The Eyres-Monsell Family
Eyres Monsell Bolton Meredith (1881-1969), first Viscount Monsell and Conservative politician, was born on 22 February 1881. His Anglo-Irish Ascendancy family was a branch of the Monsells of Tervoe who had settled in county Limerick in 1644 and were represented in the senior line by the extinct Barons Emly. His father, Bolton James Alfred Monsell (1840-1919), was an army officer and then Chief Constable of the Metropolitan Police from 1886 to 1910; and his mother, Mary Beverley Ogle (d. 1929), was the second daughter of General Sir Edmund Ogle, 6th baronet. Monsell was the younger of their two sons in a family of six children.
Although his father had an army background, Monsell was destined for the Senior Service. After preparatory schooling at Stubbington House, Fareham, he entered HMS Britannia as a cadet in 1894. He went to sea as a midshipman in 1896 and specialised as a Torpedo Lieutenant in 1903, but his marriage to an heiress brought his naval career to a close. On 3 December 1904 he wed Caroline Mary Sybil Eyres (1881-1959), the only child of Henry William Eyres of Dumbleton Hall, near Evesham in Worcestershire. The names were joined together as Eyres Monsell, and the match enabled him to retire from the navy in 1906 and embark instead upon a political career.
Monsell was elected Conservative MP for Evesham in January 1910 and in the following year became a whip at the suggestion of Bonar Law. During the war he returned to active duty in the navy, being awarded tile Order of the Nile for service in Egypt in 1915 and promoted to Commander in 1917. Monsell became Deputy Chief Whip, as Treasurer of the Household, on 5 February 1919. On 1 April 1921 he moved to the Admiralty, where he was Civil Lord up to the fall of the Coalition, and then Parliamentary and Financial Secretary. Monsell was on good terms with Stanley Baldwin, who sat for the adjacent Bewdley division, and with other Conservative anti-coalitionists. It was therefore not surprising that 'Bobby' (as he was known to his friends) should be chosen as Chief Whip when that post became vacant shortly after Baldwin's succession to the Conservative leadership. Monsell became a Privy Councillor on 7 July 1923 and took over as Chief Whip on 25 July.
Monsell served as Chief Whip for more than eight years, and was considered one of the most successful holders of this office. He possessed enormous charm and impeccable manners, was amusing and intelligent, and liked to be liked. Noted as being the best dressed man in the House of Commons, Monsell was tall, elegant and strikingly handsome. He was cultivated and sociable, enjoying the parties of the 'smart set’ and the company of women, but was also very particular and easily bored, when a sardonic note might surface. He enjoyed yachting and holidays at friends' houses on the Mediterranean. He also loved life in the country, where shooting was his favourite pursuit and he took great trouble in shaping the Dumbleton woods into one of the best and most difficult shoots in the country. Monsell enjoyed his work as Chief Whip, and was closely consulted by Baldwin on appointments and parliamentary strategy. Under his command the whips office ran with smooth efficiency. In the 1924-29 Parliament the huge Conservative majority was organised in a rota system which gave MPs some leisure whilst ensuring a government majority. Although Monsell was normally a patient man tempers can fray in the summer heat and, in July 1928, his exasperation with Sir Basil Peto, a notably awkward ‘diehard’, led to the unusual step of withdrawing the whip for several months. This explosion was untypical., dissidents were normally handled with 'a nice admixture of polite persuasion and hints of party discipline', applying 'the spur and bridle, when needed, with a deft touch'. [obituary, The Times, 24 March 1969]
Monsell encouraged the development of both the 1922 Committee and the Party's official backbench committee system which began in 1924. He faced a more difficult period whilst the Conservatives were fractious and dispirited in opposition between 1929 and 1931. Dissatisfaction with Baldwin's leadership and policy, whipped up by the press lords, led to two party meetings being held in 1930, the first of which Monsell chaired. The critics were outmanoeuvred but unrest continued into the spring of 1931. Monsell, who had been knighted in June 1929, acted as Chief Whip during the first emergency National Government and then joined the cabinet as First Lord of the Admiralty on 5 November 1931.
The longest-serving First Lord of the 1930s Monsell began by restoring confidence after the shock of the Invergordon mutiny and the uncertainty of Field's period as First Sea Lord. In 1932 Monsell decided to replace him with the outstanding service figure of the 1930s, Admiral Chatfield, with whom he established a good working relationship based on mutual respect for their complimentary roles. Under the economic pressures of the early 1930s Monsell had to ‘struggle on behalf of the Navy against his old friends in the Cabinet, a severe trial to his nature’. By the end of his tenure a programme of replacement and expansion had begun. In Chatfield’s view ‘no one could have done more, few could have achieved so much’. [Lord Chatfield in It Might Happen Again, II, p.98]
The Anglo-German Naval Agreement of 1935 was the most controversial event of Monsell’s career. Although he signed it on Britain’s behalf, it originated as a German offer and was shaped by many hands. The agreement was attacked by Churchill at the time and in his memoirs, and for many years after the Second World War it was regarded as a defining example of the folly of appeasement. The terms negociated allowed Germany to build up to the same strength in submarines, but her overall tonnage was limited to only 35 percent of Britain’s. Recent research has suggested that the Admiralty were mainly concerned with countering the danger that Germany would build large surface warships, and in this respect the agreement was successful. The German navy never posed a serious surface threat in the Second World War, whilst no treaty could have prevented the rapid building of submarines in wartime.
Monsell's intention to retire had been known since the middle of 1935 but he was persuaded to remain due to the approaching international naval disarmament conference as this met in London. Monsell had the further burden of acting as its chairman. He retired from the House of Commons at the 1935 general election and was raised to the peerage as Viscount Monsell on 30 November 1935. He eventually stood down as First Lord on 5 June 1936, by which time the negotiations for the London Naval Treaty had been concluded. The conference failed to secure any significant disarmament, but even a partial continuation of the Washington treaty system had some advantages and was better than an unbridled naval arms race. From 1941 to 1945 Monsell served as Regional Controller of Civil Defence for south-east England. He had one son and three daughters, but was something of a remote figure to his children. By the late 1940s his first marriage was effectively over, and he did not defend his wife's suit for divorce on grounds of adultery. A decree nisi was granted on 25 May 1950, and exactly two months later Monsell remarried. His second wife, Essex Leila Hilary French (1907-1996), was a grand-daughter of the first Earl of Ypres and previously had been married to Captain Vivyan Drury. Monsell died on 21 March 1969 following an aneurism in the leg He was cremated at a ceremony held on 28 March, after which the ashes were scattered at sea from a warship.
(biography written by Stuart Ball)
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