ABSTRACT
Charles Pelham Villiers was reticent in regard to overtures made to him by John Bright in December 1846 to capitalise on the success of the Anti-Corn Law League and to continue the battle against the landlord and the parson on a new front by embarking upon a further Radical reform programme. Villiers supported the campaign for the lifting of disabilities preventing Jews from sitting in Parliament, which was in keeping with his long-standing commitment to the removal of civil and religious disabilities. In so doing, Villiers was to develop a lifelong friendship with the banker Baron Lionel Nathan de Rothschild and the wider Rothschild family. He claimed that the Select Committee was fairly constituted, consisting of gentlemen who had been Chairmen of Quarter Sessions, and that there was hardly a member upon it who had not acted in the commission of the peace.
