A forceful, if somewhat emotional, speaker, Boyd Carpenter like his son was regarded as one of the best debaters in the House of Commons. Although he served in ministerial posts under both Bonar Law and Baldwin between 1922 and 1924, the latter could find no place for him in the 1924 Government, and it seems likely that his administrative ability did not match his oratorical talents. He bore no grudges against those who had outstripped him in the race for office and avowed his appreciation of their talent while being deprecatory of his own. He was one of the few who refused a peerage. His generosity of spirit was matched by acts of unobtrusive kindness and one of his close friends, Sir Home Gordon, put on record the fact that on several occasions he paid for servants at the Carlton Club to take holidays that they could not otherwise have afforded. Gordon added that he had made “devotion to his relatives the keynote of a busy life and his chief recreation was hospitality extended with generous tact.... Seldom can anyone have given so much, not only in money, but in tactful kindness, and expected so little in return...” If there was a touch of cynicism in the broad tide of his appreciation of humanity, it was well-hidden and he was greatly loved by his friends.
The ninth child and fourth son of the Right Reverend Sir William Boyd Carpenter, Bishop of Ripon and afterwards canon of Westminster, he was born on 26 March 1873. In 1887 he went to Harrow where he was in a Small House, and then in the Headmaster’s, and he went up to Balliol College, Oxford in 1892. He took only a third in modern history, but established a reputation as one of the best speakers of his time. He was elected secretary of the Oxford Union Society in 1895 and became president in the following year.
Even before this he had shown a surprising talent for winning the trust and friendship of a much older woman when he accompanied his father on a visit to the Empress Fredrick. The visit had been commissioned by Queen Victoria in an endeavour to deal with the tumult surrounding her eldest daughter, who shared the liberal convictions of her husband and was therefore at odds with Bismarck. From the lips and the pen of the Empress he received “the most intimate impressions of her struggle against Bismarck and the German people during the tragic reign of her husband”; and both he and his father remained close to the Empress until her tragic death from breast cancer in 1901. Nevertheless, both managed to remain friends also with her son, Wilhelm II: after the war and Wilhelm’s abdication, the friendship was in abeyance, but in 1932 Boyd Carpenter asked the Emperor whether he could bring his son to Doorn where the Emperor was living in exile. Permission was given and between then and 1936 Boyd Carpenter was one of his few English friends, invited to Doorn once or twice a year and recipient of drafts of his reminiscences.1
After taking his degree Boyd Carpenter had joined the editorial staff of the Yorkshire Post, but when the South African war broke out, he joined the Imperial yeomanry. In 1900 he was commissioned in the Highland Light Infantry. As a Captain he served on the staff of Brigadier General Lord Chesham and of Colonel (later Brigadier General) H.E.Belfield, who commanded the Imperial Yeomanry, was mentioned in despatches and in all awarded three clasps to the Queen’s Medal and two clasps to the King’s Medal.
After the end of the South African war he travelled with Major Karri Davies in Portugal and Spain and went on to work in the Far East. A friend recalled that as a result of representing the motor trade in Australia , the leaders of that industry offered to pay Boyd Carpenter’s expenses in the next parliamentary election. He was a convinced advocate of tariff reform and from 1906 until 1909 was the organising secretary of the Primrose League in Yorkshire, Northumberland and Durham. During that time he contested a by-election in Dewsbury in 1908, but lost it to Walter Runciman. It was perhaps because of that defeat, that he surrendered his post in 1909 in order to work the Colne Valley seat thoroughly in preparation for the next election. The contest came on rather sooner than he anticipated and, despite his hard work, he was unable to win the seat at either the January or December 1910 General Elections. He was more successful in local government, serving as Mayor of Harrogate in 1909/10 and representing the town on the Yorkshire County Council from 1910 until 1919.
Boyd-Carpenter married Annie, the daughter of Thomas Dugdale JP of Blackburn in 1907. She came from a large and vigorous family who had made their money during the industrial revolution from cotton spinning and was some years older than her husband. They settled in Harrogate. She was well into her forties before her son, John, was born. They also had a daughter.
When the 1914-18 war broke out Boyd Carpenter returned to the colours and served as DAQMG to the 62nd Division, on the Headquarters staff of Northern Command and as Deputy Assistant Director at the War Office. He was promoted to Major and mentioned in despatches.
In December 1918 he was elected as the Unionist MP for North Bradford. He was appointed to his first ministerial post after the fall of the Coalition, when Bonar Law made him Parliamentary Secretary at the Ministry of Labour. In March 1923 he was promoted to be Financial Secretary to the Treasury, but when Baldwin succeeded to the Prime Ministership, he retained the Exchequer for some months and clearly wanted a more considerable figure in the post. His choice fell on Joynson Hicks and Boyd Carpenter was consoled with the office of Paymaster General. Later in the year he was also made Parliamentary and Financial secretary to the Admiralty. Boyd Carpenter lost his seat in the December 1923 election, but remained in office until the Government fell in January. In the 1924 General Election Boyd Carpenter was elected for Coventry, but Baldwin could find no place for him in his government. His son believed that they had quarrelled, but he was offered the Governorship of Kenya and was persuaded by his wife to turn it down. He also refused a peerage. He loved the House of Commons and was happy there, although almost certainly one of those who spent more time in the smoking room than he did in the chamber. He was knighted in 1926. Boyd Carpenter lost his seat in the 1929 General Election, but secured adoption for the Chertsey seat, which he won in November 1931 and retained in 1935.
Although Boyd-Carpenter took a particular interest in the electrical development in Palestine and remained a supporter of tariffs, there were few issues that seemed actively to engage him and in his declining years his contributions to parliamentary debate shrank. The last that can be traced was an effort on 18 February 1935 to preserve an experimental farm that the Metropolitan Water Board proposed to destroy in order to provide a reservoir at Walton.
Boyd-Carpenter was one of those recruited to help found a new public school at Stowe and he sent his son there and then to Balliol where son emulated father and became president of the Oxford Union. John was called to the Bar in 1934 and was to become a Conservative politician himself and a member of the Macmillan Cabinet. Boyd-Carpenter did not live to see his son’s success. In his final years he battled with failing health, and he looked to build a house near Cairo for himself. It was almost complete when he died on 27 May 1937.
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