BEAUMONT, Thomas Wentworth (1792-1848), of Bretton Hall, Yorks. and Bywell, Northumb.

Reputed to be one of the wealthiest commoners in England, Beaumont was a divisive figure, remembered by one contemporary as ‘thoroughly independent, with no party allegiance [and] great integrity of character’ but by another as ‘a man of little stability of character’. 1J. Grant, Random recollections of the Lords and Commons (2nd ser.), ii. 66; Gent. Mag. (1849), ii. 94-5. The first son of Colonel Thomas Richard Beaumont, Tory Member of Parliament for Northumberland, 1795-1818, and his wife, Diana, the illegitimate daughter and heir of Sir Thomas Wentworth Blackett, his family’s fortune was secured in 1792 when his mother succeeded to extensive estates in Yorkshire and Northumberland. By the deaths of his father in 1829 and mother in 1831, Beaumont came into full possession of the Blackett estates with their valuable lead mines, giving him an estimated annual income of £100,000.2D.R. Fisher, ‘Beaumont, Thomas Wentworth (1792-1848)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com; J.T. Ward, ‘Beaumont Fam. Estates in 19th Cent.’ BIHR, xxxv (1962), 169-77. (Ward mistakenly assumed that Beaumont died in 1841.) At the general election of 1818 he had come forward to replace his ailing father as county member with the endorsement of the Liverpool ministry, but, once elected, his subsequent opposition to the Six Acts lost him government support, and by 1820 he had announced his adhesion to the Whigs.3HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 220. His standing amongst his constituents was damaged when his engagement to Sir John Swinburne’s daughter Elizabeth was terminated in August 1823. Beaumont had accused Lady Swinburne of committing adultery with Lord Grey, who subsequently declared him insane. At the 1826 general election, during which he fought a bloodless duel against Grey’s son-in-law John George Lambton, he was taunted over this incident and vilified by the Whigs for his absence from parliament, and was defeated. However, in December 1826 he used ‘blatant bribery’ to secure his return for Stafford at a by-election, and after dividing steadily with the Whig opposition, was returned unopposed for Northumberland in 1830.4Ibid., 222; Fisher, ‘Beaumont, Thomas Wentworth’. A supporter of Catholic emancipation and parliamentary reform, but with an independent streak, he became president of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland in 1832, and three years later established the British and Foreign Review which promoted Polish independence. He was also one of the founders of Westminster Review, to which he contributed several articles.5R. Welford, Men of Mark ’Twixt Tyne and Tweed, i. 224.

At the 1832 general election for Northumberland South, Beaumont entered into a coalition with William Ord against the Conservative Matthew Bell, and, after a bitter contest, he topped the poll. Beaumont and Ord’s committee petitioned against Bell’s return, prompting a counter-petition from Bell’s supporters. Beaumont’s undoubted collusion in ensuring that both petitions were abandoned was considered ‘by no means creditable to him’, and his reputation was damaged by the episode.6The diaries and correspondence of James Losh, ed. E. Hughes (1963), ii. 149-151. An infrequent attender, he only occasionally addressed the House. A contemporary observer noted that ‘he is not wordy; there are always ideas in his speeches, though not of a lofty or brilliant order. … There is occasionally a good deal of strength in his style; indeed, it is not always so correct as it is vigorous’.7Metropolitan Magazine (1837), xviii. 369-70. Beaumont spoke mainly on Irish issues in the 1833 session. He voiced his support for martial law to enforce the payment of tithes, accusing Daniel O’Connell of ‘despotism’, and clashed again with the Irish leader over coercion.8Hansard, 20 Feb. 1833, vol. 15, c. 998; 13 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 628. Generally supportive of Grey, he divided with the ministry over the Irish disturbances bill and the Irish church temporalities bill, 11 Mar. 1833, and Althorp’s motion for church rates to be replaced by a land tax, 21 Apr. 1834, although he was largely absent from the division lobby throughout that year’s session.

Unchallenged at the 1835 general election, Beaumont endured a lively nomination at which he declared that ‘I would part with my right hand rather than … give a vote for the ballot’.9Newcastle Courant, 17 Jan. 1835. His reformist credentials subsequently questioned, he insisted that his political watchword was ‘down with the Conservatives’, and he duly voted for Abercromby as speaker, 19 Feb. 1835, was in the majority for the amendment to the address, 26 Feb, and backed Russell’s motion for Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr.10Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 15-6. However, he was critical of the Melbourne ministry’s relationship with O’Connell, whom he had privately described as ‘too violent a schoolmaster’,11Beaumont to Charles Babbage, 28 Aug. 1835, BL Add Mss 37189, f. 161. and in December 1835, at a meeting of the Literary Association of the Friends of Poland, denounced him as ‘the greatest enemy of liberty’.12The Times, 17 Dec. 1835. Nine months later though, Beaumont subscribed £100 to O’Connell’s fighting fund, the ‘Catholic rent’, explaining to him that ‘as I spoke unceremoniously against the expediency of your agitation in England … when I see you proceeding in a right course I do not hesitate with equal frankness to offer you my humble assistance’, a possible reference to the cooling of O’Connell’s attacks on the House of Lords since the previous year.13The Times, 7 Sep. 1836. The Times was not convinced, and a leading article attacked Beaumont’s ‘inexplicable conduct’ and ‘glaring inconsistency’.14Ibid. Beaumont, however, remained firm in his new convictions, and after a tour of Ireland in the autumn of 1836, he moved but did not press an amendment to the address, 31 Jan. 1837, stating that no further measures ‘introduced for the tranquillity of Ireland could be effectual’ unless they were accompanied by measures for ‘the abolition of all religious distinctions in that country’.15The Times, 5 Jan. 1837; Hansard, 31 Jan. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 40-1.

This complete turnaround, however, did little to halt his dwindling popularity among his constituents, and he resigned on health grounds at the general election of 1837 rather than risk defeat. He spent most of the next six years in continental Europe, mainly in Italy, before returning home in April 1843, unable to resume his public affairs due to ill health. He died at Bournemouth in December 1848. Although eulogised as ‘a man of high spirit and intelligence, of great frankness of manners and of a munificence and generosity of disposition’, an unsympathetic obituarist noted that his life after parliament ‘affords a striking lesson that large wealth, though it does not fail to excite the temporary adulation of interested parties, is not alone sufficient to purchase happiness or even worldly prosperity’.16Newcastle Journal, 23 Dec. 1848; Gent. Mag. (1849), ii. 94-5. His estates passed to his eldest son Wentworth Blackett Beaumont, Liberal member for Northumberland South, 1852-1885, and Tyneside, 1886-92.17HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 224. His third son, Somerset Archibald, was Liberal MP for Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 1860-65.