The Lord Brabourne | |
|---|---|
 "A promising apprentice". Knatchbull-Hugessen M.P. as caricatured by Ape (Carlo Pellegrini) inVanity Fair, June 1870. | |
| Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department | |
| In office 25 May 1866 – 26 June 1866 | |
| Monarch | Victoria |
| Prime Minister | The Earl Russell |
| Preceded by | Thomas Baring |
| Succeeded by | The Earl Belmore |
| In office 10 December 1868 – 11 January 1871 | |
| Monarch | Victoria |
| Prime Minister | William Ewart Gladstone |
| Preceded by | Sir Michael Hicks-Beach, Bt |
| Succeeded by | George Shaw-Lefevre |
| Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies | |
| In office 14 January 1871 – 17 February 1874 | |
| Monarch | Victoria |
| Prime Minister | William Ewart Gladstone |
| Preceded by | William Monsell |
| Succeeded by | James Lowther |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 29 April 1829 (1829-04-29) |
| Died | 6 February 1893 (1893-02-07) (aged 63) |
| Nationality | British |
| Political party | Liberal (to 1880),Conservative (after 1880) |
| Spouse(s) | (1) Anna Maria Elizabeth Southwell (d. 1889) (2) Ethel Mary Walker |
| Alma mater | Magdalen College, Oxford |
Edward Hugessen Knatchbull-Hugessen, 1st Baron BrabournePC (29 April 1829 – 6 February 1893), known asE. H. Knatchbull-Hugessen, was a BritishLiberal and laterConservative politician. He served asUnder-Secretary of State for the Home Department underLord Russell in 1866 and underWilliam Ewart Gladstone from 1868 to 1871 and was alsoUnder-Secretary of State for the Colonies under Gladstone from 1871 to 1874. In 1880 he was elevated to the peerage asBaron Brabourne.
Born Edward Hugessen Knatchbull, he was the younger son ofSir Edward Knatchbull, 9th Baronet, who twice served asPaymaster General, and his second wife Fanny Catherine Knight, who was a niece of authorJane Austen. In 1849 he assumed by Royal licence the additional surname of Hugessen, which was the maiden surname of his father's mother. Knatchbull-Hugessen was educated atEton andMagdalen College, Oxford, where he wasPresident of the Oxford Union. During his Oxford days, he was a strong proponent of agricultural protection, and as President of the Oxford Union in 1850 he helped to instigate the famous three-night-long debate on the motion: ‘That the state of the nation imperatively requires a return to Protection’. The motion was supported by Robert Cecil, the future Prime Minister, and Knatchbull-Hugessen concluded the proposition arguments on 28 February 1850, declaring that:
'From one end of the country to the other, Protection is becoming the glorious watchword of thousands of true Englishmen. To check the tide of revolutionary agitation – to prefer your own countrymen to foreigners – to ameliorate, to vindicate – is not this a high, a national cause?'
The motion passed by 102 votes to 31.[1]
He owned 4,000 acres in Kent.[2]
In 1857 Knatchbull-Hugessen was electedMember of Parliament forSandwich, a seat he would hold until 1880.[3] He served as aLord of the Treasury underLord Palmerston from 1859 to 1860, asUnder-Secretary of State for Home Affairs underLord Russell in 1866 and underGladstone from 1868 to 1871 and asUnder-Secretary of State for the Colonies under Gladstone from 1871 to 1874.[4] He was admitted to thePrivy Council in 1873[5] and raised to the peerage asBaron Brabourne, ofBrabourne in the County of Kent, in 1880.[6] Shortly after becoming a peer he joined the Conservative party, citing his opposition to the interventionist policies of Radicals likeJoseph Chamberlain.[7][8] In 1882 he became a founding member of theLiberty and Property Defence League.[9]
Though forgotten and unread today, Knatchbull-Hugessen wrote many well-known short stories of fantasy andfaery. He produced a book or two of these stories each year from 1869 to 1894. Some sources on his life, such asEncyclopaedia of Fantasy say 12 such books. Others, such asOxford Reference, say 15. The collections were popular and commercial successes in the Christmas book market, and his publishers illustrated them with the leading illustrators of their time such asGustav Doré andRichard Doyle. Far from being the blandly moralistic fare of the later Victorian period,The Times newspaper noted that his stories... "are of a very high order; light and brilliant narrative flow from his pen, and is fed by an invention as graceful as it is inexhaustible." He was widely likened by the reviewers to masters of the fairy-tale such as Grimm and Andersen, and his prolific output of the tales even led a critic atThe British Quarterly Review to question his dedication to his job at the Colonial Office... "We should like to know whether Mr. Knatchbull-Hugessen maintains his intercourse with the fairies of the Colonial Office. If so, what department of office duty is specially favourable to them; whether, too, they come when Parliament breaks up, or whether their visits are intermittent all the year round."[10]
In a letter of 1971,J. R. R. Tolkien recalled that, as a small child, his bedtime reading was the fairy stories of Knatchbull-Hugessen. He especially recalled being read one story about an ogre who catches his dinner by disguising himself as a tree.[11]
Brabourne also edited the first edition of the novelistJane Austen's letters, published in 1884. This edition included about two-thirds of her surviving letters and was dedicated toQueen Victoria. He inherited the letters after his mother's death in December 1882.[12]
He died on 6 February 1893 at Smeeth Paddocks and was buried in St Mary the Virgin Churchyard atSmeeth, Kent, on 9 February.[13]
He was twice married: first, on 19 October 1852, at St. Stephen's, Hertfordshire, to Anna Maria Elizabeth, younger daughter of the Rev. Marcus Richard Southwell, vicar of that church, by whom he had two sons and two daughters:[13]
Lady Brabourne died on 2 May 1889, and on 3 June 1890 Lord Brabourne remarried Ethel Mary Walker, daughter of ColonelSir George Gustavus Walker.[13] They had two children:
Lord Brabourne was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage, Edward.
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This article incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Rae, William Fraser (1901). "Knatchbull-Hugessen, Edward Hugessen". InLee, Sidney (ed.).Dictionary of National Biography (1st supplement). London: Smith, Elder & Co.
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Member of Parliament forSandwich 1857–1880 With:Lord Clarence Paget 1857–1866 Charles Capper 1866–1868 Henry Brassey 1868–1880 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department May–June 1866 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department 1868–1871 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies 1871–1874 | Succeeded by |
| Peerage of the United Kingdom | ||
| New creation | Baron Brabourne 1880–1893 | Succeeded by |
