OSBORNE, Lord Francis Godolphin (1777-1850), of Gogmagog Hills, nr. Stapleford, Cambs.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1820-1832, ed. D.R. Fisher, 2009
Available from Cambridge University Press

Constituency

Dates

30 Mar. 1799 - 1802
1802 - 1806
16 Mar. 1810 - Oct. 1831

Family and Education

b. 18 Oct. 1777, 2nd s. of Francis Godolphin Osborne†, 5th duke of Leeds (d. 1799), and 1st w. Lady Amelia Darcy, da. and h. of Robert, 4th earl of Holdernesse. educ. Dr. Glass’s sch., Greenford 1783;1 Christ Church, Oxf. 1795; northern European tour 1797-8. m. 31 Mar. 1800, Hon. Elizabeth Charlotte Eden, da. of William Eden† , 1st Bar. Auckland, 5s. (2 d.v.p. ) 1 da. d.v.p. suc. cos. Francis, 2nd Bar. Godolphin, to Gogmagog Hills and Farnham Royal, Stoke Poges and Upton cum Chalvey, Bucks. 1785; cr. Bar. Godolphin 14 May 1832. d. 15 Feb. 1850.

Offices Held

Commdt. Stapleford vols. 1803; capt. Cambs. militia 1831.

High steward, Cambridge 1836-d.

Biography

Osborne’s inherited stake in Cambridgeshire consisted of a substantial house built within the ramparts of the Iron Age fort at Wandlebury, four miles south-east of Cambridge, together with some surrounding land.2 A Foxite Whig, who had come in for the county by a coup at the expense of the Hardwicke interest in 1810, he offered for the fourth time in 1820. Rumours of a disturbance came to nothing and Osborne, who on the hustings expressed his contempt for attempts to label him ‘a Jacobin’ or ‘a Radical’, was returned, at a reported cost of £2,000, with the ministerialist sitting Member Lord Charles Manners, brother of the 5th duke of Rutland. When accused later in the day of ‘professing atheism’, Osborne retorted that ‘the path he had followed led neither to place nor employment, but to sarcasm in Parliament and obloquy out of it’.3 For a county Member and adherent of opposition, Osborne was not particularly active in the House in this period, largely because his health, despite his comparative youth, was unreliable. Yet he was reasonably assiduous when fit, and in any case, so strong was his electoral position as the representative of the independent freeholders and Whigs of Cambridgeshire, that he received little local criticism.

Osborne voted against government on the civil list, 5, 8 May, the appointment of an additional baron of exchequer in Scotland, 15 May, the aliens bill, 1 June, and economies in revenue collection, 4 July 1820. He voted against Wilberforce’s compromise resolution on the Queen Caroline affair, 22 June. On 21 Aug. he condemned the bill of pains and penalties and, in protest against the ‘mock’ trial, which would ‘convert that House into a judicial tribunal’, moved an address for the prorogation of Parliament; he withdrew it when Tierney, the Whig leader, raised practical objections.4 ‘Some of our parliamentary friends’, he told Tierney, suggested that he should ‘repeat’ his motion for an address when the House reconvened on 18 Sept:

Much as I dislike personally intruding myself on the attention of the ... Commons, yet I feel so strongly on this subject that I should certainly concur in the propriety [of] so doing, provided no person more eligible or no other mode of proceeding more expedient should be pointed at.5

In the event, he merely questioned Lord Castlereagh on ministers’ intentions regarding the royal divorce and voted in the minority of 12 for Hobhouse’s call for a prorogation. He was the prime mover behind a requisition for a Cambridgeshire county meeting to appeal to the king to dismiss ministers for failing to relieve distress and sanctioning proceedings against the queen. He secured the prestigious Whig signatures of the duke of Bedford, Lord Tavistock*, Lord Dacre and Lord Fitzwilliam, to whom he explained, 27 Dec. 1820:

My object was and is to address the king to remove his ministers ... but in order to obtain respectable signatures both of residents and non-residents and likewise to obtain their attendance ... I thought it better to throw out more than one inducement ... The dismissal of the ministers is the old constitutional remedy for general distress, which we all admit to prevail, but such is the difference of opinion on some of the leading political subjects that now occupy the public mind, that I thought myself justified in endeavouring to awake the feeling of each interest in order to bring them to coincide in one general resolution.

