Politician - Abingdon on Thames Town Council

A Bishop, believed to be Aethelwold, giving a blessing

St Aethelwold

Aethelwold, Abbot of Abingdon from 954 to 963 and thereafter Bishop of Winchester, was one of the three men who brought England into the movement for monastic reform that had started in continental Europe earlier in the century. The others were Dunstan, abbot of Glastonbury and later Archbishop of Canterbury, and Oswald, Bishop of Worcester and Archbishop of York.

Aethelwold’s career started at Glastonbury which, under Dunstan, was the first of the English monasteries to be reformed according to the rule of St Benedict. His transfer to Abingdon was the first extension of the movement outside Glastonbury, and Abingdon Abbey was to prove a prototype of what could be achieved. Like most of the earlier foundations, it had declined into an impoverished group of priests who neither followed monastic rules nor practised community of goods, and might be married. Aethelwold replaced them with monks of his own choice. He ruthlessly reclaimed estates that had been alienated, caring little for the rights of their current owners, and raised further endowments from the king and the royal family. The abbey was transformed into a place of splendour, with buildings in the latest continental style, liturgical equipment rich in silver and gold, elaborate ceremonial, and the production of music, poetry, and illuminated manuscripts. The future king, Edgar, was educated there.

It was Edgar who became Aethelwold’s principal patron. In 963, he moved Aethelwold to Winchester, where the Old and New Minsters were reformed in the same way but on a larger scale. It was an innovation that cathedrals and monasteries were to be unified and staffed entirely by monks; among the reformers, it was Aethelwold who was most aggressively committed to the principle that there was little room in the church for clerics who were not under monastic discipline. Once at Winchester, he started an intense programme of similar reforms elsewhere, sending out trained and committed monks as abbots and serving Edgar’s political interests by expanding his influence eastwards into regions where it had not previously been strong. Two of Aethelwold’s re-foundations, Ely and Peterborough, survive as major cathedrals.

At his death in 984, Aethelwold left behind a reform movement in vigorous expansion thanks to a generation of monks he had trained; a corpus of writings that included classical scholarship, religious manuals, and poetry; a ‘Winchester School’ of manuscript illumination; and a group of former pupils who venerated him and ensured his canonisation as St Aethelwold.

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

James Bertie, Earl of Abingdon, by Sir Geoffrey Kneller

James Bertie, 1st Earl of Abingdon

James Bertie, who would be the first Earl of Abingdon, was born in 1653. He was a younger son of the second Earl of Lindsey, so would not inherit the title. His mother Bridget, the earl’s second wife, was a descendant of an Earl of Berkshire, but that title had become extinct for lack of male heirs. However, the Earl of Berkshire had simultaneously held a barony which could descend through the female line. Thus, when Bridget died in 1657 the young James became the fifth Baron Norreys of Rycote. He was owner of extensive properties in Oxfordshire and Berkshire; the main ones were at Wytham and Rycote. In adulthood, he would make Rycote his principal residence.

A half-sister of James was married to an important politician under Charles II, the Earl of Danby. It was a time of vicious, sometimes literally deadly, political conflict. In 1674, Danby made James, although scarcely of age, Lord Lieutenant of Oxfordshire with the remit of bringing the strongly Whig city of Oxford under Tory control. This he achieved over time by merciless harassment of the leading Whig councillors, bringing trumped-up lawsuits against them, ruining their businesses, and forcing a surrender of their charter. He promised that a new charter would increase the city’s liberties against the customary outrageous and humiliating demands of the university. To his chagrin, the university refused to give way. However, he did manage to position himself as the city’s defender, and finished in 1687 by being made its High Steward.

He held no official position in Abingdon, since it had the Earl of Clarendon as its High Steward, and his own authority was nominally restricted to Oxfordshire. Nonetheless, he intervened actively in its internal politics, using a Tory corporation member, George Winchurst, as his agent. This resulted in 1684 in the surrender of the town’s 1663 charter and the issue of a new one that brought in outsiders as magistrates and gave the central government additional powers to control membership of the Corporation. Clarendon seems to have acquiesced. The new charter would, however, be abrogated in 1688.

