harriet died in 1879. In 1881 Trelawny married again, to Harriet Keppel (nee Buller). ''The Times, 9july 1841, p. 11; 17 July 1841, p.4. The election revolved around the issue of agricultural protection. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.126, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:49:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500004530 4 TRELAWNY DIARIES liamentarj Companion as 'an ultra Radical', declaring his support for the repeal of the corn laws, household suffrage, the secret ballot, triennial parliaments, the abolition of the property qualification for M.P.s, the payment of members,7 and the 'voluntary principle' in religion. He also stated his willingness to resign his seat, if called upon to do so by a majority of his constituents. The contrast between social tradition and political radicalism was reflected in the character of the borough which had elected Trelawny as its representative. Tavistock was a stannery town situated on the river Tavy, to the north of Plymouth, whose prosperity had been sustained, after the decline of tin mining, firstly by its emergence as a centre of the woollen cloth industry during the seventeenth century, and then by the development of copper mining, which became the mainstay of the town's economy from the late-eighteenth century until around 1870.8 In accordance with its economic importance, the borough had returned two members to parliament regularly since 1331, and this privilege remained intact after the great reform act of 1832, although Tavistock was thereafter one of the smallest boroughs remaining. The registered electorate numbered just 247 in 1832, rising to 349 in 1852, during which time the population had increased from 5,602 to 8,o86.9 Almost the entire borough was owned by the Duke of Bedford, whose influence, as Dod's Electoral Facts noted, was 'para- mount; his friends and relatives have never been rejected'. The most eminent authority on the electoral system after the great reform act has, understandably, listed Tavistock as a purely proprietary borough.10 While this certainly was the case during the eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, there was nevertheless a powerful element of radical dissent within the borough, which had occasionally made itself apparent during the seventeenth century," and this under- current rose to the surface again in the climate of the reformed electoral system, amongst a population engaged mostly in general trade and in the mines around the town. In practice, the electoral influence of the Duke of Bedford after 1832 was less than absolute, and, while one of the borough's seats was always filled by his nominee, it was found to be expedient for the second member to be a man with genuine radical credentials. Such was the case with John Rundle, who 7 By 1850, however, Dod shows that. Trelawny had changed his mind on this point. 8W.G. Hoskins, Devon, (Newton Abbot, 1972), pp. 485-9. 9 C.R. Dod, Electoral Facts 1832-1853, Impartially Stated, (ed. by HJ. Hanham, Brighton, 1972). By 1853 only fourteen freeman voters remained. There are no poll books for the borough. '"Norman Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel, (2nd ed., Brighton, 1977), pp. 438-9. 11 Cf. the entry for Tavistock in the History of Parliament volumes for The Commons, 1660-1690, (ed. by B.D. Henning, 1983), with those covering the period 1715-1820. Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 170.106.202.126, on 28 Sep 2021 at 14:49:51, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use, available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0068690500004530 TRELAWNY DIARIES 5 was first returned for the borough in 1832, and it was on his retirement in 1843 that Trelawny received a large requisition from the electors of Tavistock inviting him to fill the vacancy.12 It had been assumed that Trelawny would be elected unopposed, but radical feeling in the borough proved to be so strong that even he was not considered suitable by everyone, and a hostile faction put up Henry Vincent, a prominent Chartist, to oppose him.
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