LIDDELL, Sir Henry, 4th Bt. (1708-84), of Ravensworth Castle, co. Dur.

One of the chief north country coal-owners, Liddell was returned in 1734 for Morpeth, where he established an interest by offering £10 a man.1J. M. Fewster, ’Pol. and Admin. of Morpeth in the later 18th Cent.’ (Durham Univ. Ph.D. thesis), 83. Next year it was reported that two cooks had been imported from Paris at 100 a year, one for the Duke of Newcastle and the other for Liddell, who was living at great expense.2HMC Carlisle, 159. A government supporter, he spoke for the Spanish convention in 17393Coxe, Walpole, iii. 517. and was one of the five members of the court list elected to the secret committee set up to inquire into Walpole’s Administration in 1742.4Walpole to Mann, 1 Apr. 1742. He voted against the Government on the Address and abstained from the division on the Hanoverians in December of that year, but spoke for them in January 1744, declaring that he had come to the House undetermined and had been convinced by the debate. Next month he opposed Pelham’s proposal to increase the duty on sugar. In 1745 he was so incensed by Pitt’s statement that the British and Hanoverian troops could not act together that he threatened to put the question to the vote, but was appeased by a conciliatory reply from Pitt.5Owen, Pelhams, 208, 217, 254-5. He again spoke for the Hanoverians in 1746. His elevation to the peerage in 1747 did not go down well with the old corps of Whigs, who thought that he had been ‘but a wavering friend’.6Duke of Richmond to Newcastle, 7 June 1747, Add. 32711, f. 254. In 1753 he brought charges of Jacobitism against Andrew Stone and William Murray on evidence so unsubstantial that the most charitable explanation of his conduct was ‘honest wrong-headed Whig zeal’.7Chesterfield Letters, 2014. He died 30 Jan. 1784, the father of Horace Walpole’s correspondent, Lady Ossory.