In 1681, Charles II, in pursuit of his political agenda, called a parliament to sit in Oxford, far from the Whig pressures of London. Bertie organised the event, and later in the year managed the legal proceedings against the Whig activist, Stephen Colledge. This was a high profile case, intended to frighten and demoralise the Whigs. Bertie hand-picked the jury, put his brother Henry on it as foreman, and used the notorious Edmund Warcup to recruit and rehearse a team of ‘witnesses’ to a totally imaginary crime of treason. Colledge was duly condemned and executed. Bertie at that point achieved his earldom, and there were civic celebrations in Abingdon when it emerged that he had chosen that town for his title.

James II invited the Earl to become Catholic, and dismissed him from all his functions when he refused. When the future William III invaded in 1688, the Earl of Abingdon was the first important British nobleman to desert to his camp. Nonetheless, he seems to have been slow to realise that William intended to seize the crown, and in the crucial division in the House of Lords voted that the throne was not vacant. This lost him credit with the new regime, but he made his submission and his career continued.

Bertie married Eleanora Lee in about 1672. They had five children. When his wife died in 1691, he commissioned John Dryden, the poet laureate, to compose an elegiac poem in her memory. It was a purely business arrangement; the poet had never met the lady. The product was notable as being probably the worst poem Dryden ever wrote, in almost 400 lines of mechanical rhyming couplets. The Earl remarried, but died in 1699 without further offspring.

The first Earl of Abingdon was never High Steward of the town. His son Montague succeeded him as second earl and as High Steward of Oxford and Wallingford, but had to wait for Clarendon’s death in 1709 to take up the office in Abingdon. He would later add Banbury to his patronage list, and had an active political career which included switching from the Tory to the Whig benches. From 1709, the high stewardship of Abingdon would be inherited with the earldom, as it still is today.

© AAAHS and contributors 2015

Willoughby Bertie (seated) as a composer.

Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon

Willoughby Bertie became fourth Earl of Abingdon on the death of his father, also Willoughby, in 1760 and was made High Steward of Abingdon and of Wallingford in the same year.

He was an active radical politician, who as a young man had gone in company with the then outlawed John Wilkes to visit Voltaire, the great figurehead of advanced Enlightenment politics, in Geneva. His political opinions seem unexceptionable today but were regarded as outrageous by his contemporaries. He strongly opposed the war against the American colonies, taking the view that Parliament was acting outside its legal powers in seeking to justify taxation without representation, and that this might lead to a parliamentary tyranny in Britain as it had in America. He took a similar position on British rule in Ireland. His effectiveness as a politician was always limited; he was too principled to join with others and too undiplomatic to make tactical alliances, and was often regarded as eccentric rather than serious.

Bertie was a notable musician. He played the flute, and was a prolific and skilful composer and song writer. About 150 of his compositions are extant. Some works were joint productions between himself and Haydn. He was patron of a series of concerts in London, on which he lost a large amount of money. A painting of him by J F Rigaud (shown above as a print) depicts him in the act of composition.

In Abingdon, he was active in local politics, supporting Whig candidates at the hustings. At his accession, he presented the Corporation with two valuable silver bowls and ladles, and in 1788 he made a gift of his accumulated fees as High Steward which were sufficient to pay for the culverting of the Stert Stream from the end of Broad Street to the Vineyard.

An enthusiastic huntsman and horse breeder, Bertie was very probably one of the backers of the Abingdon Races, which began in 1767 at Culham Heath; certainly, he opened the dancing at the ball given on the occasion, and served as a steward of the course in the following year.

In 1768 Bertie married Susanne Warren, daughter and co-heiress of a wealthy naval officer with interests both in England and America, but this did not save him from severe financial difficulties which had their origin in debts inherited from his father. He had to withdraw from the turf and sell off the furnishings of his seat at Rycote (near Thame). He died, bankrupt, in 1799, and his third and only surviving son, Montague Bertie, succeeded at the age of fifteen to the earldom, to the High Stewardship of Abingdon, and to his debts. Successive Earls of Abingdon have continued to be High Stewards of the town to this day.

© AAAHS and contributors 2015

Sir George Bowyer

At the intersection of the Oxford and Radley roads in Abingdon is a group of buildings – church, cloister, presbytery, school and former convent – that have developed over the years for the benefit of Abingdon’s Catholic community. They have their origin in an organisation or ‘mission’ which was created in the 1850s largely by the efforts of three men. Sir George Boyer was one of them and was the generous donor. The other two were Father John Paul O’Toole, the first minister to the mission, and William Wilkinson Wardell, the initial architect.

