Family and Education

b. 5 June 1780, 2nd s. of John Ferrand (d. 1790) of Stockton and Barnard Castle, co. Dur. and Sarah, da. of Edward Dale, collector of customs, of Stockton. m. (1) 5 Sept. 1805,1 his cos. Katherine Maria (d. 15 Feb. 1827),2 da. and h. of Col. William Twiss of Myrtle Grove, Yorks., s.p.; (2) 13 Jan. 1829,3 Margaret, da. of John Moss, banker of Liverpool, of Otterspool, Lancs., s.p. d. 20 Sept. 1835.

Offices Held

Ensign 2 Ft. 1799, lt. 1800, capt. 1804; capt. 67 Ft. 1806; capt. 128 Ft. (half-pay) 1807-d.

Lt.-col. Bradford local militia.

Biography

Ferrand, who was presumably named after his paternal grandmother’s father George Walker, vicar of Stockton in the mid-eighteenth century, belonged to a Yorkshire family, though his immediate ancestors had resided in Durham. His elder brother Edward, who succeeded their father in 1790, resettled his branch of the family in the West Riding on inheriting, from his kinsman Benjamin Ferrand (d. 1803), the estate at St. Ives, near Bingley.4 The neighbouring mansion of Harden Grange was apparently given over to the use of this Member, who spent heavily on building extensions and planting ornamental gardens.5 He had entered the army in 1799, serving for a while on the continent, and retired on half-pay, having acted as a brigade major, in 1807. He married the daughter of another officer in 1805 and became a country gentleman, serving on the commission of the peace and in the Bradford local militia.

It is not known whether Ferrand had had earlier ambitions to enter Parliament, but he was returned unopposed for Tralee at the general election of 1831, presumably having purchased the seat from Sir Edward Denny*.6 He voted against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, several times for adjourning the proceedings on it, 12 July, for using the 1831 census to determine the boroughs in schedules A and B, 19 July, and to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July. He presented and endorsed the Kerry petition for the grant to the Kildare Place Society, 26 July. Although the speech was attributed to his near namesake Robert Farrand, it was no doubt he who on 5 Aug. called for the proposed constituency of Bradford to cover the full extent of the town and doubted that the bill’s provisions would satisfy its inhabitants’ demands for radical reforms. As ‘Mr. Ferrard’, he briefly urged higher penalties for trespass under the game bill, 8 Aug. He divided against the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept., and the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. He voted against the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831. Although he sided with ministers in the almost unanimous majority against limiting the polling in boroughs of under 1,200 voters to one day, 15 Feb., he divided with opposition against the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., the third reading of the bill, 22 Mar., and the second reading of the Irish measure, 25 May 1832. His only other known votes were against the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12 July 1832. He was one of the original members of the Carlton Club that year.

He relinquished Tralee, where the late patron’s heir had ambitions of his own, at the general election of 1832, when he probably did not attempt to stand again for the Commons. However, in January 1835 he was chosen by the agent of the former Tory cabinet minister Lord Westmorland, lord lieutenant of Northamptonshire, to offer at the last minute as a Conservative for Peterborough, where Lord Fitzwilliam, like his father before him, had a preponderating influence. He entered the town on the eve of the contest and put up a spirited fight, but finished in third place behind the sitting Liberal Members. In a parting address, he claimed to have received 281 votes (including 89 plumps) out of the nearly 600 electors polled and congratulated the independent electors on having commenced a campaign to liberate the borough. His charges of widespread intimidation were denied by his successful opponents Sir Robert Heron* and John Fazakerley*, who retorted that it was Ferrand, not he, who had resorted to irregular practices.7 He voted for John Stuart Wortley* against the Liberal Lord Morpeth* in the by-election for the West Riding of Yorkshire in May 1835.8

Ferrand died, ‘warmly attached to Conservative politics’, in October 1835.9 By his will, dated 4 Dec. 1834 with one codicil, he made provision for his second wife (d. 1846) and left his estate and personalty sworn under a total of £61,000 (in the provinces of Canterbury and York) in trust to the family.10 Harden Grange and, on the death of Edward Ferrand in March 1837, St. Ives both passed to their sister Sarah, the widow of Currer Fothergill Busfeild (d. 1832) of Cottingley Bridge, whose elder brother William Busfeild of Upwood was Liberal Member for Bradford, 1837-51. Sarah’s eldest son and heir William, who changed his surname to Ferrand in 1837 and lived at St. Ives (as Harden Grange was renamed), was Conservative Member for Knaresborough, 1841-7, and Devonport, 1863-6, and gained a considerable working class following as a prominent factory reformer.11

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Stephen Farrell

Notes

• 1. Gent. Mag. (1805), ii. 874.
• 2. Ibid. (1827), i. 381.
• 3. IGI (Lancs.).
• 4. Burke Commoners, iv. 700; J. Foster, Peds. of Yorks. Fams. i sub Ferrand.
• 5. H. Speight, Old Bingley, 178, 361.
• 6. Dublin Evening Post, 12 May 1831.
• 7. The Times, 6, 7, 10 Jan.; Northampton Mercury, 10, 17, 31 Jan. 1835.
• 8. Yorks. (W. Riding) Pollbook (May 1835), 207.
• 9. Bradford Observer, 24 Sept. 1835; Gent. Mag. (1835), ii. 558.
• 10. PROB 11/1857/90; IR26/1415/86.
• 11. Speight, 361-2, 364-6; Oxford DNB sub William Ferrand.