Showing 1012 results

Names
P0005 · Person · 1720 – 1788

Prince Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir Stuart, eldest son of James Francis Edward Stuart, the Old Pretender or James III, and of the Princess Clementine, a daughter of Prince James Sobieski, was born at Rome on 31 December 1720. He is commonly styled Bonnie Prince Charlie or the Young Pretender. His main claim to long-lasting fame was his leadership of the Jacobite rebellion of 1745-46, which aimed at reinstating the Stuarts as kings of Great Britain but which ended in inglorious failure at the battle of Culloden in April 1746. He spent the majority of his life abroad, becoming titular king as succeeding to his father on his death in 1766. After the failure of the '45 he became increasingly dependent on alcohol which alienated his followers. He died at Rome on 31 January 1788.

P0008 · Person · 1745 – 1848

Born 26 Oct. 1775, 2nd son of Archibald James Edward Douglas, 1st Bar. Douglas (d. 1827), of Castle Douglas and 1st wife Lady Lucy Graham, daughter of William, 2nd Duke of Montrose.

Douglas, whose father had established his claim to the estates of the dukes of Douglas in 1769 and been created a baron in 1790, was described as a ‘judicious man of business’, who managed the vast estates of his ward, the 5th duke of Buccleuch. He had stood unsuccessfully for Lanarkshire at the general elections of 1806 and 1807, and offered again at a by-election in October 1827, when he ‘avowed in general terms’ his ‘attachment to the present establishments of our constitution’. Privately, he assured Lord Goderich’s coalition ministry of his willingness, leaving aside ‘his right to form opinions on some particular cases, which he does not at present anticipate’, to support them; some Whigs regarded this promise as ‘hollow’. He was defeated by Sir Michael Shaw Stewart, representing the interest of the Whig 10th duke of Hamilton. His father died at the end of the year, but he received nothing from the estate. By the time of the general election in 1830 freeholder creations had strengthened the Douglas interest in Lanarkshire and he was returned ahead of Sir John Maxwell†. He declared that he ‘placed perfect confidence’ in the duke of Wellington’s government, while remaining ‘altogether free and unshackled’, and he ‘declined to give his opinions on any subject’ or ‘pledge himself to any line of commercial policy’.

The ministry regarded him as one of their ‘friends’, and he voted with them in the crucial civil list division, 15 Nov. 1830. He condemned the Grey ministry’s English reform bill as ‘calculated most unnecessarily to risk the security of the settled institutions of the country’, 9 Mar. 1831, and called for details of the plan for Scotland, where the people were ‘under the present system contented and prosperous’. He thought it would be ‘better by gentler and gradual means to remedy existing blemishes, than ... resort to a sweeping measure’. He divided against the second reading, 22 Mar. He supported Dunbartonshire’s ‘fair claim for separate representation’, 14 Apr. He confirmed his ‘decided opposition’ to the bill, as ‘the principle of disfranchisement ... pervades it’, 19 Apr., and warned that ‘if we change the electors we shall change the elected, which I cannot think for the benefit of this country’; he voted that day for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment. He presented and concurred in a Glasgow petition against revision of the timber duties, which would be ‘detrimental to the commercial, the shipping and the colonial interests of this country’, 15 Mar. In presenting a petition from vessel owners in the Firth of Forth against the proposed tax on steam navigation, 29 Mar., he suggested that any tax should be levied on the tonnage of vessels rather than on the number of passengers, who were ‘one of the greatest sources of profit in the trade’. He believed that ‘we owe it to our sense of what is due to the dignity of the crown’ to support the civil list bill, 14 Apr. He offered again for Lanarkshire at the general election in May 1831 and faced a riotous crowd when he appeared on the hustings, being pelted with stones and cut by a broken glass. He complained that the Scottish reform scheme was ‘an attempt to assimilate our elective franchise too rapidly to the forms and standard of England’. However, he disapproved of the existing county franchise and favoured extending it to ‘owners of the soil’, without specifying what the valuation threshold should be. He also expressed his ‘cordial concurrence’ in the granting of separate representation to Glasgow and other rapidly expanding towns, but not at England’s expense, and thought the burgh franchise might be extended in some unspecified way. Following his victory over Maxwell’s son, the sheriff was forced to read the Riot Act and call in the cavalry. In a published address, he pledged himself to oppose ‘the extravagance of theorists’ in order to ‘ensure reasonable and practical measures of improvement’.