George Bowyer (1811-1883) was the eldest son of Sir George Bowyer, Bart, of Radley. With his family, George spent his early years in Italy where he developed a love of learning. Initially he thought of a military career, but abandoned this in favour of the law. On his return to England in 1836 he was called to the bar. Although Bowyer did practise as a lawyer, he found the academic study of law to be more congenial. He published several legal treatises that were well received and might have led to a successful legal career. But this was not to be.

An Anglican since birth, Bowyer was drawn in the 1830s into the religious controversies of the time. He was attracted to the Oxford Movement, which sought to return the Church of England to its roots and resulted in numerous well-publicised conversions to the Roman Catholic faith. In 1850, he himself became a Roman Catholic. It was a decision that would inform his ideas and actions for the remainder of his life.

Bowyer became the legal adviser to the newly appointed Cardinal-Archbishop Nicholas Wiseman at Westminster, at that time the centre of a stormy controversy. The pope had just appointed bishops to new Catholic dioceses in England and Wales, an action widely characterised as ‘papal aggression’, and Wiseman had issued a flamboyant declaration hailing the revival of Catholicism. Bowyer was undeterred; he never wavered from his attachment to the church of his adoption. He was tireless in defending the interests of the church and the pope, giving vent to his feelings in speeches or else in numerous letters to The Times. His services to the Catholic Church were recognised by various honours and dignities, including being named as a chamberlain to the pope, Pius IX.

Bowyer’s attempts to enter Parliament proved to be quite arduous. Securing election as a Catholic to public bodies was not easy. Having failed to gain endorsement as a candidate in two Berkshire constituencies, Bowyer was eventually elected in 1852 as member for Dundalk in Ireland and later sat for County Wexford. Once in Parliament, contemporaries found him hard to categorise; on some issues he was in agreement with Gladstone, though at other times he followed the lead set by Disraeli. He could always be relied on to champion the papacy in its opposition to the Italian nationalists led by Garibaldi, whom Bowyer loathed but who was a hero to the Liberals. He supported Irish home rule because that was the desire of his electors.

Our Lady and St Edmund – the church and cloister from the east
(Photo M. Brod 2014)

Bowyer chose to inform his co-religionists of his plan for a church at Abingdon in the columns of the Catholic newspaper, The Tablet. Readers were advised that the ancient town had once been the home of one of England’s leading abbeys and the birthplace of St Edmund Rich, a one-time Archbishop of Canterbury. Although a number of prominent Catholic families were associated with the appeal, it would seem the project owed most to the generosity of George Bowyer. He not only gave the land, sufficient for a church, presbytery, convent and cemetery, but provided the building materials and undertook to find a stipend of £100 per year for the incumbent. At the same time, he was building at his own expense the church of St John of Jerusalem in Great Ormond Street in London – it was later moved brick by brick to St John’s Wood – and was a patron of the associated hospital.

His generosity was not restricted to religious projects, He patronised the Order of Oddfellows, an organisation for mutual support in adversity, which set up a Bowyer Lodge in his honour. Also, in the early 1840s he presented the Abingdon Council with three large paintings, portraits of Charles II and of James II after Lely and a Martyrdom of St Sebastian attributed to Velasquez. In 1870 there was a further presentation of a valuable silver-gilt vase that had been a family heirloom. These gifts however were not disinterested; they were made at times when he was seeking nomination as a parliamentary candidate, but they evidently failed to have the desired effect.

Bowyer succeeded to his father’s baronetcy in 1860. He died in 1883 and is buried in the family vault at Radley. He had never married, and the title passed to a brother. His philanthropy had put the estate into debt, and it was sold in 1889.

© AAAHS and contributors 2014

John Creemer Clarke

Although he came to play a significant role in many aspects of Abingdon life, John Creemer Clarke was not a native of the town. He came from Devon and remained proud of his roots. He was the son of Robert Clarke, a farmer, and Graciana, whose maiden name was Creemer.

