BUCKINGHAM, Owen (1674-1720), of Moulsford, Berks.

Owen Buckingham’s father, a wealthy salter and hemp merchant in Bread St.,Le Neve, Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 449. represented Reading as a Whig 1698-1701 and 1702-8. He also established a large sail-making industry there and acquired lands in Sonning and Shinfield, both close to the borough.Cal. Treas. Pprs. 1708-14, pp. 14-15; VCH Berks. iii. 216, 262-3. The son succeeded to his father’s seat in 1708, was defeated in 1713 but returned at a by-election in 1716. After accepting a place in 1717, he was re-elected without opposition, voting with the Administration on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts and on the peerage bill in 1719. On 5 Mar. 1720 he attended a birthday celebration given by ‘his intimate friend’, William Aldworth, at Windsor. ‘But being both elevated with wine, some hot words arose between them and being gone out of the house to fight in the dark, Mr. Buckingham received a mortal wound, and with his dying breath owned he had given the provocation’.Pol, State, xix. 316; Hearne, Colls. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.) vii. 105.