CAYLEY, Sir George, 6th bt. (1773-1857), of High Hall, Brompton, Yorks. and 20 Hertford Street, Mayfair, London, Mdx.

Lauded by his biographers as ‘the inventor of the aeroplane’ and ‘the man who discovered flight’, Cayley was a gifted and prolific engineer, generally regarded as the founding father of aeronautical science, whose pioneering work on the subject was acknowledged by the Wright brothers.1J.L. Pritchard, Sir George Cayley: the inventor of the aeroplane (1961), 34; R. Dee, The man who discovered flight. George Cayley and the first aeroplane (2007); J.E. Hodgson, Sir George Cayley: the founder of British aeronautical science (1936). He made rather less of an impact in Parliament during his brief spell as MP for his native Scarborough.

The Cayley family had held sizeable estates at Brompton near Scarborough since the seventeenth century, and Cayley succeeded his father as 6^th baronet in 1792.2Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 3. In 1883 the family’s Yorkshire estates amounted to 8,459 acres: J. Bateman, The great landowners of Great Britain and Ireland (4th edn., 1883), 83. As a child he had spent much time with the village watchmaker and his education furthered his scientific and mechanical interests.3J.E. Hodgson (ed.), Aeronautical and miscellaneous note-book (ca. 1799-1826) of Sir George Cayley with an appendix comprising a list of the Cayley papers (1933), pg. ix. He was tutored at Nottingham from 1791 by Rev. George Walker, a Unitarian minister and ‘distinguished mathematician’ who was a Fellow of the Royal Society. He moved to London in 1792 as a pupil of Rev. George Cadogan Morgan, another Nonconformist minister with scientific interests. His mother had hoped that this move would quell the developing romance between Cayley and Walker’s ‘mathematically accomplished and notably attractive’ daughter, Sarah, but the couple were married in 1795, although his wife’s short temper made for a ‘turbulent’ marriage.4J.A.D. Ackroyd, ‘Sir George Cayley, the father of aeronautics. Part 1. The invention of the aeroplane’, Notes & Records of the Royal Society of London, 56 (2002), 169-70. Despite his education by Nonconformist clergymen and his mother’s conversion to Methodism, Cayley remained a staunch Anglican.5G. Fairlie & E. Cayley, The life of a genius (1965), 59, 61. He was said to have been in his youth ‘one of the best fencers and flyfishers of his day. He was also a capital conjuror’.6J.D.L. Legard, The Legards of Anlaby & Ganton: their neighbours & neighbourhood (1926), 181. A ‘generous and modest man of great personal charm’,7J.A. Bagley, ‘Cayley, Sir George, sixth baronet’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. one of his grandsons described him as ‘a man of the most universal knowledge he had ever known’.8Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 211.

Cayley developed a range of scientific interests, but it was the principles of flight which preoccupied him, and as early as 1799 he ‘formulated the concept of the classical fixed wing aeroplane with separate mechanisms for generating lift and propulsion’. In 1809 he experimented with a glider capable of lifting a person, and in 1809-10 published a seminal paper outlining the basic principles of aeroplane flight. He also investigated and published papers on airships, and in 1817 launched a public subscription to encourage further work in this field, but with little success.9Bagley, ‘Cayley, Sir George’; Morning Chronicle, 11 Oct. 1817. He experimented with projectiles and invented the forerunners of the bicycle wheel (1808) and the caterpillar track (1825), which in the latter case, unusually for him, he patented.10Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 145-6, 149-50; Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, pg. xx. In 1821 he helped to found the Yorkshire Philosophical Society, and subscribed £50 towards their scientific institution four years later.11Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 123; York Herald, 30 Apr. 1825. He took a keen interest in the York Mechanics’ Institute, serving as its president from its foundation in 1827 until his death.12Bagley, ‘Cayley, Sir George’; York Herald, 27 Mar. 1858. He also played a key part in the establishment of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at a meeting at York in 1831.13Preston Chronicle, 8 Oct. 1831. Alongside this, Cayley devoted considerable attention to the management of his Yorkshire and Lincolnshire estates.14He was the patron of the livings of All Saints, Brompton, Yorks. and Scampton, Lincs.: S. Lewis, Topographical dictionary of England (1844), i. 386; iv. 28. In 1800 he took a leading part in securing an Act for the Muston drainage scheme, to improve 10,000 acres of land prone to flooding west of Scarborough.15A. Bayliss & P. Bayliss, Scarborough’s Members of Parliament, 1832 to 1906. Scarborough’s mayors, 1836 to 1906: a biographical dictionary (2008), 11. A benevolent landlord, he provided allotments for labourers and rewarded their efforts at improvement.16Leeds Mercury, 2 Feb. 1822; Bury and Norwich Post, 13 Nov. 1844; York Herald, 15 Aug. 1846.