As a young man Clarke was first employed in the drapery business in Bideford before moving to Berkshire and joining the firm of Hyde and Son, wholesale clothiers in Abingdon. He married twice, both his wives coming from Somerset. With his first wife, Anna Avis, he had a son, Heber (1846-98). Anna died in 1848, and the following year Clarke married Elizabeth Joyce. After a few years in Reading, he returned to Abingdon, took up a senior position at Hyde and Son, and lived for the rest of his life at Waste Court in Bath Street. Altogether he had ten children who, unusually for the time, all reached adulthood.

Hyde and Son did well, and during the Crimean War (1854-6) won a contract for army uniforms. The American Civil War (1861-5) also provided an opportunity. At the beginning of the war, Clarke persuaded his fellow-directors to allow him to buy very large quantities of cloth while it was still available − cotton imports from the USA essentially ceased for the duration of the war. Unlike the industry in Lancashire, the Abingdon factory was able to continue production and the workers remained employed.

Hyde and Son became Hyde, Son and Clarke, and finally Clarke, Sons and Co. It was one of the largest clothing manufacturers in the country, employing up to 2000 people at its height, including many home workers. The factory itself was at the bottom of West St Helen Street, next to the churchyard. The company owed much of its success to Clarke’s drive and enthusiasm and it was one of the first to adopt new machinery. At his death Clarke was worth £85,000, which would have classed him as a multi-millionaire today.

By 1860 Clarke was a member of the town council, serving as mayor in 1869-70, and he was also a JP. As a prominent local figure he was persuaded to stand as the Liberal candidate for Abingdon in the 1874 general election. He defeated the sitting Conservative member comfortably even though Disraeli and the Conservatives won nationally, and despite his opponents saying that his business commitments had prevented him fully carrying out his duties as a councillor. This was the first election with a secret ballot, which may have contributed to Clarke’s success. There were great celebrations in the town, and in the factory his workers drank his health in cups of tea. One critic still grumbled that he was not fit for the job, lacking the education and oratorical ability required. Clarke was not very active in parliament but was nevertheless re-elected in 1880 and held the seat until 1885 when the borough lost its separate representation. In 1888, County Councils were introduced and Clarke became one of Abingdon’s two members, the other being John Tomkins, a conservative.

Clarke was a leading Methodist and rarely missed a church meeting. He played an important part in the building of Trinity Church and is credited with largely financing it with its associated meeting rooms and the original manse. His family continued to support the church in many ways. The girls helped in the Sunday School and the summer treat was held in the Waste Court gardens.

Creating a local cottage hospital was another cause Clark strongly promoted. The hospital opened in 1886 after Christ’s Hospital had provided land in Bath Street and Clarke had covered the building costs. Contemporaries thought this was his greatest contribution to the town. The building remained in use until 1930 when the Warren Hospital, converted from a large Victorian house, was opened on Radley Road. The original site in Bath Street is now Mercers’ Court, part of Abingdon School, built in a style reminiscent of the original hospital.

From 1873 Clarke was chairman of the Abingdon Railway Company. He had been a director since it was founded in 1855 when Abingdon was, at last, about to achieve a railway link, although only a branch line.

Three sons followed him into the clothing business though one of these died when only twenty. Heber, the eldest, took over the company on his father’s death in 1895. He was also a councillor for several years and served as mayor. He and his family lived in Fitzharris House, opposite Waste Court. When he died only three years after his father, a younger brother, Harry, took over the company and later moved into Waste Court. This building is now an Abingdon School boarding house with the new name of Austin House. It was renamed after the first Old Abingdonian killed in 1914, to mark the centenary of the First World War. The boys had anyway disliked the previous name. The clothing company continued until 1932.

How should Clarke be remembered? The original Cottage Hospital, his gift to the town, has gone but Trinity Church is still flourishing. In 1879, Clarke had given the town an elaborate gold badge for the mayor’s chain, bearing the arms of Abingdon, with a link showing his arms and motto. Other mayors have contributed their own links, and the handsome chain is still in use today.

Reporting his funeral, The Abingdon Herald described Clarke as “a good man whose help and counsel both public and private will be very sorely missed”.

© AAAHS and contributors 2017 & 2023

Thomas Duffield

Thomas Duffield, Abingdon’s MP from 1832 to 1844, was born in 1782 at Syston, Lincolnshire, second son of Michael Duffield. The family moved in 1805 to a new seat at Sunninghill, Berkshire. Thomas seems to have been intended for an academic career; he matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, in 1800, and in 1807 gained his MA and took up a fellowship at Merton. However, his ambitions were for a higher station in life. Emily Frances Elwes was the only child of George Elwes of Marcham Park, and sole heiress to a fortune said to be of almost a million pounds. Her father might reasonably have hoped for Emily to marry into the nobility, but in 1810 she and Thomas eloped and were married at Gretna Green. The elopement was widely and sensationally reported in the newspapers.