As it happened, illness prevented Osborne from attending the meeting, 16 Jan. 1821, when Dacre stood in for him; but he was voted thanks for his parliamentary conduct.6 He took almost no part in the opposition campaign on the queen’s behalf early in 1821: he presented and vouched for the respectability of the Cambridge petition for the restoration of her name to the liturgy, 6 Feb., but only paired for the censure motion on ministers later that day.7 He was absent from the division on Catholic relief, 28 Feb. He voted for repeal of the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., and presented the Cambridgeshire petition for parliamentary reform, 17 Apr., though he had not attended the meeting which adopted it. No other trace of parliamentary activity has been found for 1821: leaves of absence for a month because of ill health, 5 Mar., 30 Apr., would appear to explain why.

Osborne was in the opposition minorities on the treatment of Alderman Waithman* and for reduction of the salt duties, 28 Feb. 1822; he pleaded attendance for the latter as his excuse for not appearing at the county meeting on agricultural distress that day.8 He presented a petition from the agriculturists of the Isle of Ely calling for retrenchment and reform, 2 Apr. He did not attend the county reform meeting, 4 Apr., when radical elements carped at his absence and tried unsuccessfully to take the petition out of his hands. He duly presented it, 3 May. He also presented petitions from Holdsworth, Devon for reduced taxation and currency reform, 6 May, and from Cambridge for revision of the criminal code, 8 May.9 In what was evidently another relaxed session for him, he voted for parliamentary reform, 25 Apr., economies, 2, 15 May, and inquiry into the government of the Ionian Isles, 14 May, and against the aliens bill, 14 June 1822. He wintered abroad, but returned in time to attend the county meeting of 14 Feb. 1823, which adopted a radical petition calling for reform, repeal of the taxes on necessities of life, abolition of unmerited pensions and sinecures, reduction of the army and public salaries, the abolition of tithes, a redistribution of ecclesiastical revenues, the sale of crown lands and a levy on funded property. When confronted with this, he boasted of being ‘one of the oldest reformers present’, but dissociated himself from the spoliation of legitimate lay and church property. He presented the petition without comment, 27 Feb., along with two similar ones from Cambridge parishes.10 His only known votes this session were against the grant for the Royal Military College, 10 Mar., for repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., inquiries into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr., and the state of Ireland, 12 May, and parliamentary reform, 24 Apr., and to abolish the death penalty for larceny, 21 May. He presented a Chatteris anti-slavery petition, 30 Apr., and on 16 May 1823 presented and endorsed one from a Yorkshire magistrate against the practice of putting remand prisoners on the treadmill. Peel, the home secretary, brushed aside his request that women should be exempted from this punishment.11

Osborne apparently went abroad again later in the year, and he was presumably with his wife at The Hague in March 1824, when Lady Granville described her as follows:

She knows everybody, every custom, every shop, every royalty, and every drug. She seems excellent and amiable, bearing wretched health with exemplary patience; but ... she is tiresome, in a fever about trifles, and talking incessantly about nothing. With great confusion in her own ideas, and always taking hold of mine by the wrong end.

Lady Granville subsequently warmed to her as a ‘very good, friendly and amiable’ woman, whose ‘worried, fidgety, bewildered manner’ gave a bad first impression.12 Osborne’s perfunctory recorded activities in the 1824 session consisted of votes against the aliens bill, 2 Apr., for inquiries into Ireland and its church establishment, 6, 11, 25 May, and for repeal of the assessed taxes, 10 May; and the presentation of petitions against slavery, 1 Apr., the Combination Acts, 4 May, and the Beer Acts, 12 May, and for inquiry into the case of the prosecuted Methodist missionary John Smith.13 He was a little more active in 1825, when he divided against the Irish unlawful societies bill, 21 Feb. He was a defaulter on a call of the House, 28 Feb., but attended and was excused the next day, when he voted for Catholic relief, as he did again, 21 Apr. He voted against the Irish franchise bill, 26 Apr. He voted for repeal of the window tax, 17 May, and against the duke of Cumberland’s grant, 27, 30 May, 2, 6 June. He was in Hume’s minority of 37 for inquiry into the Irish church, 14 June, and the small minorities for liberal amendments to the combination bill, 27 June. He presented petitions from Guisborough and Ely for repeal of the assessed taxes and in favour of the county courts bill, 2 Mar.; and on 28 Apr. presented 68 parish petitions from Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire (where he held inherited property in the Windsor area) against alteration of the corn laws.14 At the Cambridgeshire meeting to support the abolition of slavery, 7 Mar. 1826, Osborne said that if ministers were sincere, which he doubted, ‘much more good might be done by them than all the petitions’. Written criticism by one freeholder that he should have been in the House to support Hume’s attack on the standing army was answered by a friend with a reminder that in 1822 he had been found fault with for giving precedence to parliamentary attendance. He presented the petition, 14 Mar.15 His only known votes were against the president of the board of trade’s salary, 10 Apr., for parliamentary reform, 13, 27 Apr., and in the protectionist minorities, which also included Manners, against the emergency admission of foreign corn, 8, 11 May 1826.

