SPEIRS, Alexander (1803-1844), of Elderslie House, Renfrewshire.

Esteemed for his ‘uprightness of conduct and private worth’, Speirs sat for Richmond as a Reformer, but made little impact in the Commons before his career was curtailed by ill-health.1Glasgow Herald, 21 Oct. 1844. Born at Upleatham in Yorkshire2W.W. Rouse & J.A. Venn (ed.), Admissions to Trinity College, Cambridge, vol. IV 1801 to 1850 (1911), 200., he was descended from a Scottish mercantile family, whose fortune had been made by Speirs’ grandfather, also Alexander (1714-1782), the son of an Edinburgh merchant. He had established a plantation in Virginia, before returning in the 1740s to Glasgow, where he was one of the most prominent figures in the Clyde tobacco trade.3T.M. Devine, ‘A Glasgow tobacco merchant during the American War of Independence: Alexander Speirs of Elderslie, 1775 to 1781’, William and Mary Quarterly, 33:3 (1976), 502-3; idem., The tobacco lords. A study of the tobacco merchants of Glasgow and their trading activities c. 1740-90 (1975), 3. His extensive commercial interests included banking, the sugar trade, tanneries, ropeworks, iron manufacturing and canals, and he used his wealth to purchase extensive estates, particularly in Renfrewshire, where he constructed a mansion at Elderslie in 1780-1 at a cost of £12,000.4Devine, ‘Glasgow tobacco merchant’, 503; idem, Tobacco lords, 21, 23, 30, 183. His estates in Renfrewshire and Lanarkshire passed in 1782 to Speirs’ father, Archibald (1758-1832), who continued his father’s commercial interests and sat as MP for Renfrewshire, 1810-18.5HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 228; Devine, ‘Glasgow tobacco merchant’, 510; idem, Tobacco lords, 23, 183.

Speirs inherited his father’s estates on his death in 1832.6In 1883 the Speirs estates amounted to 11,493 acres, largely in Renfrewshire: J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edn., 1883), 417. In 1834 he attended a dinner at Glasgow in honour of the earl of Durham, although it is unclear whether it was him or his cousin and namesake who proposed the toast to ‘the memory of Charles James Fox’ and praised that statesman’s defence of the cause of liberty.7Morning Chronicle, 1 Nov. 1834. It was, however, not his Scottish connections, but his links through his mother to the Dundas family, electoral patrons of the borough of Richmond, which secured him a seat. Speirs was returned unopposed for Richmond alongside his first cousin, Hon. Thomas Dundas, in 1835, when he promised to do his utmost to remove Peel’s ministry ‘in order to reinstate thorough reformers in their place’.8York Courant, 22 Jan. 1835, cited in Parliamentary test book (1835), 149. Another first cousin, Alexander Graham Speirs, joined them in the House as MP for Paisley, 1835-6.9Dod’s parliamentary companion (1835), 164. Alexander Graham Speirs was often referred to as Captain Speirs. Speirs divided for Abercromby as speaker, 19 Feb. 1835, and when present generally gave his support to Whig ministers. He praised their achievements, particularly in abolishing slavery, the East India Company monopoly and sinecures and in reducing taxation, when he appeared at the Renfrewshire by-election in January 1837 to propose the unsuccessful Liberal candidate, Sir John Maxwell.10Sheffield Independent, 4 Feb. 1837. Following his own unopposed return for Richmond at the 1837 general election, Speirs again appeared on the Renfrewshire hustings, this time to second the candidature of Captain Houston Stewart, for whom he chaired a dinner following his defeat.11Caledonian Mercury, 3 Aug. 1837, 12 Aug. 1837. He was appointed as lord lieutenant of Renfrewshire in 1838, and elected as a member of the Highland and Agricultural Society of Scotland the same year.12London Gazette, 10 Aug. 1838; Caledonian Mercury, 12 July 1838.

Speirs is not known to have contributed to debate during his time in the House, and his only committee service appears to have been on the Longford election petition in 1838.13Belfast News-Letter, 13 Feb. 1838. He divided for the ballot, 15 Feb. 1838, entering the opposite lobby from Thomas Dundas on this occasion. Otherwise he was generally found voting in support of ministers, backing them on the Canadian question, 7 Mar. 1838, slave apprenticeships, 30 Mar. 1838, the Irish poor law, 30 Apr. 1838, and the Irish church, 15 May 1838. He divided for Villiers’s motion that the corn law petitioners should be heard at the bar of the House, 19 Feb. 1839. Ill-health meant that his parliamentary attendance dwindled thereafter. In June 1840 it was rumoured that he would retire from Richmond at the dissolution in order to seek election for Renfrewshire.14The Times, 17 June 1840. In January 1841 it was falsely reported that he had died at Leamington.15Freeman’s Journal, 27 Jan. 1841; Hull Packet, 29 Jan. 1841. The following month Speirs took the Chiltern Hundreds, as ‘severe illness’ meant that he could no longer fulfil his parliamentary duties, and was praised by the Richmond Reform Association for his ‘public-spirited conduct’ in vacating the seat to make way for a more active representative.16Morning Chronicle, 12 Feb. 1841.

Following a lengthy stay in Italy, Speirs and his family returned to England in August 1842.17The Standard, 10 Aug. 1842. He remained in delicate health, and died ‘suddenly’ at Roehampton in October 1844.18Caledonian Mercury, 10 Oct. 1844. He was buried in the family vault at Renfrew, with a large procession of his tenantry in attendance.19Caledonian Mercury, 24 Oct. 1844. His ‘cellar of remarkably choice wines’ was sold off after his death, but his estates passed to his only son Archibald Alexander (1840-1868), then a minor.20Glasgow Herald, 21 Mar. 1845. Archibald followed in his father’s footsteps as a Liberal MP, sitting for Renfrewshire from 1865 until his untimely death in December 1868. In 1863 Speirs’ daughter Eliza married Claud Alexander, Conservative MP for South Ayrshire, 1874-1885, and his wife remarried in 1867, becoming the second wife of the Liberal MP Edward Ellice, son of the leading Whig ‘Bear’ Ellice. Papers relating to the Speirs family of Elderslie are held at Glasgow city archives.