When George Elwes died in 1821 Thomas became the owner of Marcham Park, which he rebuilt and modernised. An interest in politics developed slowly; in 1825 he publicly supported the Tory candidate for one of the Berkshire county seats. In 1826, Abingdon Conservatives, who included most of the Corporation, invited him to stand against their incumbent, the Liberal John Maberly, but he decided that Maberly was too well entrenched and withdrew.

Nonetheless, he continued to be active in public affairs and to nurse the constituency. He was High Sheriff of Berkshire in 1827. He donated very generously to local social and charitable funds, and subscribed £100 of the £1700 cost of widening Abingdon Bridge in 1829, the largest contribution by any individual. He was a signatory to the 1831 Berkshire petition, where some 150 of the most prominent residents of the county publicised their opposition to the proposed parliamentary reforms and extension of the franchise.

In 1832, Maberly became bankrupt and had to flee abroad to avoid the debtor’s prison. Duffield was the obvious man to succeed him and had the support of most members of the Corporation. The Liberal candidate, Thomas Bowles of Milton Hill, was supported by ‘some of the gentry and nearly all the respectable tradesmen’ but withdrew, hinting at large-scale bribery by the wealthy Duffield with which he could not compete. He was replaced as candidate by a son of Maberly without local connections. Duffield won the seat by 157 votes against 43. He became as entrenched in Abingdon as Maberly had been, and was returned unopposed at the elections of 1835, 1837 and 1841.

Duffield was never an active parliamentarian and there is no record of him speaking in the House of Commons. His main political interest was in agricultural matters. He strongly opposed repeal of the Corn Laws. However, he also worked hard in support of local interests and, in particular, helped to defeat an early attempt in the Berkshire Quarter Sessions to close the Abingdon gaol and remove the convicts there to Reading. The Corporation trooped in a body to Marcham Park to thank him.

It may have seemed that Duffield would hold the Abingdon seat for a very long time, but in 1844 he unexpectedly resigned and was replaced by another Conservative, Frederick Thesiger. The Abingdon Corporation, nearly all Conservatives, manipulated the election so that it was impossible for the Liberals to field a candidate, and Thesiger walked over.

Thesiger was solicitor-general, and had lost his seat at Woodstock because the Duke of Marlborough wanted it for his son. The coup at Abingdon came about because the government needed to keep his services. It was speculated, probably rightly, that Duffield had received a payoff of £7500 or thereabouts from the Treasury.

Duffield’s motives remain a mystery – he plainly didn’t need the money – but it is possible that he was simply tired of parliamentary duties and anxious to spend more time with his young second wife and their growing family. His first wife, Emily, had died in 1835 after bearing ten children, eight of whom survived infancy. In 1838, he married Augusta Elizabeth Rushbrooke, daughter of a fellow-MP. His oldest son had died tragically in a shooting accident in 1833 at the age of twenty, and a daughter at the same age in 1841. Augusta died in 1846, probably after the birth of their fifth child.

In the summer of 1847, Duffield left Marcham Park and moved with his younger children to a new home, the Castle Priory in Wallingford. He continued active in public affairs, and was soon made High Steward of the town. He died in 1854.

© AAAHS and contributors 2016

St Edmund with infant (Chaource, France)

St Edmund of Abingdon

Edmund of Abingdon, the future scholar, archbishop and saint, was born in about 1175, probably in West St Helen Street, where his father, Reginald, had property. Reginald may have been a lay official in the Abbey. Edmund attended the grammar school near to St Mary’s in Oxford, and after further study in Paris became a teacher of the liberal arts in Oxford. After some years he returned to Paris for advanced study in theology. He was back in Oxford by about 1214, not (as is often said) the first doctor of theology in the still new university, but probably the first to have an international scholarly reputation.

