HEATHCOTE, Richard Edensor (1780-1850), of Longton Hall, Staffordshire; Apedale Hall, Staffordshire

A country gentleman who owned land in the Staffordshire potteries, Heathcote briefly represented Stoke-on-Trent as a Reformer, but did not find the reformed Commons to his liking. Heathcote had inherited the family seat, Longton Hall, from his father Sir John Edensor Heathcote in 1822, which he extensively and expensively remodelled soon after.1D. Stuart (ed.), People of the Potteries (1985), 120.

Heathcote was elected for Coventry in 1826, but his support for Catholic emancipation was unpopular and compelled his retirement in 1830.2HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 552-4. Thereafter he concentrated his political activity on the newly created parliamentary borough of Stoke-on-Trent, where he possessed land. In 1832 he offered himself as ‘a reformer of the same stamp as my Lords Grey and Brougham, and Sir Francis Burdett’, and declared that he ‘would lop off everything that was malignant, corrupt and deformed in our institutions’.3Staffordshire Advertiser, 8 Dec. 1832. Heathcote finished third, but in 1835 he was returned unopposed for the same constituency. During the campaign, he emphasised the need to ‘reform and purify the Established Church, without endangering its stability’, and more specifically to ‘abolish Tithes’. He also wished to enact municipal reform and shorter parliaments ‘and guard the national purse from the hands of the public robber’.4Staffordshire Advertiser, 27 Dec. 1834.

Heathcote described himself as ‘a Reformer, but no revolutionist’, a view which echoed that of Charles Dod.5Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832; Dod’s parliamentary companion (1835), 126. He does not appear to have added to the small number of speeches he had made in the unreformed Commons, nor did he serve on any committees. In the key party votes of the 1835 session, he sided with the Whigs, endorsing Abercromby for the speakership, and dividing for the amendment to the address, and Russell’s motion on the Irish church, 19, 26 Feb. 1835, 2 Apr. 1835. Heathcote also supported E.S. Cayley’s motion for a silver standard, 1 June 1835. However, he did not adjust to the demands on MPs in the reformed era, and resigned after sitting for barely a session on 5 February 1836. This was for a variety of reasons, he told constituents, but ‘above all, an insurmountable dislike to spend whole summers in town, after the present fashion of legislators’.6The Times, 2 Feb. 1836.

Although he did not seek to re-enter Parliament, Heathcote nominated Liberal candidates for Stoke in 1837 and 1841, and also attended some anti-corn law meetings in the Potteries.7Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837, 29 May 1841, 3 July 1841. However, by 1840 Heathcote had left Longton Hall, which was situated in an increasingly industrialised and urbanised district.8Stuart, People of the Potteries, 120. Heathcote died in Geneva in 1850 and was succeeded by his eldest son from his first marriage, John Edensor Heathcote (1829-69), after whose death the estates passed to his nephew Justinian Heathcote Edwards-Heathcote (1843-1928), Conservative MP for North-West Staffordshire, 1886-92.9Gent. Mag. (1850), ii. 551; Al. Cant., pt. II, iii. 314; Burke’s landed gentry (1879), i. 762; ibid., (1937), i. 1084; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), pt. II, p. 223. Longton Hall remained in family hands until 1928 and was demolished in 1939.10Stuart, People of the Potteries, 120.