James Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Wharncliffe

James Stuart-Wortley, engraving by Francis Holl about 1836

James Archibald Stuart-Wortley, 1st Baron Wharncliffe PC (born October 6, 1776 , † December 19, 1845 in London ) was a British officer, nobleman and politician.

origin

Stuart-Wortley came from an old branch of the Stuarts , which descended from the Scottish King Robert II and was born as James Stuart, the second son of James Archibald Stuart and Margaret Conyngham. His grandfather was John Stuart, 3rd Earl of Bute , after the death of his grandmother Mary Wortley-Montagu in 1794, he and his father took the name Stuart-Wortley in 1795. He attended Charterhouse School from 1789 to 1790 .

Military career

Stuart-Wortley began a military career in the British Army under the auspices of his uncle Charles Stuart and joined the 48th Regiment of Foot as an ensign in November 1790 . In 1791 he became a lieutenant in the 7th Royal Fusiliers and served in Canada from 1792 to 1794, where he was promoted to captain in 1794. From 1795 to 1797 he served in the Cape Colony , where he became Lieutenant Colonel of the 12th Regiment of Foot on December 1, 1796 . In 1797 he was sent back to England with reports by Governor George Macartney . He was transferred to Ireland to crush the 1798 uprising and returned to England in 1799. In October he applied for a transfer to the staff of his uncle Charles Stuart, who was to take command in Egypt , but was to be transferred to the Netherlands instead. This was prevented by the Alkmaar Convention in November 1799 and the subsequent armistice.

After the death of his older brother John in 1797, Stuart-Wortley became his father's likely heir. In April 1800 his father inherited the estates of his uncle James Stuart Mackenzie in Scotland, whereupon he left the management of the estates in Yorkshire and Cornwall to him . After the beginning of the peace negotiations in 1801, which led to the peace of Amiens , he therefore took his leave of the army and lived on the estates in Yorkshire. In 1803 he became a lieutenant colonel of the Southwest Yorkshire Yeomanry .

Political career

MP of a rotten borough

Through his marriage on March 30, 1799 to Elizabeth Caroline Mary Creighton , a daughter of John Creighton, 1st Earl Erne , and his second wife Mary Caroline Hervey, Stuart-Wortley gained good contacts with Lord Liverpool and his followers. In 1802 he was elected to the House of Commons instead of his father as a member of the House of Commons for the Bossiney family electoral district , which was considered rotten borough . Although he was not ranked among the leading MPs, his independent views were recognized and he ended up being a supporter of Prime Minister Pitt . In the next few years he tried to help his indebted father regulate his financial situation and was only occasionally politically active. In 1812 he became an independent supporter of Lord Liverpool's government along with moderate Tories , but continued to be a minor politician.

Proponents of Catholic emancipation and peer promotion

In the late summer of 1814 he had visited Paris and Spa with his family . From October 1817 to June 1818 he took his family on a trip to Europe, during which they visited Paris, Naples, Rome, Venice and Innsbruck . His father had died in March 1818, so that he inherited his Scottish property. In the general election of 1818 he did not run again for Bossiney, but was elected as MP for Yorkshire. After he had already dispelled a riot in Sheffield as Colonel of the Yeomanry in 1816 , he ended riots in Yorkshire in 1819 without bloodshed. He was considered business-friendly and was strictly opposed to an electoral reform. In contrast, he campaigned for Catholic emancipation from 1812 . This attitude led to his being voted out of office in 1826. He was then raised on July 26, 1826 to the first Baron Wharncliffe of Wortley , named after one of his estates in Yorkshire, and thus a member of the House of Lords . In the same year he changed his name to Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie.

