Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 31.djvu/154

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
King
148
King
1 vol. 8vo.
  1. 'A Short History of the Job of Jobs,' written in 1825, first published as an anti-cornlaw pamphlet, London, 1846, 8vo.

[The principal authority is A Selection from the Speeches and Writings of the late Lord King, with a short introductory Memoir by Earl Fortescue, London, 1844, 8vo. See also Gent. Mag. 1833. pt. ii. p. 80; Brougham's Historical Sketches of Statesman who flourished in the time of Geo. III., 2nd ser. pp. 172 et seq.; Yonge's Life of Lord Liverpool, iii. 170; Lord Colchester's Diary, vol. iii.; Parl. Hist, and Hansard; Horner's Memoirs, ii. 92; Collins's Peerage (Brydges), vii, 92; Burke's Peerage, 'Lovelace;' Edinburgh Review, 1. 1 et seq).]

J. M. R.

KING, PETER JOHN LOCKE (1811–1885), politician, second son of Peter King, seventh baron King [q. v.], and brother of William King-Noel, first earl of Lovelace, was born at Ockham, Surrey, on 25 Jan. 1811. He was educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated B.A. 1831, and M.A. 1833. In 1837 he unsuccessfully contested East Surrey, but was elected for that constituency on 11 Aug. 1847, and retained his seat until the conservative reaction at the general election in February 1874. He supported an alteration in the law of primogeniture for many sessions. On 15 March 1855 he delivered a speech in which he showed emphatically ‘the crying injustice of the law.’ On 11 Aug. 1854 he passed the Real Estate Charges Act, according to which mortgaged estates descend with and bear their own burdens. In the session of 1856 he was successful in obtaining the repeal of 120 sleeping statutes which were liable to be put in force from time to time. He also waged war against the statute law commission, and more than once denounced it as a job. King introduced a bill for abolishing the property qualification of members, which passed the House of Lords on 28 June 1858, and in eight successive sessions he brought forward the county franchise bill, on one occasion, 20 Feb. 1851, defeating and causing the resignation of the Russell ministry. He succeeded in carrying through the House of Commons a bill for extending the 10l. franchise to the county constituencies, so as to include every adult male who came within the conditions of the borough suffrage. He was also well known for his advocacy of the ballot and of the abolition of church rates, and for his strenuous opposition to the principle and practice alike of endowments for religious purposes. He died at Brooklands, Weybridge, on 12 Nov. 1885. He married, on 22 March 1836, Louisa Elizabeth, daughter of William Henry Hoare of Mitcham Grove, Surrey. She died in 1884, leaving two sons and four daughters.

King was the author of:

  1. ‘Injustice of the Law of Succession to the Real Property of Intestates,’ 1854; 3rd edit. 1855.
  2. ‘Speech on the Laws relating to the Property of Intestates,’ 15 March 1855.
  3. ‘Speech on the Laws relating to the Property of Intestates in the House of Commons,’ 17 Feb. 1859.
  4. ‘Speech on the Law relating to the Real Estates of Intestates,’ 14 July 1869.

Four letters which King wrote to the ‘Times’ in 1855 on ‘Chancery Reform’ are reprinted in ‘A Bleak House Narrative of Real Life,’ 1856, pp. 55–66.

[Hansard, 1849, ciii. 88 et seq.; Statesmen of England, 1862, No. 46, with portrait; Drawing-room Portrait Gallery, 2nd ser. 1859, with portrait; Foster's Peerage; Times, 14 Nov. 1885, p. 9.]

G. C. B.

KING, PHILIP GIDLEY (1758–1808), first governor of Norfolk Island and Governor of New South Wales, was born 23 April 1758 at Launceston in Cornwall, where his father, Philip King, was a draper; his mother was a daughter of John Gidley, attorney, of Exeter. He was educated at Yarmouth by a Mr. Bailey, but went to sea at the of of twelve as a midshipman in the Swallow frigate. Captain Shirley, and served five years in the East Indies, returning to England with much knowledge of his business and, some acquaintance with the world' (Phillip, Voyage). In 1775 he went to Virginia with Captain Bellew in the Liverpool. His ship, after seeing some service, was wrecked in Delaware Bay, whereupon King entered on board the Princess Royal, October 1778. He was promoted to the Renown, with the rank of lieutenant, 26 Nov. following. In 1779 he again returned home, and for four years served in the Channel on board the Kite cutter and Ariadne frigate. He was associated as lieutenant with Captain Phillip of the Europe in 1783, and this officer's high appreciation of his qualities—his merit as a seaman and perseverance—led to his selection of King (25 Oct. 1786) for the post of second lieutenant on his own ship, the Sirius, when he commanded the famous 'First Fleet' which sailed for Australia on 13 May 1787, and arrived at Botany Bay in January 1788. Immediately after his landing Phillip appointed King commandant of Norfolk Island. King set sail thither on 14 Feb. 1788, taking with him only a petty officer, a surgeon's mate, two marines, two men who were supposed to understand the cultivation of flax, and nine male and six female convicts, for the purpose of settling the island