Although rumours of an opposition, aimed chiefly at Manners, were rife as the 1826 general election approached, Osborne took few active steps to prepare for a contest. Yet when sounded by Lord Hardwicke, the lord lieutenant, who was considering a bid to reassert his electoral interest in the county, as to whether he would step down if a serious third candidate started or was nominated, he replied that, despite appearances to the contrary, he had every intention of standing his ground and contesting the issue, though on ‘a system as little expensive as possible’.16 In the event Samuel Wells, the radical Huntingdon attorney, nominated Henry Adeane*, who had stood against the Rutland interest in the borough in 1818, but on the morning of the election had turned down a request to put him in nomination from a radical group among the county independents. While Adeane declined the nomination, on the pretext that he was pledged to do nothing that would endanger Osborne, Wells persisted and forced a contest intended to cause the Manners family as much inconvenience and expense as possible. Osborne, who midway through the affair publicly acceded to a request that he release Adeane from his pledge, of which he denied all knowledge, was in no danger. He was irritated by the sham contest, but was put to no expense and finished comfortably in second place behind Manners, who polled mainly plumpers. At the same time, one commentator thought that his votes for Catholic relief in 1825 had ‘materially weakened his interest’. He stood by his support for emancipation, declaring that the issue ‘resolves itself into a matter of political expediency between Whig and Tory, and not all the sophistry that can be urged on the other side, nor all the learning of the university, can controvert it’. On agricultural protection, he stated his continued support for the existing corn laws and promised to resist ‘the attempt that will undoubtedly be made in the ensuing Parliament, to deprive you of that protection, as cultivators of land, to which you are entitled under the pressure of taxation of various sorts’.17

On neither issue did Osborne deliver. Although he presented the county petition against alteration of the corn laws, 26 Feb., he was not in the minority against the corn bill, 2 Apr. 1827.18 Nor did he vote in the division on Catholic relief, 6 Mar: it was said that he had ‘stayed away on purpose’.19 On 27 Mar. he presented the petition of Hardwicke and the conservators of Bedford Level corporation complaining of the excessive fees charged for the drafting and passage of drainage bills.20 When publicly challenged by Wells, he admitted that he had encouraged Thomas Fryer, the sheriff at the time of the 1826 election, to petition the Commons, 6 Apr., to take steps to prevent such ‘vexatious’ proceedings, which penalized genuine candidates.21 Osborne, whose pro-Catholic Tory brother, the 6th duke of Leeds, was appointed master of the horse in Canning’s ministry and rewarded with a vacant garter under an arrangement made before the change of government, voted for chancery reform, 22 May, and the disfranchisement of Penryn, 28 May. He presented several Cambridgeshire petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 25 May, 6, 7, 19 June, and a county brewers’ petition for reform of the regulations governing their trade, 7 June 1827.22

He voted for repeal of the Tests, 26 Feb. 1828, and presented petitions for it that day and 5 Mar. He was unwell during April,23 and only paired for Catholic relief, 12 May. He was present to divide with the opposition to the Wellington ministry on civil list pensions, 20 May, the archbishop of Canterbury’s registrar, 16 June, the Irish estimates, 20 June, and the cost of improving Buckingham House, 23 June. He presented petitions from Cambridgeshire farmers against the importation of foreign wool, 19 May, and from Eversden for the abolition of slavery, 19 June, 1828. He was again conspicuous by his absence from proceedings on the Catholic question in 1829, when his brother supported and his nephew Lord Carmarthen, Member for Helston, opposed emancipation. A defaulter on a call of the House, 5 Mar., he is not known to have voted on the issue; but he did present favourable petitions, 11 Mar., and voted for O’Connell to be allowed to take his seat unimpeded, 18 May. Although he feared that he was addressing ‘an unwilling audience’, Osborne voiced his ‘decided opposition’ to Warburton’s anatomy regulation bill, 15 May; and three days later, when he suggested that it would be ‘rendered nugatory by the humanity of individuals’, he secured seven votes to 36 for his bid to kill it. He voted to reduce the grant for the marble arch sculpture, 25 May, and was one of the minority of 40 who supported Lord Blandford’s parliamentary reform scheme, 2 June 1829.

