LYNE STEPHENS, Stephens (?1800-1860), of 32 Portman Street, Mdx.

Lyne Stephens’s Lyne ancestors had long been resident in Cornwall. In 1826 his father, whose occupation is unknown, took the additional name of Stephens in memory of his cousin, John James Stephens, a merchant at Lisbon, who had named him as the residuary legatee of his will, which was proved under £600,000.2 PROB 11/1719/657; IR26/1106/1177. It was rumoured in 1830 that Lyne Stephens would stand for Kingston-upon-Hull, but in the event he offered for the venal borough of Barnstaple on ‘perfectly independent principles’, professing ‘a firm attachment to our excellent constitution’ and promising ‘a strict regard to retrenchment and economy’. He was returned at the head of the poll.3 Lincs. AO, Ancaster mss, Denison to Heathcote [July]; N. Devon Jnl. 22 July, 5 Aug. 1830. The duke of Wellington’s ministry listed him among their ‘friends’, but with a query, which proved justified as he voted against them in the crucial civil list division, 15 Nov. 1830. He ignored a request to support the Barnstaple reform petition, forwarded from a public meeting,4 N. Devon Jnl. 10 Mar. 1831. and he divided against the second reading of the Grey’s ministry’s bill, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. He is not known to have spoken in debate, and retired at the ensuing dissolution. He stood for Sudbury as a Conservative in 1835, but came bottom of the poll. A devotee of the turf, he was the residuary legatee of his father’s estate in 1851; the personalty was sworn under £180,000.5 PROB 11/2135/510; IR26/1914/389. In 1856 he purchased and rebuilt Lynford Hall, near Brandon, Norfolk. He died in February 1860 and left his property, including personalty sworn under £700,000, to his French wife, a former ballet dancer and noted beauty.6 N. Pevsner and B. Wilson, Buildings of England: Norf. ii. 531-2; W. Rubinstein, Men of Property, 253.