Constituency : Northampton 1880-91
There's no doubt who the most controversial of the new intake of Liberal MPs was. Charles was one of the two Liberal victors at Northampton alongside the ostentatious Radical Henry Labouchere.
Charles was a legal clerk's son from London. He started in clerical jobs. After a spell as a Sunday school teacher he began having religious doubts and was expelled from both hi post and the family home. He was taken in by the widow of atheist agitator Richard Carlile who introduced him to the secularist George Holyoake. Her encouraged Charles to start giving atheist lectures. In the 1850s he served briefly in the army in Dublin but soon bought himself out. He then became a solicitor's clerk who published pamphlets in his spare time , anonymously first to protect his employer's reputation. He became editor of the secularist paper the National Reformer which fought off a government prosecution for blasphemy and sedition in 1868. In 1866 he founded the National Secular Society. He was a member of the Reform League but attacked its leadership. In 1876 he and his cohort Annie Besant were again prosecuted for re-publishing an American pamphlet advocating birth control. They got six months and a heavy fine but got off on Appeal on a technicality. The trial led to the start of the Malthusian League. Charles was also a republican who resigned from his masonic lodge when Prince Edward became its Grand Master. The young Philip Snowden saw him speak and recalled "He was a massive figure, with a fine head and powerful voice and in declamation he was a tremendous force".
When Charles became an MP he had a problem with swearing the Parliamentary oath of allegiance because of its religious character and asked to be allowed to affirm instead as was allowed in the courts. The Speaker Henry Brand was opposed to the idea and asked the House for its judgement. Gladstone's government referred the matter to a Select Committee. The Attorney General Sir Henry James thought the affirmation was OK but the Select Committee rejected his advice on the casting vote of the chairman when the Liberal Charles Hopwood sided with the Conservatives.
Charles then said he would take the Oath but wrote a letter to The Times explaining that it was involuntary and he would "regard myself as bound, not by the spirit of its words, but by the spirit which affirmation would have conveyed had I been allowed to take it". A Tory MP objected to Charles taking the Oath an Brand took his side. Gladstone now proposed a second Select Committee to decide on whether such an objection was permissible and the House agreed.
The Select Committee rejected the idea of allowing Charles to take the oath but said he should be allowed to affirm in the hope that it would provoke a legal challenge and thus pass the decision to the courts. Labouchere moved to effect this in the Commons but was defeated by a Tory amendment closing off either option. Charles turned up the next day to take the oath. Brand ordered him to withdraw but permitted him to argue his case from "behind the Bar". When, after this, Charles refused to leave the House he was taken into custody by the Serjeant-at-Arms and placed in the Tower of London. In his last effective act as Tory leader, Disraeli persuaded his party it was advisable to release him.
This meant a by-election which Charles easily won and the whole fiasco was re-run each year with Charles being re-elected four times. The matter was a severe disruption to government business , a factor that probably informed much of the Tory opposition. Gladstone supported his right to affirm but found it difficult to persuade enough of his party to let a bill through on the matter. A huge petition gathered by Charles in 1882 failed to break the deadlock.
Charles was finally allowed to take the oath by the new Speaker Arthur Peel in 1886 and two years later helped secure a new Oaths Act which allowed MPs to affirm and clarified the use of affirmations in the courts. In 1886 he moved to reduce the supply estimates relating to missions and embassies. He supported Home Rule and opposed Salisbury's imperialist policies.
Aside from his views on religion and monarchy Charles was quite a right wing Liberal committed to classical political economy . He opposed social reform which discouraged self-reliance and backed away from social republicanism after the Paris Commune. He and Besant drifted apart over her support for socialism which he vigorously opposed.
He died in 1891 aged 57.
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