A native of Gloucester, according to “Debrett,” he was a lineal descendant of Edward Whalley (first cousin to Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden), who signed the warrant for the execution of Charles I.  At the University College, London, he carried off first prize in rhetoric and logic, afterwards was called to the bar, for some years went the Oxford Circuit and acted as Assistant Tithe Commissioner, and Examiner of Private Bills for Parliament.  He lived at Plas Madoc, Ruabon, was a deputy lieutenant for Denbighshire and a magistrate for that county, Montgomeryshire and Merionethshire.  In 1853 he acted as High Sheriff of Carnarvonshire, and at the time of the Crimean War he volunteered the services of the troop of Denbighshire Yeomanry Cavalry of which he was Captain and received the thanks of the War Office.  Some years earlier, during the Irish famine, he established fisheries on the west coast of Ireland, and, in his own yacht, explored and ascertained the position of the fishing banks.  The electors of Leominster declined to return him to Parliament in 1845, as did also the Montgomery Boroughs in 1852; but later that year he was elected for Peterborough, unseated on petition, re-elected the next year and again unseated.  He unsuccessfully contested the same constituency in 1857, but was elected in May 1859 and sat till his death in 1878, during his Parliamentary career devoting a good deal of attention to the reform of private bill procedure on which he carried a not unimportant measure.  But he was no mere meticulous lawyer.  His

frantic espousal of the Protestant cause, supposed by the timid in the middle of last century to be in some danger in England, earned him a good deal of notoriety and a popular name.  Hardly more eccentric was the warm support he gave to the cause of Arthur Orton in his claim to the title and estate of Sir Roger Tichborne.  On one of the last visits he paid to Oswestry he called to see a friend.  As he was leaving his friend’s office he suddenly turned round and asked “Do you believe in the Claimant?”  The reply was an emphatic negative.  “Ah,” exclaimed the departing visitor, “you will come to!”

But if Mr. Whalley was a bad prophet in this respect, his instinct did not always mislead him.  He believed in himself, which was not only a more substantial faith, but more to the point in this narrative, for it enabled him, by dint of self-assurance, largely to dominate, and occasionally to domineer, the railway world of Montgomeryshire and the adjacent counties and to contribute in no small measure to the successful accomplishment of several local schemes.

Conspicuous among them was the Llanidloes and Newtown.  Though an isolated link in itself, it was intended to form part of a chain that was to stretch from Manchester and the industrial north to Milford Haven, a famous Welsh seaport, and this dream was constantly in the mind of local promoters whenever and wherever such sectional schemes were discussed.  On October 30th, 1852, a meeting was held at Llanidloes, with Mr. Whalley in the chair, at which the project was cordially adopted, a committee formed to further its achievement by raising the necessary subscriptions, and arrangements made for carrying the fiery cross of propaganda to Newtown and Rhayader, and as far afield as Aberystwyth.  On this effective errand Mr. Whalley and his coadjutors stumped the

countryside, and “inn bills” began to form no inconsiderable item in the promoters’ balance sheets.  But nothing can be accomplished in this world without effort and expenditure; and to the missionaries’ warning words against “the evil of conceding to an overbearing leviathan neighbour any privileges calculated to endanger the independence of their little company,” we are informed by a chronicler of the day, “the county nobly responded, and petitions were sent from every district, praying for the recognition by Parliament of the principles so ably enunciated by Mr. Whalley.”

The “little company” had, indeed, good reason to be apprehensive; but fortune favoured its course.  Before this onslaught, even the “overbearing leviathan” quailed.  After long and costly struggle in the Parliamentary committee rooms, accommodation was reached, and in the House of Commons the Montgomeryshire promoters’ scheme passed with flying colours; but an unfortunate error, by which the levels were proved to be some 18 feet below the Severn water, wrecked it in the Lords.  In August, 1853, however, the scheme received Parliamentary sanction, and out of the long list of “provisional directors” appointed the previous year, the first board was formed.  They were:—Mr. Whalley, chairman; Mr. W. Lefeaux, vice-chairman; Alderman E. Cleaton, Llanidloes; Alderman Richard Holmes, Llanidloes; Mr. Wm. Lloyd, Newtown; Mr. Edward Morris, Oxon, Shrewsbury; Mr. T. E. Marsh, Llanidloes, and Mr. T. Prickard, Dderw, Radnorshire.  Mr. Rice Hopkins was the engineer, Mr. T. P. Prichard, general manager, and Mr. John Jenkins, secretary.  Mr. Jenkins, however, soon transferred his services to the office of auditor, and was succeeded by Mr. Thomas Hayward.

III.

And so, with eager hearts, directors looked forward to a rosy future.  It is interesting to recall what, in their opinion, the financial prospects of the line were.  Larger schemes loomed in ambitious minds, but, even confined to the local line along the Severn valley, the estimated revenue was as follows:—

Passengers £2,350

Coal £750

Lead, Copper, and Barytes Ore £1,700

Timber (chiefly used in working the mines) £900

Iron, Powder, and other articles used by miners £75

Lime for Agricultural and other purposes £900

Corn, Flour, and other Agricultural Produce £600

Cattle, Sheep, and other animals £300

Wool and Woollen Manufactures £225

General Merchandise and Shop Goods £250

Building Stone, Tiles, Bricks, etc. £200

Total £8,250

Estimating working expenses at 50 per cent., that left a surplus of £4,125, being nearly 7 per cent. per annum on £60,000, the required capital.  With such a scheme the majority of the local owners readily expressed their agreement, and arrangements were made for cutting of the first sod, in a field which was to form the site of the Llanidloes station, on October 3rd, 1855.  Mrs. Owen, of Glansevern, was invited to perform the ceremony, but, owing to what she regarded as a premature announcement of the fact in the “Shrewsbury Chronicle,” that lady sent an advertisement to the journal announcing the postponement of the function.  Pages of the

Company’s minute book were devoted to expressions of the Board’s “utmost astonishment” and demands for explanations.  Mrs. Owen was at no loss for material to furnish equally voluminous reply, the pith of which was that she was simply inspired by a desire to obtain time, both to secure the attendance of her influential friends and to inform herself of the financial position of the undertaking.

It was all a storm in a tea-cup, but it was a very severe storm while it lasted; and Mr. Whalley had to cut the sod himself, in a deluge of rain, taking occasion, however, in doing so, to express, in graceful terms, the disappointment felt at the absence of one “who had done so much to introduce improved means of communication through the county,” a reference equally gracefully acknowledged by letter from Glansevern a few days later.  “Up to the present period,” wrote Mrs. Owen, “we have been strangers in this part of the county to the preparations necessary for inaugurating a railway, and it should not,