COUSSMAKER, George (?1797-1821), of Poulton, Kent.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1818 - 23 May 1821

Family and Education

b. ?1797, o. s. of Col. George Kien Hayward Coussmaker of Marylebone, Mdx. by Hon. Catherine Southwell, da. of Edward Southwell, 20th Baron de Clifford. educ. Westminster 1808-14; Christ Church, Oxf. 23 May 1814, aged 17. unm. suc. fa. 1801.

Offices Held

Biography

The Coussmaker family claimed descent from a Dutchman who came to England in the suite of William III. They settled at Westwood, Warplesdon, Surrey and prospered as London merchants. Coussmaker’s grandmother, widow of George Coussmaker of Staple, Kent, married Thomas Pym Hales, MP for Downton and Dover. His father, a Guards officer, died of yellow fever at Martinique and his mother soon afterwards. He and his only sister were placed under the aegis of his maternal uncle, Lord de Clifford, who in 1818 returned him to Parliament for Kinsale.

It was at first uncertain whether he would join his uncle in opposition, but he appears to have done so. On 25 Jan. 1819 he joined Brooks’s Club. Although no speech by him is known, he voted at least four times in the minority in 1819: for the Bank committee, 2 Feb., for Tierney’s censure motion, 18 May, against the address 26 Nov., and for Althorp’s critical motion of 30 Nov. He also voted with the majority for criminal reform, 2 Mar. 1819. He died 23 May 1821. His sister and heiress married a son of the impoverished Whig grandee Lord William Russell in the following year and became in 1832 Baroness de Clifford.

Eton Coll. Reg. 1753-90, p. 132; The Times, 12 Sept. 1801; Add. 40298, f. 24.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: P. J. Jupp

Notes