BERESFORD, Sir John Poo (1766-1844), of Hutton Bonville, nr. Northallerton, Yorks. and 48 Harley Street, London

Beresford, a serving flag officer and distinguished veteran of naval campaigns in the Mediterranean, North America and the West Indies, was the acknowledged illegitimate son of the 1^st marquis of Waterford, probably by his eventual wife.1Creevey Papers, ii. 127. For his naval career see J. K. Laughton, ‘Beresford, Sir John Poo, first baronet (1766–1844)’, rev. Andrew Lambert, Oxford DNB. In 1832 he had been forced to retire from his sister-in-law’s pocket borough of Northallerton, which he had represented as a Tory since 1826, following its partial disfranchisement by the Reform Act.2HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 259. He instead came forward for Coleraine, where he had sat before 1826 on the Waterford interest, which was now headed by his nephew the 3^rd marquess. After being elected on the casting vote of the mayor, a Beresford nominee, he was ‘drawn through the town in a very handsome carriage made in the shape of a boat’.3Belfast Newsletter, 18 Dec.; Morning Post, 21 Dec. 1832. Beresford declined to contest his opponent’s petition against his return, 23 Feb. 1833, but a defence was mounted by local electors over the terms of the borough’s franchise, 14 Mar., and he was only unseated following the decision of an election committee, 17 May 1833.4Examiner, 24 Feb.; Morning Post, 18 May 1833. He cast no known votes during this time.

Appointed a second naval lord by the incoming Peel ministry, 24 Dec. 1834, at the 1835 general election he was parachuted into the admiralty borough of Chatham, where he issued an address declaring his willingness ‘to grant every extension of civil and religious indulgence consistent with the security of the altar and throne’, and topped the poll.5Add. 40405, ff. 222-3; Parliamentary Testbook (1835), 18. A petition against his return, alleging interference by the commandant of the local royal marines, came to nothing.6N. Gash, Politics in the Age of Peel, (1953), 444-5.

A silent Member in his last parliament, Beresford was in Peel’s minorities on the speakership, 19 Feb., the address, 21 Feb., and the division on the Irish church which brought the ministry down, 2 Apr. 1835. Thereafter he gave steady support to the Conservative opposition to the reappointed Whig ministry on most major issues, including Irish municipal reform and reform of the Irish church, and divided against the abolition of military flogging, 13 Apr. 1836, inquiry into the reappointment of Lord Brudenell, 3 May 1836, and the ballot, 7 Mar. 1837. At that year’s general election he made way for the Whig nominee at Chatham and ‘retired entirely from public affairs’, residing ‘mostly at his Yorkshire seat’.7Morning Post, 7 Oct. 1844. In 1838 he acted as George Loftus’s second in a duel with his nephew Lord Waterford, in what was clearly a matter of form, as neither party was injured.8Disraeli Letters, ii. 369.

Beresford died in October 1844 at Bedale Hall, the Yorkshire seat of his eldest son and successor in the baronetcy George de la Poer Beresford (1811-73), Conservative Member for Athlone, 1841-2.9Gent. Mag. (1844), ii. 646; PROB 8/237; 11/2007/805.