Proponents of constituency reform

Over the next several years, Stuart-Wortley went from being an opponent to being a proponent of constituency reform. In 1829 he made a petition known as the Wharncliffe Order in the House of Lords regarding changes to the application for a member of parliament. By presenting statistics, he achieved on March 28, 1831 that constituency reform was discussed for the first time in the House of Lords. After the first attempt to pass the constituency reform law failed in 1831, he supported further proposals and finally submitted one of his son John, who was now MP for Bossiny, and Dudley Ryder, 1st Earl of Harrowby and his son worked out a compromise, which was also not accepted by the House of Lords. Other proponents of the reform suggested that the creation of numerous new peer dignities would win a majority for reform in the House of Lords. However, Stuart-Wortley convinced King William IV that the reform would find a majority in the House of Lords even without new peer degrees and that he should be reluctant to create new peer degrees. In fact, on April 9, 1832, the House of Lords approved the Reform Act . Stuart-Wortley now tried to get closer to his party, the Tories, and on May 7th advocated an adjournment of the deliberations, thereby incurring the enmity of the Whigs . Ultimately, the constituency reform was finally decided on June 7, 1832.

The coat of arms of the Barons Wharncliffe on the Wharncliffe Viaduct in London

Further political career

In December 1834 Stuart-Wortley became a member of the government of Robert Peel as Lord Seal Keeper , which is why he was also a member of the Privy Council from December 16, 1834 . The Peel government failed in April 1835, and Stuart-Wortley resigned from office. He remained in the opposition for the next six years. During this time he published a collection of the letters and writings of his great-grandmother, Mary Wortley Montagu . When Peel became Prime Minister again in 1841, Stuart-Wortley took over the office of Lord President of the Council . In the same year he became Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire . Despite these offices, however, he had little influence in government.

Most recently he did without his Mackenzie suffix and called himself just Stuart-Wortley. He died on December 19, 1845 after a stroke in his townhouse in London.

Stuart-Wortley was considered one of the moderate Tory politicians who led the party out of the crisis it was in before the Reform Act of 1832. His reform course brought him many opponents within the party, but by being able to convince the king to forego the creation of additional peer ratings, he rendered the Tories an invaluable service that retained their power in the House of Lords until the end of the 19th century.

Family and offspring

He had four children with his wife, Elizabeth Crichton:

• Caroline Jane († 1876) ∞ John Chetwynd Talbot, son of Charles Chetwynd-Talbot, 2nd Earl Talbot
• John Stuart-Wortley, 2nd Baron Wharncliffe (1801–1855)
• Charles James Stuart-Wortley (1802–1844) ∞ Emmeline Manners , daughter of John Manners, 5th Duke of Rutland and Elizabeth Howard
• James Archibald Stuart-Wortley (1805–1881) ∞ Jane Lawley , daughter of Paul Beilby Thompson, 1st Baron Wenlock and Caroline Neville

Web links

• G. Le G. Norgate; HCG Matthew: Wortley, James Archibald Stuart-, first Baron Wharncliffe (1776-1845). 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
• RG Thorne: STUART WORTLEY, James Archibald (1776-1845), of Wharncliffe Lodge and Wortley Hall, Yorks. (History of Parliament Online)
• Martin Casey, Philip Salmon: STUART WORTLEY, James Archibald (1776-1845), of Wortley Hall, Yorks .; 15 Curzon Street, Mayfair, Mdx. and Belmont, Perth. (History of Parliament Online)
• Cracroft's Peerage: Wharncliffe, Baron (UK, 1826)

Individual evidence

1. ^ History of Parliament online: STUART WORTLEY, John (1801-1855), of 15 Curzon Street, Mdx. Retrieved September 18, 2014 . 
2. ↑ G. Le G. Norgate; HCG Matthew: Wortley, James Archibald Stuart-, first Baron Wharncliffe (1776-1845). 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

predecessor	Office	successor
Constantine Phipps	Keeper of the Lord Seal 1834–1835	John Ponsonby
Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice	Lord President of the Council 1841-1845	Walter Montagu Douglas Scott
Henry Lascelles	Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire 1841-1845	Henry Lascelles
New title created	Baron Wharncliffe 1826-1845	John Stuart-Wortley