John Pakington, 1st Baron Hampton

He was born John Somerset Russell, the son of William Russell and Elizabeth Pakington, of the Pakington family of a Worcestershire family, sister and heiress of Sir John Pakington, the 8th and last Baronet Pakington of Ailesbury.[1] His birthplace was Slaughter's Court, Powick, Worcestershire.[2]

His father William Russell (1750–1812) was a barrister and magistrate, the son of a surgeon of Worcester of the same name, and first cousin of William Oldnall Russell, and had first been married to Mary Cocks, with whom he had a daughter Mary.[3] He was left an orphan when his mother died in 1813:[2] his half-sister Mary had married in 1806 the Rev. Henry Barry Domvile, and Domvile from 1811 had the living near Powick of Leigh with Bransford.[3][4] John was educated at Eton College and matriculated at Oriel College, Oxford in 1818.[2][5]

The second son, John became the heir when his elder brother William Herbert Russell died in 1819, and he left Oxford without a degree.[2] In 1827 he fought a duel, over a matter concerning the Worcestershire Hunt. It took place at Kempsey, when he and John Parker, Master of the Hunt, fired at each other without injury.[6]

John Somerset Russell assumed in 1831 by Royal Licence the surname of Pakington in lieu of his patronymic, having inherited in 1830 the estates of his maternal uncle Sir John Pakington, which he held jointly with the baronet's younger sister Ann Pakington.[2][7] The estate included Westwood House, Worcestershire and Pakington moved there with his first wife Mary, in 1832.

Pakington had a family connection to Sir Compton Domvile, 1st Baronet, a Tory Member of Parliament in the 1820s and early 1830s, and the brother of Henry Barry Domvile who had married his half-sister Mary.[8] He turned down the chance to stand as a reform candidate at the 1831 general election, instead speaking for the Tory Henry Beauchamp Lygon standing for Worcestershire.[9] He was elected at the fourth attempt as the Tory Member of Parliament for Droitwich in 1837, a seat he held until 1874.[1]

Pakington is considered a liberal conservative.[10] He was first given office by Sir Robert Peel in 1841 and created in 1846 Baronet Pakington of the second creation, of Westwood in the County of Worcester.[1]

1870s

Pakington caricatured by "ATn" in Vanity Fair, 1870

In 1871 Pakington addressed the Social Science Congress, speaking on the "New Social Alliance", with which Disraeli was toying.[20] The term referred to discussions being held between Conservative Party leaders and workers' representatives.[21] They aroused hostility from Tory backbenchers;[22] and George Charles Brodrick called it a "semi-communistic programme".[23] Pakington had joined the ephemeral movement of John Scott Russell, signing with Stafford Northcote, Gathorne Hardy and some of the House of Lords a memorandum on social reform measures to be taken, the "seven points".[24][25] In October, in an article "The New Social Movement", the Saturday Review commented:

The pompous announcement of an alliance between the aristocracy and the artisans bears traces of Mr. Disraeli's earlier manner; but a serious belief in the practicability in the present day of a limited and regulated socialism is only worthy of Sir John Pakington or of Lord John Manners. When Coningsby and Sybil were published, there had been no insurrection of a Paris Commune, nor had Mr. Mill and the Land and Labour League attacked directly or indirectly the right of property in land.[26]

Pakington, by now unpopular with Tory leaders, lost his seat in the Commons in the 1874 general election, defeated on a large swing from 1868 by John Corbett, a local Liberal.[2][27] He was raised to the peerage as Baron Hampton, of Hampton Lovett and of Westwood in the County of Worcester.

Hampton served for many years as chairman of the Worcestershire Quarter Sessions. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in June 1858.[28] He was also President of the Royal Statistical Society from 1861 to 1863 and Chief Civil Service Commissioner from 1875 until his death.

Lord Hampton died at his London home in April 1880, aged 81, and was succeeded by his son from his first marriage, John Slaney Pakington.[29]

He was three times married:[29]

• Firstly, in 1822 as John Somerset Russell, to Mary Slaney, daughter of Moreton Aglionby Slaney; she died in 1843.
• Secondly, in 1844, to Augusta, daughter of the Right Reverend George Murray; she died in 1848.
• Thirdly, in 1851, to Augusta Anne, daughter of Thomas Champion Crespigny MP, and widow of Thomas Henry Hastings Davies MP.

His son John Slaney Pakington (born 1826) by the first marriage became the 2nd Baron Hampton; he had a son Herbert Perrott Murray Pakington (born 1846) by the second marriage, who became the 3rd Baron Hampton, and was father of Herbert Stuart Pakington who on his death in 1906 became the 4th Baron. There were no children of the third marriage.[30][31]

• Obituary New York Times 10 April 1880
• The peerage of the British empire as at present existing. Page 31 Google Books