BAYLY, Sir Nicholas, 2nd Bt. (1709-82), of Plas Newydd, Anglesey

In 1754 Bayly was returned for Anglesey after a contest, and was classed by Dupplin as a Government supporter. In retrospect he wrote to Bute, 11 May 1764:Bute mss.

In the early part of my life I had the honour to be taken notice of and was sincerely attached to the late Prince of Wales on which account I was (as some others were) under a kind of proscription in the late reign and except when your Lordship was in Administration never honoured with any mark of royal favour.

By 1761 the gentlemen of the county were ‘one and all for throwing out Sir Nicholas Bayly’Dowager Lady Bulkeley to Sir Hugh Williams, Baron Hill ms 5736, U.C.N.W. Lib. because of an occurrence thus related in Boswell’s Life of Johnson:Vol. iii. 350-1, and 528; Baron Hill ms 5738.

Mrs. Thrale told me that a baronet lost an election in Wales, because he had debauched the sister of a gentleman in the county, whom he made one of his daughters invite as her companion at his seat in the county, when his lady and his other children were in London.

Bayly, who insisted on standing, was defeated. ‘Although I am not in this Parliament’, he wrote to Bute on 11 May 1764,Bute mss. ‘[I] will be in the next whenever a new one is called.’ But he did not succeed in re-entering the House until 1770. During his last four years in Parliament only one vote is recorded: 9 Feb. 1773, for the petition of the naval captains on half pay, when he was classed in the King’s list as one who normally supported Government.His inclusion in the Opposition list of 26 Apr. 1773 is a duplication of Nathaniel Bayly’s vote. In Robinson’s list of September 1774 he was also classed as a Government supporter. He did not stand at the general election.

On 14 July 1782 he wrote to Shelburne asking the King’s permission to resign because of ill-health the lord lieutenancy of Anglesey, and that it should be conferred on his son, Lord Paget.Lansdowne mss. Bayly died 9 Dec. 1782.