In 1222, Edmund’s career changed direction. He left Oxford for Salisbury, where he was given charge of the cathedral treasury, responsible for vestments and ceremonial equipment. However, his high status was shown by the grant of the lucrative prebend of Calne for his maintenance. The Bishop of Salisbury, Richard Poer, was a close associate of the highly controversial Archbishop Stephen Langton, and the move put Edmund clearly into Langton’s circle and in line for further promotion. He is reported as having travelled extensively, especially in the politically troubled west of England, as a preacher.

Langton died in 1228 and his immediate successor in 1233. It was a time of internal warfare. King Henry III and his advisors were at odds with a party among the English barons, who were in armed revolt. Their main complaint was the influence of the king’s minister, Peter des Roches. The king, or des Roches, successively nominated three candidates for the archbishopric, but the pope refused to accept any of them. He imposed Edmund, with the brief to act as a peacemaker.

Even before he had been consecrated, Edmund and his bishops were active in the Welsh border country where the fighting was most intense, negotiating local truces and seeing that they were kept. At a session of the king’s council, Edmund spoke vigorously against des Roches, and ordered the king, on pain of excommunication, to sack him, which was done. Edmund then presided over ceremonies of peace and reconciliation between the king and his barons. This ending of a civil war must stand as the greatest achievement of Edmund’s career.

Matthew Paris: Edmund forcing Henry III and Gilbert Marshall to be friends
(Wikimedia Commons)

In October 1240, Edmund set off for a routine visit to Rome. He fell ill and died close to the Cistercian abbey of Pontigny in Burgundy. Miracles were reported to have taken place around his corpse. This was kept by the Cistercians, who started a campaign to have him declared a saint so that they could benefit from pilgrimages and relics. There was widespread political support both in France and in England. Some of the usual formalities were dispensed with, and he was duly canonised in the remarkably short time of six years. The stories that circulated describing him as unusually austere and saintly in life have been taken by hagiographers at face value ever since, but in fact were part of the canonisation campaign and must be read with caution.

Shrine of St Edmund in the Abbey of Pontigny
(Photo courtesy of Terryl N. Kinder)

Edmund is known in England as St Edmund of Abingdon, and in France as St Edme. His attributes in French art often include infants; he was revered as miraculously bringing still-born babies to life just long enough for them to be baptised. His remains are still at Pontigny, in an ornate shrine held by angels above the main altar.

Sir Ralph Glyn

Ralph George Campbell Glyn was probably Abingdon’s longest serving MP, holding the seat from 1924 to 1953. He was born in 1885; his father was Bishop of Peterborough and his mother a daughter of the eighth Duke of Argyll. Intended for the army, he was educated at Harrow and Sandhurst and commissioned in 1904 into the Rifle Brigade. He seems from the start to have gravitated to headquarters and staff rather than regimental duties. In 1910 he transferred to reserve status, managing to combine staff work at the War Office with helping to reorganise the Conservative Party and unsuccessfully contesting various Scottish constituencies.

During the First World War he participated in a military-diplomatic mission to Russia and to allies and neutrals in the Balkans. He served as a staff officer in the Dardanelles campaign and in Egypt and later in France. He finished with the rank of major, a Military Cross, three mentions in dispatches, the Légion d’Honneur, the Imperial Russian Order of St Anne, the Serbian Order of the White Eagle and the American Distinguished Service Medal.

In the post-war election he was finally successful in entering the House of Commons as member for Clackmannan and East Stirlingshire, but lost the seat in 1922. The Abingdon division of North Berkshire, as it was officially known, was a very extensive and still largely rural constituency. He first contested it in 1923 losing by 254 votes, but won it in the following year with a majority of over 4000. He then held it for almost thirty years.

Glyn was assiduous as a constituency MP, supporting and appearing at local events and communicating well with his electorate through regular articles in the Wallingford-based Berks and Oxon Advertiser. He became High Steward of Wallingford in 1933. In Abingdon, he was an active governor of Abingdon School for many years and latterly vice-chairman of the governing body, but his greatest contribution to the town was in his support for the civic society, the Friends of Abingdon. He was among the founders of the society in 1944 and its president from 1945 until his death. He was particularly effective as a fund raiser, and obtained over several years a total of £5000 from the Pilgrim Trust which made possible the acquisition and renovation of the Checker and Long Gallery. In 1952, he was active in the campaign to save Fitzharris House from demolition, but this was ultimately unsuccessful.