With the state of the king’s health promising a general election, the 1830 session was Osborne’s most active of this or the previous Parliament. His was the first signature on the requisition of 2 Jan. for a county meeting to consider agricultural distress and petition for repeal of the beer and malt taxes and alteration of the licensing system. At the meeting, 22 Jan., he reproved Maberly, the eccentric vicar of Kingston, for his rant against Catholics and fundholders, argued that ‘the distresses of the country were owing to excessive taxation and, observing that ‘the great portion of his income was derived from the public funds’, called for retrenchment to preserve the public credit. A motion that he and Manners be ‘instructed’ to support the petition and promote its object was carried.24 Osborne voted for the amendment to the address, 4 Feb., and the next day, when he was prevented from presenting the Cambridgeshire petition by the protraction of other business, gave notice that after Easter he would move for repeal of the beer and malt duties. (He thought reform of the licensing laws a subject better suited to a select committee.) On 8 Feb. he presented and endorsed the county petition, together with one from the Ely area praying for a reduction of taxes on necessities and remodelling of the poor laws. He declared himself satisfied with Goulburn’s advance notice of his budget statement, 2 Mar., and no more was heard of his threatened motion, though he did present several petitions for repeal of the beer and malt duties, 4 May. He voted for the introduction of the East Retford disfranchisement bill, 11 Feb., but for the transfer of its seats to Birmingham, 5 Mar. He voted for inquiry into the Newark petition alleging improper electoral interference by the duke of Newcastle, 1 Mar. He presented a petition for repeal of the tobacco duty, 30 Mar. He divided with the reviving Whig opposition for a reduction of taxes, 15 Feb., and admiralty economies, 22 Mar., and against the Bathurst and Dundas pensions, 26 Mar. He paired for the divisions on the salary of the lieutenant-general of the ordnance, 29 Mar., and inquiry into crown lands revenues, 30 Mar. He presented a Wisbech merchants’ petition for mitigation of the penal code, 31 Mar., but paired against abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June. He was against Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr. The following day he spoke and voted against the third reading of Lord Ellenborough’s divorce bill, of which he had ‘strong suspicions’. On the introduction of Wallis’s divorce bill, 4 May, he explained his ‘strong objections’ to the present state of the law, which unfairly favoured the wealthy. He gave notice that next session he would propose a regulation to force all parties seeking divorce by statute to state ‘some special reasons’ to the House. He voted to reduce the grant for public buildings, 3 May. Poor health prevented him from presenting the Ely petition in favour of the sale of beer bill, 21 May.25 He took a month’s sick leave, 25 May, but was present to vote for cuts in diplomatic expenditure, 7, 11 June. He was one of a handful of Whigs who divided with government against a fixed duty on imported sugars, 21 June 1830.26

When he offered again for Cambridgeshire at the subsequent general election, Osborn claimed, somewhat implausibly, to have ‘advocated the peculiar interests of this agricultural county with success’; and on the hustings he bragged that he had exerted himself last session to secure repeal of the beer tax and a change in the licensing system. He declared himself to be ‘a friend to reform’, reiterated his support for the corn laws and welcomed the emancipation of Dissenters and Catholics. He shrugged off Wells’s jibes at his brother’s household office and, in response to his direct question, pledged himself to support repeal of the malt tax, though he doubted if the state of his health would allow him to take the initiative.27 This time Adeane, who had been disowned by Wells, accepted a requisition to stand. According to Manners and others, Osborne was ‘very indignant at Adeane’s behaviour’. Certainly there was much mutual hostility between them at first, but as it became clear that the Rutland interest was in trouble, a practical coalition developed which relegated Manners to third place. Near the end of the contest, Osborne asserted that his position at the head of the poll gave the lie to accusations that ‘he slept at his post and that he neglected the private interests of the county’. He claimed to have preserved its ‘independence’ and ‘beat the administration of the country’. He said that there had been so much chicanery, particularly by Hardwicke, who backed Adeane, as to make him ‘almost sick of elections’. Some years later the daughter of Professor George Pryme, one of the leading Whig independents, recalled the chairing of Osborne and Adeane:

Every now and then, when the populace pleased, the procession stopped, and the chairs were tossed up as far as the bearers could reach, amid loud huzzas. I recollect the look of discomfort at such times on Lord F. Osborne’s face, as he sat in his peculiar, stiff, stately manner, dressed in a green coat and top boots.28