He deplored the ‘extremely improper ... attack’ made by Members on the sheriff of Lanarkshire for his conduct of the election, 29 June 1831. He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced English reform bill, 6 July. He divided for an adjournment motion, 12 July, before pairing for the rest of the night with John Cam Hobhouse. He voted to use the 1831 census for the purpose of scheduling boroughs, 19 July, after pointing to the rapid population increases in the principal towns of Lanarkshire. He divided to postpone consideration of Chippenham’s inclusion in schedule B, 27 July. He protested against population being used as the criterion for determining London’s representation, 4 Aug., remarking that ‘in a short time the metropolis will engross a very large proportionate share’ of seats. He maintained that ‘under the present system, the various colonial and other interests are all adequately represented’, but if the bill passed ‘local interest and connection will be sure to command the return’. He therefore intended to move for an increase in Scotland’s representation, as it would no longer have ‘the facilities afforded by means of the boroughs’ to secure reasonable ‘access to this House’. He insisted that the Scottish electoral system had ‘always ... been found to answer all the purposes of popular representation’, 12 Aug., and repeated his complaint next day that Scotland had ‘not been treated fairly’ under the ministerial plan. He voted to preserve the voting rights of non-resident freemen, 30 Aug., and against the third reading, 19 Sept., and the bill’s passage, 21 Sept. In moving to reject the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept., he admitted that there was a ‘very strong feeling ... in favour of reform’ in Scotland, but denied that this reflected ‘the spontaneous wishes of the people’, who had been encouraged by radical agitators to ‘entertain extravagant ideas that their condition would be materially benefited’. He thought it strange that ministers did not connect the ‘rapid advances in wealth and civilization’ made by Scotland in the past century with its political institutions. The bill was ‘a direct attack on the agricultural interests’, which would ‘throw the whole power of the representation into the hands of the manufacturers’, and he particularly objected to conferring county votes on householders. While it proposed some ‘desirable alterations’, such an ‘extravagant’ measure could not be justified. The second reading was carried by 209 votes to 94, with Douglas acting as a minority teller. He divided for inquiry into the effects on the West India interest of renewing the Sugar Refinery Act, 12 Sept. In October he suffered a ‘severe and dangerous attack’, probably a stroke, and though by mid-November 1831 he was reportedly ‘in a convalescent state’, his speech was permanently impaired. He took no further part in parliamentary proceedings and did not seek re-election in 1832.

Douglas succeeded his brother to the barony in 1844. He died in 1848 and was succeeded by his half-brother, the Rev. James Douglas (1787-1857), on whose death the title became extinct. His personalty was sworn under £4,000 within the province of Canterbury.

P0009 · Person · 1764 – 1821

Sir Charles Edmonstone, 2nd Baronet (10 October 1764 – 1 April 1821), also 12th of Duntreath, was a Scottish politician.

Edmonstone was the third son of Sir Archibald Edmonstone, 1st Baronet. He was educated at Eton College and subsequently at Christ Church, Oxford. Having been called to the Bar, he was one of the six clerks in Chancery until the time of his father's death. In 1806 he was elected Member for Dumbartonshire, but he lost his seat in the general election of the following year. In 1812 he became Member for Stirlingshire and held the seat until his death. A Tory like his father, he supported Lord Liverpool's government during the later part of the Napoleonic Wars.

Edmonstone married firstly, Emma, daughter of Richard Wilbraham Bootle of Rode Hall, Cheshire, by whom he had a son and a daughter. He married secondly on 5 December 1804 Louisa Hotham (9 October 1778 – 30 August 1840), daughter of Beaumont Hotham, 2nd Baron Hotham, by whom he had four sons and two daughters. His second daughter, Louisa Henrietta, married John Kingston of Demerara in 1829. He died at Brighton in 1821, apparently from a stroke, aged fifty eight, and was succeeded by his eldest son.

P0011 · Person · 1769 – 1827

Lord Archibald Hamilton (17 March 1769 – 28 August 1827) was a Scottish politician.

Born in 1769 to Lady Harriet Stewart, and her husband, Lord Archibald Douglas-Hamilton, Hamilton matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford on 23 April 1788. He received his BA in 1792 and his MA in 1795. On 14 October 1790, he was admitted to Lincoln's Inn, and called to the bar in 1799.

He was elected Member of Parliament for Lanarkshire in 1802.
He served as MP for 26 years, opposing the governments of Addington and Pitt, and was an advocate of Burgh reform, something that would occur 8 years after his death with the Burgh Police (Scotland) Act, 1833

Hamilton was also Colonel of the Lanarkshire Militia.

P0014 · Person · 1784 – 1865

Lord Palmerston, in full Henry John Temple, 3rd Viscount Palmerston, of Palmerston in the County of Dublin, Baron Temple, of Mount Temple in the County of Sligo, byname Pam, (born October 20, 1784, Broadlands, Hampshire, England—died October 18, 1865, Brocket Hall, Hertfordshire), English Whig-Liberal statesman whose long career, including many years as British foreign secretary (1830–34, 1835–41, and 1846–51) and prime minister (1855–58 and 1859–65), made him a symbol of British nationalism.

P0015 · Person · 1783 – 1858

Born 28 Jul 1783 to John Stirling, 5th Bart. and his wife Gloriana Folsome. Called to the Scottish bar 1808. Married Mary Ann Berrie in 1842. One son, Campbell A. G. Stirling, who predeceased him. Was succeeded by his nephew Samuel Home Stirling.

P0016 · Person · 1777 – 1853

Lieutenant-general Sir Thomas Bradford GCB GCH was a British Army officer.

Bradford was commissioned as an ensign in the 4th (The King's Own) Regiment of Foot in October 1793 without purchase. He took part in the suppression of the Irish Rebellion of 1798, the Buenos Aires Expedition of 1806 as well as the battle of Vimeiro in 1808, battle of Corunna in 1809 and battle of Salamanca in 1812 during the Peninsular War. He commanded a Portuguese division at the Battle of Vitoria, the Battle of San Sebastian and the Battle of the Nive, all in 1813. For his service in the Peninsular he was awarded the Gold Medal with one clasp.

He became General Officer Commanding the 7th Division of the Army of Occupation in France in 1815, Commander-in-Chief, Scotland in 1819 and Commander-in-Chief of the Bombay Army from 1825 to 1829.

He was then Colonel of the 94th Regiment of Foot (1823–29) and, after returning to England, Colonel of the 30th Regiment of Foot (1829–46).

He exchanged the Colonelcy of the 38th Foot for that of the 4th (The King's Own) Regiment of Foot in 1846, a position he held until his death in 1853.