Note 10 — INTRODUCTORY

The candidates ultimately chosen were the Hon. Charles Pelham Villiers, who represented the constituency for sixty-three years—from January 1835 till his death in January 1898—and Mr Thomas Thornley of Liverpool. Both men, as we shall see, served on that select Committee on Postage which sat to enquire as to the merits of my father's plan of postal reform, and helped to cause its adoption. The two men were long known locally as “Mr Pearson's members.” Mr Villiers will be remembered as the man who, for several years in succession, brought in an Annual Motion on behalf of Free Trade, and as being for a longer while, perhaps, than any other Parliamentarian, “the Father of the House”; but the fact is not so well known that he came near to not representing Wolverhampton at all. The election agent who “discovered” him in London described him in a letter to my grandfather (who was chairman of the local Liberal Association) as “a young gentleman named Villiers, a thorough free-trader, of good connexions, and good address.” Thus his advent was eagerly looked for. Always given to procrastination, the candidate, however, was so long in making his appearance or communicating with the constituents, that his place was about to be taken by a more energetic person who went so far as to issue his address and begin his canvass. Only just in time for nomination did Mr Villiers drive into Wolverhampton. Whereupon Mr Throckmorton gracefully retired.