BARING, Sir FRANCIS THORNHILL, Lord Northbrook (1796–1886), statesman, was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Baring, the second baronet, and was born at Calcutta 20 April 1796. He was educated at Winchester School and Christ Church, Oxford, gaining the distinction of a double first class in 1817. In the parliament of 1866 the constituency of Portsmouth chose him as its member, and he represented it without interruption until 1885. He climbed from step to step of the official ladder, and was a lord of the treasury Nov. 1830 to June 1834, its joint secretary June 1830 to June 1834 and April 1835 to Sept. 1839, and chancellor of the exchequer Aug. 1839 to Sept. 1841. From 1840 to 1852 he was the first lord of the admiralty. He was created Baron Northbrook 4 jan. 1866, and died as Stratton Park Sept. 1886. Lord Northbrook was twice married: first 7 April 1825, at Portsmouth,to Jane, youngest daughter of he Hon. Sir George Grey, K.C.B., by whom he was father of Thomas George, created Earl Northbrook in 1876; and secondly, 31 March 1841, at St. George's, Hanover Square, to lady Arabella Georgiana Howard, second daughter of the first Earl of Eflingham. His first wife died at Belgrave Square, Pimlico, 23 April 1838; his second wife is still living. The speech which he made, 17 May 1841, on the budget resolutions for the year, was printed as a pamphlet; his proposals were keenly critcised by Sir Robert Peel. Several improvements were effected at the admiralty during his presidency of the board.
[Burke's Peerage; Men of the Time; Times, 8 Sept 1866.]
BARING, HARRIET, Lady Ashburton. [See under Baring, William Bingham.]
BARING, THOMAS (1799–1873), financier, son of Sir Thomas Baring and brother of Sir Francis Thornhill Baring, the first Lord Northbrook [q. v.], was born 7 Sept. 1799, and educated at Winchester School. From early age he was trained in the family business, and he bore the burden of its financial operations for many years. He sat in parliarment as member for Great Yarmouth from 1835 to 1837, but was defeated on two subsequent occasions, 1838 and 1841. On a chance vacancy in the representation of the city of London, Oct. 1843, he contested the seat, but was unsuccessfulby 156 votes in a poll of nearly 18,000. The borough of Huntingdon, however, elected him as one of its members April 1844, and he continued to represent it until his death. Unlike most of the members of his family, Thomas Baring was a conservative in politics; and on the formation of two of Lord Derby's administrations, in 1852 and 1858, he was offered the post of chancellor of the exchequer, which his elder brother had filled in the whig ministry of Lord Melbourne. The taste for pictures which was possessed by the first lord Ashburton also characterised Thomas Baring. His death took place at Fontmell Lodge, Bournemouth, 18 Nov. 1878. Had he been ambitious he might have played a more important part in history.
[Men of the Time; Times, 20 Nov. 1873]
BARING, WILLIAM BINGHAM, second
Baron Ashburton (1799–1864), statesman, the eldest son of Alexander, first Lord Ashburton [q. v.], was born June 1799. He was educated at Oriel College, Oxford, taking a second class in classics in 1821. Through the influence of his family he was elected for Thetford in 1826, and for Callington in 1830. After the Reform Bill he sat for Winchester (1832–7) as a moderate whig, but it was as a conservative that he represented the larger constituency of North Staffordshire 1837–41, and Thetford from 1841 to 1848, when he succeeded to the peerage. In Sir Robert Peel's administration of 1841 he was secretary to the board of control until February 1845, and paymaster-general from that date until July 1846. Lord Ashburton lacked boldness, and his manners failed to impress the world with the respect which his abilities deserved; but he possessed a great thirst for information, and in later life he distinguished himself by his strenuous advocacy of the teaching of ‘common things’ in national schools. His shyness was more than compensated for in the person of his first wife (married 12 April 1823), Lady Harriet Mary Montagu, eldest daughter of the sixth Earl of Sandwich. Under her auspices his houses of the Grange, near Alresford, and Bath House, Piccadilly, became centres of life for many eminent men in politics and literature, and especially for Charles Buller, Thackeray, and Carlyle. Mrs. Carlyle, indeed—as readers of her Letters and her husband's Reminiscences will remember—resented his attachment to Lady Ashburton. Lady Ashburton had long been in delicate health, but was seized with her fatal illness at Nice in 1857, and died at Paris 4 May 1857. Many of her sayings are recorded, and her character is analysed in a chapter in Lord Houghton's ‘Monographs,’ 1873, pp. 225–55. Lord Ash-
