Edward Thynne

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Lord Edward Thynne (born January 23, 1807 , † February 4, 1884 in Laverstock , Wiltshire ) was a British politician who was elected twice as a member of the House of Commons.

Origin, training and military career

Edward Thynne came from the British noble family Thynne . He was the sixth son of Thomas Thynne, 2nd Marquess of Bath and Isabella Elizabeth Byng, daughter of George Byng, 4th Viscount Torrington . He attended Charterhouse School from 1820 to 1821 and studied at Oriel College , Oxford in 1825 , where he graduated in 1828. Originally destined for a spiritual career, he joined the British Army and was promoted to lieutenant in 1828. He served in the 60th Rifle Corps but retired in 1830 when he married. Through his father's influence, he became a lieutenant colonel in the Yeomanry of Somerset .

First marriage, MP for Weobley, and guilty imprisonment

After six months of negotiations, his father had negotiated a prenuptial agreement for him with William Mellish , who had made a fortune as a supplier to the Royal Navy , under which Mellsih gave his daughter and heiress Elizabeth Mellish a three-installment dowry of £ 100,000. The Marquess of Bath in return gave his son £ 10,000 annual income from his Irish possessions. The marriage took place on July 8, 1830. Thynne, who was a notorious gambler, had to use the first installment of the dowry to settle his gambling debts on October 25, 1830. This had not yet been discovered when he was nominated in the general election of April 1831 by his father, along with his brother Henry, as the Tories' candidate for Weobley in Hertfordshire , which was controlled by his father as a rotten borough . After his election, however, he rarely attended the meetings and is not known to have made any speeches. Together with Henry and his uncle John Thynne , he voted against the drafts of the constituency reform , which was passed in the summer of 1832. As a result, the Weobley constituency was dissolved and both Edward and Henry and John Thynne lost their seats. In the general election of 1834 and a by-election in January 1835, he ran unsuccessfully in Finsbury against Thomas Slingsby Duncombe , a Liberal MP to whom he owed over £ 10,000. Through his gambling addiction, his affairs, and his debts, he had fallen out deeply with his wife, and Duncombe tried to get Thynne and his wife to claim the debt. His father eventually gave him £ 60,000 in 1835 to keep him out of custody . When his brother Henry, his father's heir, refused to pay for his further debts after the death of their father in 1837, Thynne was still held in custody and declared bankrupt in August 1837. His wife failed to claim her inheritance from her sister and husband, the 2nd Earl of Glengall , after the death of her father . When she died in March 1849 her fortune was only £ 3,000, which Thynne inherited.

Second marriage and MP for Frome

After the death of his first wife, Thynne married Cecilia Anne Mary Gore on July 4, 1853 , a daughter of Charles Arthur Gore and the writer Catherine Gore . In the general election of 1856 and 1857 he ran unsuccessfully for Frome in Somerset, but in the election of 1859 he was elected MP for Frome. Once again he remained a rather passive but extremely conservative MP. In the subsequent election in 1865 , he did not run again.

Affairs and later life

Thynne was considered a philanderer for life. In 1872 he caused a scandal when he traveled to France with Anne Elizabeth Duff , who was over 40 years his junior and the wife of John Townshend, 5th Marquess Townshend . In 1881, nine years later, Townshend and some companions ambushed Thynne near his place of residence and beat him with his riding crop, for which he was fined £ 500.

Thynne died without leaving a will in his home near Salisbury . He was buried next to his second wife in Fisherton Anger . His first marriage had remained childless, from his second marriage to Cecilia Gore he had a daughter:

  • Mary Isabella Emma Thynne († 1906) ∞ Stephen Ormston Eaton

His nephew, John Thynne, 4th Marquess of Bath , who had vouched for his debts, became his heir.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ FML Thompson: Townshend, John Villiers Stuart, fifth Marquess Townshend (1831-1899). In: Henry Colin Gray Matthew, Brian Harrison (Eds.): Oxford Dictionary of National Biography , from the earliest times to the year 2000 (ODNB). Oxford University Press, Oxford 2004, ISBN 0-19-861411-X , ( oxforddnb.com license required ), as of 2004
personal data
SURNAME Thynne, Edward
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Thynne, Lord Edward
BRIEF DESCRIPTION British politician
DATE OF BIRTH January 23, 1807
DATE OF DEATH February 4, 1884
Place of death Laverstock , Wiltshire