John Barnes, Historian

John Freeman-Mitford, 2^nd Baron and 1st Earl of Redesdale (1805-1886)

Redesdale’s main part in the history of the Conservative party was played as its Chief Whip in the House of Lords, a position that he held until 1845, when he took issue with Peel over Maynooth and resigned. He was passionately opposed to the repeal of the corn laws in 1846, and while he was ready to accept the verdict of the House of Commons on electoral reform in 1867, he asked that it should be a full, complete and final settlement of the Reform Question. Much of his attention was given to ecclesiastical questions, on which he was notoriously orthodox and protestant, and he proved to be a strenuous opponent of Gladstone’s proposals to disestablish and disendow the Irish Church. Disraeli, when concerned that the Lords might “cut their own throats” by throwing out the Game Bill in 1880, told lady Bradford that “many find a respectable leader in Lord Redesdale, who has many excellent qualities and talents, but who is narrow-minded, prejudiced, and utterly unconscious of what is going on in the country, its wishes, opinions, or feelings.” It was no doubt because of his excellent qualities that Disraeli had elevated him to an Earldom in 1877, but more probably because of the almost universal respect in which Redesdale was held for the dispassionate way in which he conducted himself as chairman of committees in the House of Lords from 1851 until his death in May 1886.

John Thomas Mitford, from 1809 Freeman-Mitford, was the only son and heir of John Freeman-Mitford, 1st Baron Redesdale (1748-1830) and his wife Lady Frances Perceval (1767–1817), sixth daughter of the 2^nd Earl of Egmont. He was born at Port Rush, co. Antrim, on 9 September 1805 and educated at Eton (1818–23) and New College, Oxford where he graduated in 1825 (MA 1828, DCL 1853). On the death of his father in 1830 he became the 2^nd Baron, but took little part in the debates of the House of Lords for five or six years. In the session of 1837 he began to manifest an interest in practical measures of legislation and it was not long before the House recognized the grasp of detail and clarity of judgment that he brought to the task, preventing, it was said, “many a blundering clause and provision from being perpetuated in legislation.”¹. At about the same time the Conservative party, as Granville later recalled for his colleagues in the Lords, appointed this “keen politician” to “a confidential position in this Assembly, to which no strictly official title belongs, but which implies the full confidence of the leaders of a party in the peer who holds it.”

As the Conservative Chief Whip in the House of Lords, he worked closely with Fremantle, who took the corresponding position in the House of Commons in 1837, and together they established and administered a fund to pay for circulars addressed to members asking them to attend and vote in divisions. A voluntary subscription of £2 was sought from Conservatives in both chambers and Edward Fitzgerald was put in charge of printing and distribution. Initially they obtained support from 109 peers and 175 MPs. The number of peers fell in 1838 to 95, although 285 MPs subscribed and in the following year the figures were 69 and 251.²

He resigned as Conservative Chief Whip in the House of Lords in 1845 over the bill to increase the state grant paid to St Patrick’s College, Maynooth and was a major opponent of Peel’s repeal of the Corn Laws in the following year. During the remainder of the decade he played a considerable role in the efforts to reunite the party in the House of Lords and he advised Derby on the approaches to be made to protectionist Whigs. He could be troublesome, most notably when his leader considered some measure of fiscal reform or intriguing against attempts to remove Jewish disabilities, but he remained central to the counsels of the Conservative leadership and can be found, for example, taking part in the discussions that Derby held on the eve of the 1851 session of Parliament.

Theological controversy exercised a strange fascination over Redesdale and ecclesiastical matters became a central concern. He published in 1849 some Reflections on the Doctrine of Regeneration and its Connexion with both Sacraments, and in 1850 took part in the controversy over the Gorham case. His Observations on the Judgment in the Gorham case and the Way to Unity attracted a good deal of favourable attention. In 1853 he was one of those behind the revival of Convocation and a brief session was authorized in 1854.

He was appointed to serve on the Royal Commission considering the law of divorce, but refused to sign its report on the ground that the dissolution of the marriage tie was contrary to scripture. He sought to vindicate his views in a pamphlet entitled The Law of Scripture Against Divorce (1856), avowedly in preference to offering his views in Parliament, but when Palmerston introduced a Divorce Bill in the 1857 session, Redesdale was amongst its most vigorous opponents in the Lords. He believed that there was no country in which marriage had produced so much happiness as England and argued that this had mainly arisen from the fact that it was almost impossible to dissolve the marriage tie.

Equally outspoken was his resistance to the disestablishment of the Irish church, which he maintained to be a violation of the coronation oath sworn by Queen Victoria. On 17 July 1868 he moved in the Lords for a copy of the oath, and in that year and the next published two pamphlets on the subject, Some of the Arguments by which Mr Gladstone’s Resolutions are Supported Considered and Lord Macaulay on the Coronation Oath.