Osborne did not attend the Wisbech celebration dinner, 8 Oct. 1830: according to his spokesman, he stayed away because he did not wish to become involved in any ‘personal triumph’ over Manners, whom he respected as an individual.29

Osborne presented a number of anti-slavery petitions, 3, 4, 10, 16 Nov., and Wisbech petitions for repeal of the coal duties, 15, 22 Nov. 1830. He voted to scrap the Irish Subletting Act, 11 Nov., and against government on the civil list, 15 Nov. On 6 Dec. 1830 he was given three weeks’ leave to attend to his magisterial duties in Cambridgeshire, where the ‘Swing’ disturbances were troublesome. He warned Warburton that he would resist his anatomy bill if he reintroduced it, 9 Feb. 1831. Later that day he presented the petition of the inhabitants of Shelford, his neighbours, calling for tax reductions, abolition of the game laws, select vestries and tithes, reform of Parliament and election by ballot. As he had told the petitioners beforehand, it was ‘the first petition I have ever presented ... to which I have not been prepared to give my cordial support’. In a discussion on tithes, 16 Feb., he called for ‘a fair commutation’.30 He presented a Royston petition for parliamentary reform, 14 Feb. At the county meeting called to endorse the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 18 Mar., he said that it ‘had his entire approbation’.31 He presented favourable petitions from Haddenham, 19 Mar., and Soham, 18 Apr., and voted silently for its second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. He presented petitions against slavery, 28 Mar., 13 Apr., and the general register bill, 28 Mar. On Tower’s divorce bill, 13 Apr., he again declared his objection ‘on principle’ to such measures ‘passing as a matter of course’. He did not oppose its report stage, 21 Apr. 1831, because of the ‘extraordinary state of excitement’ prevailing in the House, but called for urgent tightening of the law.

Unlike Adeane, who had reservations about details of the bill, Osborne had no difficulty in presenting himself as its unconditional supporter at the 1831 general election. When Manners came forward as a moderate reformer and farmers’ friend, Osborne dismissed him on both counts, arguing that the bill as it stood would strengthen rather than harm the landed interest. Manners’s bid collapsed, and Osborne and Adeane were unopposed; but Osborne was too ill to attend the formal proceedings. In his address of thanks he forecast that the bill would

strengthen the king upon his throne ... [and] enable the aristocracy to shine with pure and uncontaminated lustre, and, limited to its constitutional duties, again to become a rampart round the throne, and a guardian of the people’s rights; obliterating I trust from our memories and even our language the odious epithet of boroughmongers.32

He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, and was a steady supporter of its details in committee. Unlike Adeane, he voted with ministers against the enfranchisement of £50 tenants-at-will, 18 Aug. He voted against the issue of a writ for Dublin, 8 Aug., and with government on the controversy over the last election there, 23 Aug. When he repeated his objections to the ‘farce’ of divorce bills, 11, 19 July, Whittle Harvey advised him to address the king to draw the attention of the commission on the ecclesiastical courts to the problem. On 17 Aug. Osborne, reporting that he had found that it was not possible to proceed in this way, said that ‘I almost begin to despair of being able to effect any good on this subject’. As a basis for others to work on, he suggested that divorce bills ought to be made public measures, started in the Commons and referred to select committees. On the presentation of a Gloucestershire petition for repeal of the corn laws, 22 July, he argued that ‘unless protection be afforded to the agriculturalist, corn cannot be grown in this country’. He presented a Cambridgeshire petition against distillation from molasses, 2 Aug., and saw the Eau Brink drainage bill through its third reading, 17 Aug. He voted for the passage of the reform bill, 21 Sept. About a week later he let it be publicly known that he intended to immediately retire from the Commons, claiming that his health was unequal to the duties of a county Member. He had already tipped off his friend, neighbour and fellow-reformer Richard Townley, who won the ensuing by-election against Hardwicke’s nephew.33 In his last known act as a Member, Osborne voted for the motion of confidence in the Grey ministry, 10 Oct. 1831.