Glyn lived in Ardington and later near Farnborough where his almost 2000 acres on the Berkshire Downs were said to make him the largest landowner in the Commons. As a parliamentarian, he was always ready to support agricultural interests, with a particular emphasis on sheep farming and horse breeding. In 1928 he introduced the private member’s bill that eventually reorganised racecourse gambling and set up the tote, a publicly owned system that diverted betting profits to the benefit of the sport. But he was a businessman as well as a farmer, holding a number of industrial directorships.

In the Commons, Glyn was always his own man and never a party hack. It was entirely consistent with his independent views that he welcomed the formation of a ‘national’ coalition government to deal with the financial crisis of 1931, and he became parliamentary private secretary to the Labour prime minister, Ramsay MacDonald. This was the nearest he ever got to a government, as against a parliamentary, position. The parliamentary record, Hansard, shows him to have been an active debater with a wide range of interests. He was made a baronet in 1934.

One of his interests, no doubt stemming from his military experience, was in foreign affairs, and sometimes he would make his own visits to trouble spots and, if he felt it necessary, criticise government policies. In the 1925 dispute over the fate of Mosul he went to Constantinople and wrote home supporting the Turkish case over the British. In 1938 he made an ostensibly private trip to the Balkans and had talks with the Hungarian prime minister. He favoured the League of Nations and disarmament.

After the Second World War, Glyn was a leading member of the Commons Committee on Estimates which monitored government expenditure. He became its chairman in 1951. His greatest disagreement with his own party was over transport policy. Although a director of one of the ‘big four’ railway companies, he supported nationalisation in 1948 and opposed privatisation of road haulage in 1953. He argued that all transport should be centrally managed and rail and road be allowed to cross-subsidise each other. Whatever differences he may have had with his party whips, his support among North Berkshire voters remained firm throughout his tenure of the seat: he was unopposed in 1931 and 1935, and had majorities approaching 5000 in each of the post-war elections

In 1952 Glyn indicated a wish to retire. He became Baron Glyn in the coronation honours of 1953 and moved to the House of Lords where he remained active until his death in May 1960. He had married in 1921 Sybell Long, widow of a senior officer killed in 1917. She died in 1958. There were no children of the marriage, and the barony became extinct.

Ralph Glyn was an old-fashioned figure even in his own time – a back-bencher who saw his prime duty as being to his country and his constituents, not his party. His private means enabled him to take personal initiatives. His business interests made him indifferent to hopes of government office. He worked hard for his constituents, and thoroughly deserved the confidence they placed in him.

Simon Harcourt, 1st Viscount Harcourt

Simon Harcourt was of a gentry family whose seat was at Stanton Harcourt. He was educated at a dissenting academy at Shilton, near Burford. He went on to Pembroke College at Oxford, which was closely connected with Abingdon.

Harcourt was called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1683, became Recorder of Abingdon in 1689, and in 1690 was elected unopposed to Parliament for the Abingdon seat as a high Tory and Anglican. He soon developed a reputation as an orator and administrator, and gradually gained recognition and promotion. This was especially the case in the time of Queen Anne (reigned 1702-14), whose chief minister was Robert Harley. Harcourt and Harley had been contemporaries at the Shilton academy, and they now worked closely together. For many years, he maintained a legal career in addition to his political one, the two feeding off each other, and he became very rich. By 1711, he had become Lord Keeper and was soon made a baron. In 1713, he was promoted to Lord Chancellor.

In the later part of Anne’s reign, Harcourt was among her principal ministers. When she was succeeded by George I, a Whig, it seemed to be the end of his political career, as it was for his colleagues. But unlike them, he was able to make his peace with the new regime. Against expectation, he had government office again in 1720, was made a viscount in 1721, and by 1722 was back in the Privy Council. When the king was out of the country, Harcourt was one of the Lords Justices, holding vice-regal power.

Harcourt made his home at Cokethorpe and bought the estate of Nuneham Courtenay. At Cokethorpe he entertained widely, including literary men of congenial political views such as Alexander Pope and Jonathan Swift. He died in 1727, and is buried at the old family seat at Stanton Harcourt.

