Francis Egerton, 1st Earl of Ellesmere (1 January 1800 – 18 February 1857), known as Lord Francis Leveson-Gower until 1833, was a British politician, writer, traveller and patron of the arts. Ellesmere Island, a major island (10th in size among global islands) in Nunavut, the Canadian Arctic, was named after him.
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.speech of Egerton on page 2 of 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.
Worsley 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"(Report of the Commissioners on Conditions in Factories, Parliamentary Papers, 1833, volume XX ), as given in
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"editorial (not separately titled) under general heading
Worsley Hall served as a suitable base for royal visits to Manchester (the first occurring in 1851) and Egerton presided at the 1842 meeting of the British Association of Science in Manchester but Egerton had little influence in Manchester; when his name was put forward for presidency of the Manchester Athenaeum, Richard Cobden was brought forward as an alternative candidate, and duly elected. Egerton's politics (Tory and protectionist) were not those of (Reform and Free Trade) Manchester, and his association with the Bridgewater trust also told against him.
The Bridgewater canal The canal was highly profitable, and owed much of its profitability to price-fixing agreements with its rivals; this led to resentment in both Liverpool and Manchester of its wealth and influence (and hence that of Egerton). After 1810, when they had agreed to charge identical rates, the canal and the Mersey and Irwell Navigation ('the Old Quay Company') had enjoyed a profitable duopoly of Manchester-Liverpool goods traffic (not because each had exclusive use of their waterway, but because each had a monopoly of Manchester warehouses with easy access to their waterway). The Liverpool and Manchester Railway had been promoted to allow greater volumes of traffic between the two towns, and to bring down transport costs. However, faced with strenuous opposition from Egerton's father, the railway's promoters had won him round to the extent that he had subscribed for over a fifth of the company's capital with a corresponding presence on the board. The shares had been inherited, not by Egerton, but by his brother, the 2nd Duke of Sutherland; Loch was also auditor and principal steward for the Duke, as well as personally holding shares in the railway. When the railway opened, the rates charged by two previous carriers settled down just below the maximum (ten shillings a ton) the railway was allowed to charge by its act of Parliament. When the Old Quay Company later significantly reduced its freight charges, they were bought out by Egerton personally (1843) and the previous charges reinstated: the Bridgewater trust then bought the company from him (for over half a million pounds) once they had obtained the requisite powers. After the railway was absorbed into the London and North Western Railway, there was a brief period of fierce competition for goods traffic, with the rate for transport of cotton from Liverpool to Manchester dropping by two-thirds. A more profitable modus vivendi was soon restored, however; in 1858, after the canal had joined the railway conference on freight rates, the Liverpool Mail thought it 'notorious that the exorbitant rates for railway and water carriage between Liverpool and Manchester are kept up by means of powerful combinations between the Railway interest and the Bridgewater Canal interest'
Hence, although Egerton offered on succeeding to the Bridgewater estate to pay for a large statue of the Duke of Bridgewater in Manchester if the town authorities would identify a suitable site for itthe text of a letter from Egerton to the Boroughreeve of Manchester making the offer is given in the offer was never taken up.
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:quoted in 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'.(advert) - 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.