MUNDY, George (1777-1861), of Shipley Hall, Derbys. and 9 Cork Street, Mdx.

Mundy, a naval officer and son of the Tory Member for Derbyshire, stood again for Boroughbridge at the general election of 1820 on the interest of his brother-in-law, the 4th duke of Newcastle. He again faced a contest and campaigned actively in the constituency. There was a double return in favour of Newcastle’s opponents, but Mundy was seated on petition. T. Lawson-Tancred, Recs. of a Yorks. Manor, 336. It is sometimes difficult to distinguish Mundy’s votes from those of his father, until the latter’s death in 1822, but he was evidently a fairly regular attender who continued to give general support to Lord Liverpool’s ministry. He voted in defence of their conduct towards Queen Caroline, 6 Feb. 1821. He divided against Catholic relief, 28 Feb. He voted against parliamentary reform, 9 May, reduction of the barracks grant, 28 May, and Hume’s economy and retrenchment motion, 27 June 1821. He divided against abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar., and for the grant to place government proclamations in Irish newspapers, 22 July 1822. He voted against relieving Catholic peers of their disabilities, 30 Apr., and inquiry into Irish tithes, 19 June. Even after his father’s death some difficulty exists in differentiating his votes from that of the new Derbyshire Member, his kinsman Francis Mundy. It was probably George who divided against repeal of the assessed taxes, 18 Mar., and he was certainly with government against inquiry into the currency, 12 June 1823. The Times listed him in both the majority and the minority on the Scottish juries bill, 20 June 1823. The Times, 21 June 1823. He voted against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 26 Feb. 1824, and repeal of the usury laws the next day. He made his first known intervention in debate on the silk trade, 5 Mar., when he stated that the proposed repeal of the duty on silk had ‘created alarm in the counties of Chester and Stafford, as well as ... Derby’. He spoke again on the game laws, 12 Apr., when he proposed that those liable to transportation if convicted should be given a choice between trial at the quarter sessions or the assizes; he was fearful of the prejudice which magistrates, who were often sportsmen, might have against poachers. He voted against the motion condemning the trial of the Methodist missionary John Smith in Demerara, 11 June 1824. He divided for the Irish unlawful societies bill, 25 Feb. 1825. He was absent from the call of the House, 28 Feb., but attended next day to vote against Catholic relief, and did so again, 21 Apr., 10 May 1825. He voted against the disfranchisement of Irish 40s. freeholders, 26 Apr. He may have been the Mundy who presented a petition from Holborn against the Metropolitan Water Company bill, 11 Mar. He divided for the financial provision for the duke of Cumberland, 10 June 1825. In January 1826 Newcastle recorded in his diary how Mundy, while out shooting, had accidentally ‘killed a Newfoundland dog led by one of my keepers and wounded the man a good deal in the thigh’. Nottingham Univ. Lib. Newcastle mss Ne2 F2/1/90. He voted against reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 13 Apr. 1826. He was returned unopposed for Boroughbridge at the general election that summer.

It is possible that he was the Mundy who seconded Robert Bransby Cooper’s successful resolution to prevent Members from voting on private bills in committees which they had not attended, 20 Feb. 1827. In the Berwick election committee, 24 Mar., he reportedly voted to find John Gladstone* guilty of treating. St. Deiniol’s Lib. Glynne-Gladstone mss 277, J. Gladstone to Huskisson, 24 Mar. 1827. He divided against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828. At the end of that year he was appointed captain of the yacht Royal George. In February 1829 Planta, the Wellington ministry’s patronage secretary, listed him as one who was ‘opposed to the principle’ of Catholic emancipation, like his patron, and he voted accordingly, 6, 18, 23, 30 Mar. In affirming his continued opposition to concession, 12 Mar. 1829, he expressed his ‘decided disapprobation’ of the ‘late change of opinion that has taken place in the minds of some gentlemen’, who ‘appear to have turned round at the beck of a finger held up by a single individual’; such a ‘weathercock system ... would never influence me’. However, his name does not appear in the lists compiled that autumn by the Ultra Tory leader, Sir Richard Vyvyan*. His last known vote was against the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb. 1830. In May Newcastle noted that ‘poor George Mundy has had a paralytic stroke and lost his speech and the use of his right side’. He retired at the dissolution that summer, owing to continued ‘ill health’. Newcastle mss Ne2 F2/1/224; F3/1/245. He was replaced about this time as captain of the Royal George, but promoted to rear-admiral. It appears that he subsequently regained some of his faculties: in October 1845 he described himself as being in ‘tolerable health’, and the following March Newcastle found him ‘looking surprisingly well, better than I have seen him for years’. Add. 38048, f. 428; Unhappy Reactionary ed. R.A. Gaunt (Thoroton Soc. rec. ser. xliii), 262. He died in February 1861 and divided his property among his nephews.