Harcourt was three times married, but his first wife, Rebecca, was the only one with whom he had children: two daughters and three sons. The first and third sons died young. The second, Simon, in spite of the influence his father exerted on his behalf, had a short and only mediocre career. He was MP for Abingdon 1713-15, but was not re-elected. He died in 1720. A grandson, also Simon, became in 1749 Viscount Nuneham of Nuneham Courtenay and Earl Harcourt of Stanton Harcourt.

George Knapp

The Knapps were a large but close-knit family originating in Chilton, a village between Abingdon and Newbury, where many of them would return to be buried. Three Knapp lineages were active in Abingdon from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. Two of them were of lawyers who were respectively town clerks and recorders. The third was of businessmen, originally grocers and later bankers.

A George Knapp, grocer, came to Abingdon in 1753, married, and leased from the Corporation the former Corner House at the north side of the Square (which was then the Sheep Market). The Corner House had previously been occupied by the Pleydell family, also grocers. He became active both in the Corporation and Christ’s Hospital, being several times mayor of the one and master of the other. It is his eldest son, also George, who is the main subject of this article.

The younger George Knapp, born in 1754, was educated at Abingdon School, as was his younger brother Henry. Some of the friendships they made there would be lifelong and important in their careers. The two brothers became grocers in their turn, with a shop in West St Helen Street. George entered local politics at an early age. He became a freeman of the town in 1780 – apparently at that time a formality – and almost immediately was elected a secondary burgess and then one of the two bailiffs. Further spells as bailiff and one as chamberlain followed; in 1791 he became a principal burgess and in the next year began the first of four terms as mayor. Brother Henry’s career followed a similar course a few years behind, with the difference that Henry, like his father, was active in Christ’s Hospital. George, remarkably, seems to have had no contact with that organisation.

One of George’s school friends was William Bagshaw Stevens who became headmaster of Repton School near Derby. Stevens kept a diary in which George appears frequently. We learn that he was an easy-going man but addicted to gambling. He lost large sums of money, and Stevens seems to have believed that he was being cheated. He moved between two homes, one in Abingdon and one in Kidlington which had been his mother’s. He never married, but his sister Anne kept house for him. From his will, we learn that he had two illegitimate daughters, Anne and Harriet, whom he brought up and provided for.

During the 1780s, George moved from the grocery business into banking. He associated himself with the brothers Joseph and William Tomkins in what became the Abingdon Bank. The venture seems to have gone well, and any continuing gambling losses do not seem to have been more than he could afford. About 1800 he made major alterations at his residence on The Square, putting up the building that now houses Barclays Bank.

The relationship with the Tomkins brothers carried into the social and political fields. They supported him in various initiatives, including a declaration of support for William Pitt at a time of political difficulty and the setting up of a local militia against a possible French invasion. After 1800, George decided to try to win the Abingdon seat from the current MP, Thomas Metcalfe. Metcalfe’s main interest was the East India Company, of which he was a director, and George could campaign as an independent who would have the town’s interests and no other at heart.

Through the Tomkins, who were Baptists, George could rely on the local dissenting vote. To ensure he won an election, he needed the help of his brother Henry, another old school friend Thomas Knight, and various fellow-members of the Corporation. It was necessary that one of these should be mayor and returning officer at the time of an election. Money was spent to keep the mayoralty within the group in as many years as possible. Metcalfe narrowly won the elections of 1802 and 1806, but in 1807, Knight, as mayor, disqualified nine voters and George won by a margin of seven.

In Parliament, George became a follower of the young radical Francis Burdett, whom he had probably met through William Bagshaw Stevens. He supported Burdett in an ill-timed and under-prepared attempt to push through a parliamentary reform which would give the vote to all householders. He also supported a trumped-up allegation of corruption that forced the resignation of the Duke of York as head of the army, an arguably irresponsible action during an all-out war.

But George Knapp’s parliamentary career was destined to be brief. He died in November 1809. There is some doubt about the circumstances. It was stated that he had fallen from his gig and sustained head injuries, but there are no details and no reports of an inquest. He had added a codicil to his will a few days earlier, increasing the provision for his daughters. It does seem that something was being covered up, possibly a duel since duels were remarkably prevalent at the time, but it is unlikely that any further information will now be forthcoming.

George joined his ancestors in the Chilton churchyard, while his brother Henry moved easily into his place at the Abingdon Bank and continued his own rather more conventional career. The daughters, whose ages are unknown, were still unmarried and living with their aunt Anne when she died in 1839.