BRADSHAIGH, Sir Roger, 3rd Bt. (c.1675-1747), of Haigh Hall, nr. Wigan, Lancs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1695 - 25 Feb. 1747

Family and Education

b. c.1675, 1st s. of Sir Roger Bradshaigh, 2nd Bt., M.P., by Mary, da. and coh. of Henry Murray, groom of the bedchamber to Charles I. m. 1697, Rachel, da. of Sir John Guise, 2nd Bt., M.P., of Elmore, Glos. 4s. 2da. suc. fa. 17 June 1687.

Offices Held

Col. of Ft. 1706-9; mayor of Wigan 1698, 1703, 1719, 1724 and 1729.

Biography

Bradshaigh, whose grandfather and father had represented Wigan, was returned for the borough in fourteen successive Parliaments. He had at Haigh an estate ‘reckoned one of the best situations in the north of England’, with ‘one of the finest works of coal called cannell in England, which is so much admired for its heat and brightness’.1 But, probably owing to the expense of keeping up an interest in Wigan, he became so impoverished that he avoided being seized for debt on the adjournment of Parliament in June 1711 only through a loan from Harley, whose Administration he supported.2 On the accession of George I he went over to the Whigs, voting with the Government in every recorded division except that on the repeal of the Conformity and Schism Acts in 1719, when he was absent. He was rewarded with army commissions and minor court places for his younger sons. Yet he shared the electoral management of Wigan with Lord Barrymore, a Jacobite, from whom he repeatedly borrowed money.3 The alliance was uneasy at first; in 1722 he did not consent to stand jointly with Barrymore until shortly before the election; and in 1725, when Lord Malpas, Walpole’s son-in-law, was trying to establish an interest in Wigan, Barrymore accused Bradshaigh of being ‘so much Sir Robert’s humble servant that, if he had desired, you should resign next election to Lord Malpas’.4 Subsequently the partnership ran more smoothly, Barrymore apparently bearing most of the expense of nursing the constituency. In 1742 he gave up Haigh to his eldest son, thereafter seldom visiting Wigan. There was doubt as to whether he would be returned in 1747,5 but before the election came on he died, 25 Feb., leaving debts amounting to £8,000.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Add. 24120 ff. 138-41.
  • 2. HMC Portland, v. 18, see also pp. 151, 381, 387, 480.
  • 3. M. Cox, 'Sir Roger Bradshaigh and the electoral management of Wigan', Bulletin of John Rylands Lib. xxxvii. 123-4, 145, and Bradshaigh to Walpole 2 Mar. 1737, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss.
  • 4. 12 Dec. 1725, Rylands, Crawford mss.
  • 5. Geo. Winstanley to Bradshaigh, 3 Aug. 1746, Rylands, Crawford mss.