He had already been talked of as a candidate for the peerage, though when he retired he denied that this was on the cards.34 He was, in fact, regarded as being ‘in a manner promised’; and the elevation of himself and the veteran Whig Charles Dundas* were the only exceptions which William IV would admit to his veto on the ennoblement of commoners in the mass creations sought by Lord Grey to secure the passage of the reform bill through the Lords. The cynical Edward Littleton* believed that the peerage had been promised to Osborne principally to gratify Lord Granville, whose bastard daughter by Lady Bessborough Osborne’s eldest son had married in 1828.35 Early in April 1832 it was reported that Osborne had ‘fully expected to be a peer last week’, but had been frustrated by the king’s latest contretemps with Grey. In the event, the barony of Godolphin of Farnham Royal was conferred on him as the gift of the king to his outgoing ministers at the beginning of the political crisis of May 1832.36 Osborne, who lost his married daughter in 1838, his younger son in 1846 and his wife in 1847, died of ‘a gradual decay of nature’ at Gogmagog Hills in February 1850.37 By his will, dated 9 July 1847, he confirmed the generous provisions made for his two surviving younger sons in his marriage settlement. In a cocidil of 14 Feb. 1850 he left £1,000 to a Mrs. Susan Gazelle Giles, ‘now residing with me at Gogmagog Hills’. His Cambridgeshire and Buckinghamshire estates, together with a cottage and land at Tron Dinas, Denbighshire, bought in 1824, passed to his eldest son and successor in the peerage, George Godolphin (1802-72), who became 8th duke of Leeds on the death of his cousin in 1859.38

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

  • 1. Heber Letters, 19.
  • 2. VCH Cambs. viii. 153, 227, 230-1. His property qualification was hardly ‘of the slightest’, as stated in HP Commons, 1790-1820, iv. 701.
  • 3. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 12, 19, 26 Feb., 11, 25 Mar.; Dorset RO, Bankes mss, Mrs. Henry Bankes’s diary, 20 Mar. 1820.
  • 4. The Times, 22 Aug. 1820.
  • 5. Hants RO, Tierney mss 55.
  • 6. Fitzwilliam mss 102/1; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 6, 13, 20 Jan. 1821.
  • 7. The Times, 7 Feb. 1821.
  • 8. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 2 Mar. 1822.
  • 9. The Times, 3, 6 Apr., 4, 7, 9 May 1822.
  • 10. Ibid. 15, 28 Feb.; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 8, 15, 22 Feb. 1823.
  • 11. The Times, 1, 17 May 1823.
  • 12. Countess Granville Letters, i. 262-3, 268.
  • 13. The Times, 2 Apr., 5, 13, 25 May 1824.
  • 14. Ibid. 3 Mar., 29 Apr. 1825; VCH Bucks. iii. 229, 310, 316.
  • 15. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 11, 18 Mar.; The Times, 15 Mar. 1826.
  • 16. Add. 35691, ff. 142, 144.
  • 17. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 10, 17, 24 June, 1, 8 July; The Times, 1 July 1826.
  • 18. The Times, 27 Feb. 1827; C.H. Cooper, Annals of Cambridge, iv. 553.
  • 19. Add. 56550, f. 143.
  • 20. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 17, 31 Mar. 1827.
  • 21. Ibid. 14, 21, 28 Apr., 5 May 1827.
  • 22. The Times, 26 May, 7, 8, 20 June; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 9 June 1827.
  • 23. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 26 Apr. 1828.
  • 24. Ibid. 9, 23 Jan. 1830.
  • 25. Ibid. 29 May 1830.
  • 26. Grey mss, Howick jnl. 21 June [1830].
  • 27. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 10, 17, 24, 31 July, 7, 14 Aug. 1830.
  • 28. Rutland mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Manners to Rutland, 25 July; Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 14, 21 Aug.; The Times, 14 Aug. 1830; G. Pryme, Autobiog. Recollections, 188.
  • 29. Cambridge and Hertford Independent Press, 9, 16 Oct. 1830.
  • 30. Ibid. 5, 12, 19 Feb. 1831.
  • 31. Ibid. 19 Mar. 1831.
  • 32. Ibid. 30 Apr., 7, 14 May 1831.
  • 33. Ibid. 1, 8 Oct. 1831.
  • 34. Add. 37726, f. 189; The Times, 1 Oct. 1831.
  • 35. Holland House Diaries, 98, 110; Grey-William IV Corresp. ii. 71, 113; Three Diaries, 178, 253; Add. 76369, Althorp to Brougham, 7 Jan.; Hatherton diary, 19 [Jan. 1832].
  • 36. Aberdeen Univ. Lib. Arbuthnot mss 3029/1/2/47; Grey-William IV Corresp. ii. 335, 397, 399.
  • 37. Gent. Mag. (1850), i. 432; The Times, 18 Feb. 1850.
  • 38. PROB 11/2113/356; IR26/1866/170.