While being educated in London, Cayley had become acquainted with John Horne Tooke, John Cartwright and other reformers, and developed republican sympathies, refusing to be addressed as Sir George.17Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 22, 24. (One of his Scarborough opponents dubbed him ‘Citizen Cayley’.18Sir F.W. Trench to Sir Robert Peel, 21 Dec. 1834, BL, Add. MSS. 40407, f. 34.) He took a prominent part in Yorkshire politics, supporting the return of William Wilberforce at York in 1807.19Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, pg. xix. In 1818 he published an open letter to Cartwright on parliamentary reform, in which he urged him ‘to petition only for some moderate and specific objects’, rather than ‘wander[ing] into the extreme limits of political speculation’.20Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 79-80. He served as president of the York Whig Club, ‘the most influential reformist institution in the North of England’, from 1821 until 1827, when he urged that the club should be remodelled ‘to unite the friends of popular principles’.21Bayliss & Bayliss, Scarborough’s Members of Parliament, 11; Morning Chronicle, 8 Oct. 1827. He had been unable to assist at the 1820 election because his wife was ill, but was active at subsequent contests, and was often called upon to propose candidates on the hustings.22York Herald, 18 Mar. 1820; Leeds Mercury, 17 June 1826; Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, pg. xx. Backing Sir John Johnstone for Yorkshire in 1830, he voiced his dislike of monopoly, but believed that the corn laws must be retained, ‘for what with portioning daughters, and paying the debts of grandfathers, the land owner, in times of depression, had more than his share to perform’.23York Herald, 4 Dec. 1830. The following year he was prominent at reform meetings in the county.24York Herald, 26 Mar. 1831; The Times, 14 Oct. 1831.

In spring 1831 Cayley declared his intention to offer for Scarborough once the reform bill had been passed.25Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 114-5. On the hustings at Scarborough town hall in 1832, he noted that he had been born less than 100 yards from that spot, and referred proudly to his former association with Horne Tooke. He promised to vote for the abolition of slavery, but hoarseness meant that his remarks on free trade were difficult to hear, although he expressed support for a happy medium, and for the need to protect the shipping interest from foreign competition. Following his return in second place behind Sir John Johnstone, he noted that Scarborough’s corporation had opposed him, and promised to support Hume’s proposals for corporation reform in order to ‘root them up stump and branch’. He also declared that ‘we must have an equal taxation; the landowner, the ship-owner, and the manufacturer, must none of them be taxed to the exemption of the other’.26York Herald, 22 Dec. 1832; Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 117.

Reputedly a poor attender,27Daily News, 7 Feb. 1849. Cayley ‘was never really happy in the Commons’, and although elected as a Whig, ‘he was not fully in sympathy with all that was basic in Whig policy. He was really more of an independent’.28Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 120. Cayley’s reluctance to adhere to any particular party line was reflected in his conception of Parliament as ‘a truly deliberative assembly’, which had led him to condemn attempts to extract pledges from candidates in 1832, because

‘if any man is sent up to vote on any question guided only by the degree of information he and his local constituents may possess at the date of his Election, and cannot open his reasonable conviction to that wider and later grasp of information which the debates of Parliament, or its official documents, may present to him, he can make no efficient part of the deliberative wisdom which ought to guide the State’,

a pronouncement which undoubtedly also reflected his rational scientific sensibilities.29Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 105. Cayley made these comments at the 1832 election in response to questions from the Scarborough Anti-Slavery Society.

