LASCELLES, Hon. Henry (1797-1857), of Goldsborough Hall, Knaresborough, Yorks. and 14 Hanover Square, Mdx.

Lascelles, who joined the army at the age of 17, was slightly wounded by an exploding shell while bearing the standard of the second battalion of the Grenadier Guards at Waterloo. He was injured again in 1823 when a gun burst in his hands as he was shooting sea fowl off Cowes. By September that year he had reportedly recovered and was accompanying his younger brother William on a ‘drawing expedition’ to Switzerland. Gent. Mag. (1815), i. 633; (1857), i. 490; Add. 52011, John Stuart Wortley to H. E. Fox, 10 Sept. 1823. At the general election of 1826 he was returned for Northallerton on his Tory father’s interest, somewhat to the surprise of the brother of Lord Carlisle, who ‘thought that he entertained a dislike of being in Parliament’. Castle Howard mss, Lord William Howard to Carlisle, 10 June 1826.

He was certainly a very lax attender, who cast no recorded votes in the 1827 session. He presented a petition complaining of the Malt Act, 22 Feb. 1828. In his only known speech, 3 Mar., he urged the rejection of the Wakefield and Ferrybridge canal bill, maintaining that the House was bound to do so as long as the Aire and Calder Canal Company ‘perform their contract’. He divided against Catholic relief, 12 May. He voted with the duke of Wellington’s government against reduction of the salary of the lieutenant-general of the ordnance, 4 July 1828. In February 1829 Planta, the patronage secretary, listed him as one who was ‘opposed to the principle’ of Catholic emancipation, but he gave no recorded votes that session. His name does not appear in the lists compiled that autumn by the Ultra leader Sir Richard Vyvyan*. He was granted three weeks’ leave on account of illness in his family, 10 Mar. 1830. He returned to vote against Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May. He divided for abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830. He was again returned for Northallerton at the general election that summer. The ministry regarded him as one of their ‘friends’, but he was absent from the crucial division on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. He divided against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831. At the ensuing general election he made way for William at Northallerton. According to the Whig Thomas Creevey*, he had intended to contest Yorkshire but his father had withdrawn him. Creevey mss, Creevey to Miss Ord, 30 Apr. 1831.

Lascelles may have been the ‘son of Lord Harewood’ whom the Conservatives of Pontefract had reportedly ‘been trying to prevail on ... to bleed ... without success’ in the autumn of 1832. Staffs. RO, Stafford Jerningham mss D641/3/P/3/14/68. He never returned to the Commons. The death of his elder brother in 1839 made him heir to his father’s earldom, and he succeeded to the title in 1841. He tendered his resignation of the lord lieutenancy of the West Riding of Yorkshire in 1846 because of his opposition to repeal of the corn laws, but was assured by the prime minister Sir Robert Peel that the office did not oblige him to support the government. He died in February 1857, four weeks after a hunting accident which had left him with a fractured skull and other injuries. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Henry Thynne Lascelles (1824-92); his second son Egremont William Lascelles (1825-92) was Conservative Member for Northallerton, 1866-8. Gent. Mag. (1857), i. 490.