Published in Windlesora 19 (2002)
© WLHG
The Council throughout the years from 1828 to 1852 contained men of ability. Many were Windsorians born and bred and, like John Secker, were able to say: ‘I was born in the house in which I now live and have lived there ever since’. Most distinguished of all was Charles Knight who through his publishing and writing became one of the most notable popular educators of the 19th century — but he resigned from the Council in 1830 and achieved his fame not in Windsor but in London. Others like James Egelstone, Robert Tebbott, Charles Snowden, Thomas Jenner, John Chapman, John Clode senior, John Banister, William Berridge, Charles Phillips, the Hansons and the Laytons served for many years on the Council. The average length of service of the 62 members of the Council during the period of the Hall Book was 17 years; 23 served more than 20 years and 14 more than 30. John Secker, too, Town Clerk from 1828 to 1854, was obviously a highly competent officer, whose personality is stamped on many pages of the Hall Book.
Three members of the Council are outstanding. The most colourful personality is that of James Bedborough. ‘The history of his life’, said the Windsor Express on the occasion of his death in 1860, ‘is most intimately associated with the progress of Windsor and its neighbourhood, socially, politically and commercially’. Born in humble circumstances, he began business when scarcely 18 as a stone mason. From small beginnings his business extended rapidly and he became a wealthy and successful builder. He played an important part in the building works at the Castle, the Parish Church, the Guildhall, and the Gasworks as well as in much of the new housing in Windsor such as Clarence Crescent. He became a principal contractor to the Great Western Railway Company; those portions of the main line from West Drayton to Maidenhead, from Basildon bridge to Steventon, together with a section in the neighbourhood of Wootton Bassett were constructed by him; so also was the principal part of the railway bridge over the Thames at Maidenhead. He constructed several of the new roads in Windsor and was prominent in bringing the South Western Railway to the town.
He had been a member of the old Corporation for 16 years before the new Council came into being in 1835. In that year he stood for election as a Liberal and was top of the poll in the Out Ward. He was elected as alderman at the first meeting of the new Council and continued as such until the time for his retirement in 1841. He was not re-elected by the Tory majority, but came back as a councillor in the following year and was re-elected in 1845 and 1848. He became an alderman again in 1850, resigned in November 1854 because of the ‘unmeasured hostility’ towards him and then came back again as an elected councillor in 1857. He was Mayor for the first time in 1846 and again in 1854 for a few months when Henry Darvill resigned in the course of his year of office.
James Bedborough was at the centre of almost all the controversies that arose in the course of the long period during which he was a member of the Council — in point of fact he was the author of many of them. He proposed the admission of the hurgesses to Council meetings; he challenged the method of appointing Council committees (he was himself debarred from membership of the main committees from 1836 to 1845 because of his politics); he opposed the way in which the Council iyadesmen were chosen; he was deeply involved in the controversies over the appointment of a Justice of the Peace and over the Clewer rate. He spoke frequently and at length, even when he was Mayor and when his financial interests were involved. He stood up to the Town Clerk and told him it was his duty to do what the Council ordered whether he himself agreed or not. With Henry Darvill he used every opportunity to promote a drainage scheme for Windsor, but in the railway controversy he quarrelled violently with Darvill, who was a champion of the Great Western Company’s projected line from Slough to Windsor. |
After his year of office as Mayor in 1846-47, the Council paid him an unqualified tribute and referred to ‘his zealous and indefatigable exertions, regardless of personal trouble and expense, in advancing the Treaty for the Sale of certain Corporate Estates to the Crown and especially in promoting to a successful issue the long desired object of the Town and Corporation, a direct Railway communication between Windsor and the Metropolis’. Self-opinionated, not always an easy man to work with, Bedborough was immensely able, with a wide practical knowledge which he put at the service of the town. ‘We may safely say’, concluded the Windsor xpress in its obituary, ‘that he has done more than any other single individual to enhance the importance of this borough’.
Robert Blunt, the same age as James Bedborough, outlived him by 13 years. When he died in 1873, he had served continuously on the Council for 57 years, though his last years were overshadowed by physical infirmities which largely incapacitated him. A saddler by trade, he became a member of the old Corporation in 1816 and passed through all the various offices in turn, eventually becoming Mayor in 1833. In 1835 he had in a sense to start all over again. Elected as a councillor in the first municipal elections, he did not become an alderman again until 1846. Just before this, in 1843-44, he had served as Mayor for the second time. Apart from his service on the Council, he was magistrate for many years and held many positions in the town. ‘His intimate acquaintance with all the affairs of the Corporation’, said the Windsor Express, ‘made him a kind of universal referee and umpire upon all doubtful matters connected therewith’.
In politics he was a Tory, ‘an old-fashioned gentlemanly Tory’ the Windsor Express called him and went on to say that ‘those who knew him might have supposed him to be some scion of aristocracy turned tradesman by some freak of fortune’. Blunt was regarded as the leader of the Tories on the Council, as Bedborough was of the Liberals. Their opinions were often in conflict, but Blunt’s calm temper and tact, combined with a dedication to what he conceived to be the best interests of Windsor, often enabled him to hold and more than hold his own.
The last of the three, Henry Darvill, was a younger man. Born at Bledlow, Bucks, about 1812, he came to Windsor in 1834 where he built up a ‘lucrative and high-class practice’ as a solicitor. Like Bedborough he was a Liberal. He was first elected to the Council in 1838 and was re-elected on five subsequent occasions – usually at the top of the poll. As a Liberal he brought an unflagging reformist zeal to the work of the Council; as a solicitor he brought not only legal acumen but also a ready tongue and a shrewd wit to its debates. He often crossed swords with Blunt and, in an acrimonious series of exchanges in a discussion on the activities of the new Board of Health, proposed, amid laughter, ‘Coffee and pistols for two’. He brought the Council to the point of threatening the Crown Commissioners with legal action in 1849. He spoke constantly in favour of the sale of corporate property in order to finance the drainage scheme for the town. He took the lead in proposing the abolition of the Fair. A staunch dissenter, he seconded the motion against ‘popish aggression’ in 1850.
Darvill had been proposed unsuccessfully for Mayor in 1850, but was eventually elected in 1853. This was perhaps extraordinary in itself, since Darvill had been the gadfly of the Council over the years. The sequel, however, was even more extraordinary. In April 1854 he stated that he understood that the Town Clerk, John Secker, was intending to retire and that he had therefore decided to resign both as Mayor and as councillor so that he could be a candidate for office. This move caused a furore. The Crimean War had just broken out and the Windsor Express commented: ‘We have war abroad, and at home we have had civil war raging in our midst’. Darvill was appointed by eleven votes to nine and went on to hold the office until his death in 1883 — almost thirty years. The Windsor Council in this period often seems lethargic, suspicious of change. This turn of events perhaps shows — in spite of Darvill’s slender majority — that it could also, when civic interests demanded it, be flexible and enlightened.
Raymond South
Windsor Local History Group 