Early in his first session Cayley presented a petition from inhabitants calling for reform of Scarborough’s corporation, 13 Feb. 1833, and he supported the prayer of various local petitions presented by Johnstone, 20 Mar. 1833, including one for the abolition of slavery.30The Times, 14 Feb. 1833, 21 Mar. 1833. He divided against Joseph Hume on the abolition of military sinecures, 14 Feb. 1833, but supported him on the abolition of military flogging, 2 Apr. 1833. Having previously condemned the ballot as ‘an un-English practice; I do not like voting in the dark’, he divided against it, 25 Apr. 1833, and opposed shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833, although he reversed the latter vote in the following session, 15 May 1834.31York Herald, 11 Dec. 1830. He was in the minority with Fowell Buxton for limitations on the period of slave apprenticeships, 24 July 1833. He backed the removal of Jewish disabilities, 22 May 1833, and the admission of Dissenters to universities, 17 Apr. 1834. In keeping with his previous pronouncements on the corn laws, Cayley divided against Hume’s motion for a moderate fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834. He again advocated Scarborough’s interests that July when he represented the town as part of a deputation to the board of trade complaining of the ill effects for seaports if the system of bonded warehouses was extended to inland towns.32The Standard, 5 July 1834.

An indifferent orator, Cayley’s rare contributions to debate reflected his scientific interests, endorsing efforts to update the law on patents, 19 Feb. 1833, and sitting on the committee on the subsequent bill.33Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 114; The Standard, 25 Apr. 1833. He supported a petition from his close friend, the inventor Goldsworthy Gurney, for an alteration in the prohibitive tolls on steam carriages using roads, which had been imposed in 1831 following pressure from the agricultural interest.34Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 108. Gurney had spent £30,000 perfecting his steam carriage design, and Cayley – who had been among MPs who made an experimental steam carriage journey from London to Brighton in 183335Morning Post, 26 Aug. 1833. – contended that he had been ‘very ill-used’, and that this ‘beneficial invention... deserved the highest reward the country could bestow’, 20 Apr. 1834. Although Cayley was part of a deputation to Lord Althorp on Gurney’s behalf, and sat on the select committee which considered his case, no redress was forthcoming.36Morning Post, 4 July 1834; PP 1834 (483), xi. 224; G.B. Smith, rev. A. McConnell, ‘Gurney, Sir Goldsworthy’, Oxf. DNB [www.oxforddnb.com]. Cayley’s committee service was otherwise limited to the Petersfield election petition.37CJ, lxxxviii. 124.

The sudden dissolution meant that Cayley felt compelled to offer again in 1835, but he retired after the first day’s poll when it became evident that an unofficial coalition between the Conservative Sir Frederick Trench and the trimming Johnstone, who promised support for Peel’s ministry, would result in his defeat.38Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 115-16; Leeds Mercury, 24 Jan. 1835; Parliamentary Test Book, 1835 (1835), 90. He complained that ‘too many direct breaches of promise have been made’ and ‘overwhelming threats or temptations... held out’, and warned that ‘without Corporate Reform, the Reform Bill itself is an incomplete guardian of your liberties’. However, he declared himself ‘rejoiced to be relieved from the confinement and restraint of a Parliamentary life’.39Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 115-16. Disappointment among Scarborough’s inhabitants at Cayley’s defeat meant that the victorious MPs were not chaired, and he was subsequently presented with ‘a splendid tea-urn’ worth 100 guineas.40Scarborough poll book (J. Bye, 1835), 2; Leeds Mercury, 9 May 1835. His continuing influence at Scarborough was demonstrated by the selection that May of his son-in-law, Sir Thomas Charles Style, as prospective Liberal candidate, and at the 1837 election Style secured the second seat behind Trench.41Ibid.

In 1839 Cayley appeared as a witness before the select committee on lighting the House, giving typically practical advice, and endorsing Gurney’s Bude light.42PP 1839 (501), xiii. 43-6. He remained a supporter of the corn laws, attending a meeting of the Central Agricultural Society in 1839 which considered how to counter the anti-corn law agitation.43York Herald, 2 Mar. 1839; Legard, Legards of Anlaby, 178. (He had helped to establish the society in 1835 and was also involved with the Yorkshire Central Agricultural Association, of which his son-in-law was president.44Berrow’s Worcester Journal, 12 Nov. 1835; Newcastle Courant, 21 Nov. 1835.) He continued to take an interest in Scarborough politics, apparently helping to arrange with the commissioners of woods and forests for the Liberals to have valuable pasture land at their disposal to lend out prior to the 1841 election.45Daily News, 7 Feb. 1849.

