Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/65

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Manners-Sutton
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Manners-Sutton

ment, and (3) that he had counselled and advised the late dissolution of parliament, his opponent, James Abercromby, afterwards Lord Dunfermline [q. v.], was elected speaker by a majority of ten votes (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. xxvi. 3-61). Manners-Sutton was created Baron Bottesford of Bottesford, Leicestershire, and Viscount Canterbury on 10 March 1835, and took his seat in the House of Lords for the first time on 3 April following (Journals of the House of Lords, xvii. 80-1). He was selected to fill the office of high commissioner for adjusting the claims of Canada on 18 March 1835, but shortly afterwards resigned the appointment on account of his wife's health (Greville Memoirs, pt. i. vol. iii. p. 234). He only spoke nine times in the House of Lords. While travelling on the Great Western railway he was seized with an apoplectic fit, and died at the residence of his younger son in Southwick Crescent, Hyde Park, London, on 21 July 1845, aged 65. He was buried at Addington on the 28th of the same month.

Though not a man of any remarkable ability, Manners-Sutton was a dignified and impartial speaker. During his speakership he thrice exercised his right to speak in committee of the whole house — on 26 March 1821 he spoke on the Roman Catholic Disability Removal Bill (Parl. Debates, 2nd ser. iv. 1451-4), and on 6 May 1825 and on 2 July 1834 on the bill for admitting dissenters to the universities (ib. 2nd ser. xiii. 434-5, 3rd ser. xxiv. 1092-3). While he was in office the houses of parliament were destroyed by fire (16 Oct. 1834), and his frequent communications with the king on this subject gave rise to the rumour that he was endeavouring to effect the overthrow of the whig cabinet. He was elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn on 6 June 1817,andheld the post of registrar of the faculty office from 1827 to 1834.

He married first, on 8 July 1811, Lucy Maria Charlotte, eldest daughter of John Denison of Ossington, Nottinghamshire, by whom he had two sons, viz., Charles John, who, born on 17 April 1812, succeeded as second Viscount Canterbury, and died unmarried on 13 Nov. 1869, and John Henry Thomas, third viscount Canterbury [q. v.], and one daughter, Charlotte Matilda, who married, on 12 Feb. 1833, Richard Sanderson of Belgrave Square, London, M.P. for Colchester. His first wife died on 7 Dec. 1815, and on 6 Dec. 1828 he married, secondly, Ellen, widow of John Home-Purves of Purves, N.B., a daughter of Edmund Power of Curragheen, co. Waterford, by whom he had one daughter, Frances Diana, who became the wife of the Hon. Delaval Loftus Astley, afterwards third Baron Astley (8 Aug. 1848), and died on 2 June 1874. His widow survived him but a few months, and dying at Clifton, Gloucestershire, on 16 Nov. 1845, aged 54, was buried in the crypt of Clifton Church. A portrait of Manners-Sutton as speaker by H. W. Pickersgill belongs to Lord Canterbury. It was engraved in 1835 by Samuel Cousins. There is also an engraving of him by Hall after Chalon.

[Greville Memoirs, 1874, pt. i. vols. ii. and iii.; Journal of Thomas Raikes, 1856, vols. i. and ii.; Correspondence and Diaries of J. W. Croker, 1884, l. 121-2, ii. 163-7, 200, 266; Sir D. Le Merchant's Memoir of Viscount Althorp, 1876, pp. 449-50, 630-2; Torrens's Life of Lord Melbourne, 1878, i. 408, ii. 71-95; Walpole's Hist. of England, ii. 57, 676-7, iii. 139-40, 287-9, 414-16; Manning's Lives of the Speakers of the House of Commons, 1851, pp. 484-8; Annual Register, 1845, App. to Chron. pp. 290-2; Gent. Mag. 1845, pt. ii. pp. 305-6; John Bull, 26 July 1845; Times, 22 July 1845; Cambridge Independent, 26 July 1845; Burke's Peerage, 1890, p. 235; Doyle's Official Baronage, 1886, i. 315; Grad. Cantabr. 1866, pp. 376, 446; Lincoln's Inn Registers.]

G. F. R. B.

MANNERS-SUTTON, JOHN HENRY THOMAS, third Viscount Canterbury (1814–1877), the younger son of Charles Manners-Sutton, first viscount Canterbury [q. v.], by his first wife, Lucy Maria Charlotte, eldest daughter of John Denison of Ossington, Nottinghamshire, was born in Downing Street, London, on 27 May 1814. He was educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated MA. in 1835. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 18 Sept. 1835, but was never called to the bar, and took his name oiF the books of the society on 25 Nov. 1853. In September 1839 he defeated Thomas Milner Gibson at a by-election for the borough of Cambridge, but was subsequently unseated for bribery (Journals of the House of Commons, xlv. 293-4). At the general election in June 1841 he was again returned for Cambridge, and on 25 Aug. following spoke for the first time in the House of Commons (Parl. Debates, 3rd ser. lix. 216-17). On the formation of Sir Robert Peel's second administration in September 1841, Manners-Sutton was appointed Under-Secretary for the home department, but he took little part in the parliamentary debates. He resigned office upon Sir Robert Peel's overthrow in June 1846, and losing his seat for Cambridge at the general election in August 1847, did not again enter the House of Commons. In 1851 he published the 'Lexington Papers' (London, 8vo), which had been discovered at Kelham, Nottinghamshire, in the library