In 1874 his Reasoning on some Points of Doctrine was published , and in the following year he entered into a controversy with Cardinal Manning in the pages of the Daily Telegraph on the subject of communion in both kinds. This was subsequently republished as The Infallible Church and the Holy Communion. Redesdale argued that a single error was fatal to the doctrine of infallibility and selected by way of illustration the error that he believed the Church had committed at the Council of Constance in 1417 by directing that the cup should not be administered to the laity. He argued that Christ’s own words and those of St Paul made the taking of communion in both kinds a duty on all Christians and he adduced decrees of Leo the Great and Gelasius 1 and of the Council of Clermont 1095 to support his view. In reply Manning not only denounced the right to private judgment but held it to be treason and heresy to quote ecclesiastical history and even the scriptures against the divine and infallible voice of the papacy. However, the Cardinal himself resorted to history in defense of his position and the general feeling at the time was that Redesdale had had the better of the argument. He concluded a prolonged correspondence with the blunt assertion that common sense would continue to reject the claim that the decrees of the Church of Rome should be held to be of higher authority than the words and deeds of Christ, as interpreted and acted upon by the Apostles and early Fathers, and a sustained assault on the Roman Church’s most recent errors, two new articles of faith, the Immaculate Conception and Papal infallibility. On 14 June 1877 he called attention in the Lords to a manual entitled The Priest in Absolution, published privately for the use of the clergy by the Society of the Holy Cross. He called for a decided condemnation of the practices outlined, and in response Archbishop Tait not only said that it was a disgrace to the community that such a book should be circulated under the authority of clergymen of the Established Church, but gave it as his opinion that in doing so they had brought themselves very near the confines of the law. Further pamphlets by Redesdale on the real presence, appeared in 1877 and 1879.

But his major role in political life was played as chairman of committees in the Lords. He had begun to interest himself in the wording and detail of parliamentary bills in 1837 and Wellington had recommended him to study the private business of the house in order to qualify himself for the position. In 1851 he succeeded Lord Shaftesbury as lord chairman, with support from all parts of the House and a unanimous vote. He remained chairman until his death, and was particularly known for his domination of private bill legislation. The way in which he handled it contributed greatly to the prominent part the Lords played in respect to the large volume of private bills. His shrewdness and independence of judgment enabled him to penetrate the stratagems practiced by attorneys and agents. Salisbury recognized the importance of the part he had played: “By his great courage and his discernment, he has given a great power to the deliberations of this House in connexion with matters of private business, a power which I trust we shall not speedily lose. His power was so great that his dictatorship had become proverbial, and yet that dictatorship was exercised, not by reason of any transcendent talents, but simply on account of the sterling and pellucid honesty of the man who exercised those powers. Nothing but that honesty could have procured for him with so imperious an action the respect which he uniformly secured.” Granville, who was one of his oldest friends, had earlier paid tribute to him in the House of Lords on 6 May 1886 in judicious terms which were thought by Salisbury no exaggeration.³

“It is perhaps odd for me to say so,” Granville told the House, “but I could not help feeling admiration for the genuine Conservatism with which he regarded all questions whether great or small. There were few things which he did not consider to be better as they were rather than as they might be after alteration. Yet I do not remember any instances in which these strong political prepossessions influenced at all his conduct in the chair. He was a strong, just, shrewd and kind man. He was afraid of no one in or out of the House. He could say ‘No’ and even a disagreeable ‘No’ when the need arose; yet such was the simplicity and straightforwardness of his character, and the absence of all personal vanity from his character, that he never gave offence.”

Redesdale was especially severe on the drafting of railway bills, and in 1867 threatened to bring a contractor named France to the bar of the house for expressions reflecting on him as chairman. The correspondence, when published, showed that he was acting under a misapprehension.⁴ Nevertheless his firm and honest management increased the authority of the House of Lords in connection with private business.

Amongst his parliamentary duties was that of presiding at sittings of the Lords when bills were being discussed in Committee of the Whole House and he was rarely absent from the table. He exercised that duty with tact and firmness, was indeed a model chairman and, despite his known preferences, his independence was never questioned.

Redesdale was also a frequent speaker on general topics, especially when innovation was in the air. He had few graces of style as a speaker, but he always had clearly in mind the points that he wished to make and put them forcibly. An abiding theme was the strict construction of the constitution. During the debates on reform in 1867, he opposed Earl Grey's amendment for the disfranchisement of certain boroughs on the ground that the matter was beyond the proper jurisdiction of the peers, and that it was a mistake to make the franchise a party question. He was all for finality on the subject and hoped that the two parties would not make the constitution of the Commons a perpetual battlefield of party politics. In that he was disappointed and in 1884, he found himself taking part in party conclaves on the further extension of the franchise and the redistribution of parliamentary seats. He also took a prominent part in the debates on the Alabama claims, maintaining in 1872 that the United States had no claims to compensation because the Southerners had re-entered the Union at the close of the war. Nevertheless, although he was a strong partisan, Salisbury could say of him without fear of contradiction, that he had never known him “in the strength of his partisanship stoop to wrest an argument or ignore a fact”. He had the courage of his own opinions and never hesitated to act on what he believed to be right. His last pamphlet was The Earldom of Mar: a Letter to the Lord Register of Scotland, the Earl of Glasgow, a reply to the earl of Crawford's criticisms on Glasgow's judgment.

Redesdale took great delight in literature and, in addition to his pamphlets on religious matters, wrote Thoughts on English Prosody and Translations from Horace, and Further Thoughts on English Prosody (Oxford, 1859), in which he attempted to formulate rules of quantity for the English language on Latin models.

Although Beaconsfield was privately critical of his rigidity and his refusal to bend to the popular will, he nevertheless gave Redesdale a step in the peerage, creating him Earl of Redesdale on 3 January 1877. After about a month’s illness, he died unmarried on 2 May 1886 at Vernon House, St James's, London, and was buried at Batsford Park, near Moreton in Marsh, Gloucestershire. He bequeathed his estates to his kinsman, Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford. The peerage became extinct but in 1902 Algernon Mitford was created Baron Redesdale.