| Constituency | Dates |
|---|---|
| Tiverton | 6 July 1819 – 1831 |
| Liverpool | 21 Oct. 1831 – 1847 |
Sec. to Board of Control Dec. 1830 – May 1831; commr. for building new churches 1845; ecclesiastical commr. 1847 – 80; PC 31 Mar. 1855; chancellor of duchy of Lancaster Mar. – Dec. 1855; ld. privy seal Dec. 1855 – Feb. 1858.
Lt. Staffs. militia 1819, capt. 1826.
Sandon’s serious childhood speech impediment caused his father to send him to a succession of private schools and tutors, who included John Thelwall, the radical orator of the 1790s turned elocution teacher. In 1814 he accompanied his father on an excursion to Spa.1Reminiscences 2nd Earl of Harrowby, 3-8, 12, 16-17. When Sandon was 18, John William Ward reported that his stammer had been ‘almost entirely removed’ and that
his father means to bring him into Parliament as soon as he is of age ... [He is] a young man of very pleasing manners, and of a sound and cultivated understanding ... His father, no incompetent judge, says he is a fair Greek and Latin scholar, and from what I have seen of him, I can venture to say that in point of general reading and knowledge, he is very much above the average.2Letters to Bishop of Llandaff, 149.
He was duly returned for the family borough of Tiverton while still at Oxford, where he took a double first. He voted with government, of which his father was a senior member, in favour of the banishment clause of the blasphemous libels bill, 23 Dec. 1819, but evidently did not speak in the House during his first brief session. He died 18 Nov. 1882.