Cayley’s energies after leaving the House were, however, devoted primarily to science. He supported the establishment of the Adelaide Gallery in the Strand, which provided scientific and mechanical demonstrations and exhibits, but when its focus shifted from education to amusement, he took the lead in founding the Polytechnic Institution in Regent Street in 1838, for which he secured a royal charter.46Bagley, ‘Sir George Cayley’; Fairlie & Cayley, Life of a genius, 125-31. Cayley had been present at the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester railway in 1830 when William Huskisson was killed, an experience which prompted him to publish several schemes (of varying practicality) for improving railway safety between 1831 and 1847.47Mechanics’ Magazine (1831), 145-9; (1840), 466-8, 563-6; (1841), 130-3; (1842), 397-8; (1845), 145-7; (1847), 611. He also forwarded some suggestions to Sir Robert Peel in 1845: Dee, The man who discovered flight, 193. He also designed an artificial hand for one of his tenants, which was exhibited at the Royal Polytechnic Institution in 1845, leading Punch to joke that his next invention should be an iron heart for the poor law commissioners.48The Era, 23 Mar. 1845; Preston Guardian, 5 Apr. 1845. For Cayley’s papers on this subject, see Mechanics’ Magazine (1849), 289-91; (1856), 581-2. Cayley maintained his interest in flight. In 1837 he suggested the formation of a Society for Promoting Aerial Navigation, and three years later issued a prospectus for a Royal Aerostatic Institution, neither of which enjoyed much success.49Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 120-1. See also his papers on ‘aerial navigation’ and ‘governable parachutes’: Mechanics’ Magazine (1843), 263-5, 273-8; (1852), 241-4. Undeterred, Cayley continued his own experiments, which included inventing a hot-air engine as a potential power source for flight.50Bagley, ‘Cayley, Sir George’; The Operative, 4 Nov. 1838; Leeds Mercury, 26 Dec. 1840. In 1849 he launched a glider large enough to carry a small child at Brompton, and in 1853, reputedly with his coachman as pilot, flew the first ever full-size glider.51Bagley, ‘Cayley, Sir George, sixth baronet’. He also undertook work on optics, acoustics, steam engines and breech-loading rifles, and had his own engineering works at Holywell Street, Millbank, London.52Ackroyd, ‘Sir George Cayley’, 170; The Times, 25 Nov. 1840; Legard, The Legards of Anlaby, 174.

Cayley died at Brompton in December 1857, and was buried at All Saints, Brompton.53Pritchard, Sir George Cayley, 218. Brompton Hall is now a special school: http://www.bromptonhall.n-yorks.sch.uk/about%20school.htm He had been predeceased by his wife, who had been in declining mental health since 1840.54Dee, The man who discovered flight, 203, 277. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his only surviving son, Digby (1807-83), whose eldest son, George Allanson Cayley, stood unsuccessfully as a Conservative at Ripon in 1868 and 1871. Cayley’s third daughter Emma (d. 1848) married her cousin, Edward Stillingfleet Cayley, MP for the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1832-62, and their son George John offered unsuccessfully as a Conservative at Scarborough in December 1857, 1859, 1865 and 1868.55Hull Packet, 18 Dec. 1857. Another grandson did enter the Commons: Henry Frederick Beaumont was Liberal MP for the southern division of the West Riding, 1865-74, and for Colne Valley, 1885-92, latterly as a Liberal Unionist. Cayley’s scientific papers are held by the Royal Aeronautical Society, London. As a scientist, ‘his posthumous reputation suffered almost complete neglect until the end of the [nineteenth] century, and even today his full stature is not generally recognised’, despite the efforts of biographers.56I. James, Remarkable engineers: from Riquet to Shannon (2010), 40.