DE HORSEY (formerly KILDERBEE), Spencer Horsey (1790-1860), of Great Glemham, Suffolk; 8 Upper Grosvenor Street, Middlesex

A Conservative Suffolk landed gentlemen, Kilderbee changed his surname to de Horsey in 1832. He had briefly sat in the unreformed Commons and did little of note in his second spell in the House. The son of the wealthy Suffolk cleric Samuel Kilderbee (1759-1847), de Horsey had in 1813 succeeded to the Great Glemham estate of his paternal grandfather in 1813.1F. Boase, Modern English biography, supplement (1912), ii. 63; HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 912-13. His grandfather had been solicitor to the Tory Rous family, of Henham Hall, into which he later married.2Ibid. De Horsey successively sat for two Suffolk boroughs as an anti-reformer after 1829, but both were disenfranchised by the 1832 Reform Act.3Ibid.

That year de Horsey had changed his name from Kilderbee after becoming co-heir (with his half-brother) to the estates of his maternal grandmother.4Ibid., 913. A founder and lifelong member of the Carlton Club, de Horsey came forward as a Conservative candidate for Newcastle-under-Lyme at the 1837 general election.5Ibid. During the campaign he promised strong support for the established church and constitution, and jibed that the Whig ministry could not stand ‘unless propped up by [Daniel] O’Connell’s 43 nominees’.6Staffordshire Advertiser, 29 July 1837. Although his lack of local connections with Staffordshire aroused comment, de Horsey was returned in second place.7Ibid.

Summing up de Horsey’s second spell in the Commons, the chronicler of Staffordshire parliamentary history and founder of the History of Parliament, Josiah Clement Wedgwood MP, wrote that ‘he took no part in debates, but his votes were consistently Conservative, save for that in favour of the abolition of negro apprenticeships [in 1838]’.8J.C. Wedgwood, Staffordshire parliamentary history (1934), iii. 104. De Horsey opposed the repeal of the corn laws, the appropriation of surplus Irish church revenues, the Whig government’s Canadian policy, and attempts to repeal the new poor law. He backed the votes of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 31 Jan. 1840, 4 June 1841. He also served on the 1841 committee on the West India mail service which recommended retaining Falmouth as the port of departure.9PP 1841 (409), viii. 224, 228.

De Horsey did not seek re-election at Newcastle-under-Lyme in 1841. He was proposed by Leicester Conservatives at that borough’s nomination, but his absence prompted them to withdraw his name.10Leicester Chronicle, 3 July 1841. De Horsey had planned to contest Barnstaple, but as he later wrote to Peel, 29 July 1841, his wife’s illness prevented this:

which was a real mortification to me, as well as to Ld Hertford [de Horsey’s uncle] who was very anxious that I should be in this Parlt and he has still kindly left me, the power of going as far as [£]4000 to procure myself a seat in case of any vacancy arising with a fair chance of success. I have reason to know that it will afford him great satisfaction should it be in the power of the Gov’t … [if anything] … is to be given me … in the way of an appointment – and I am ready to work for it however small it may be – I am quite aware how many there are with superior claims to any that I have.11Spencer de Horsey to Sir Robert Peel, 29 July 1841, Add. 40485, f. 325.

Peel did not reciprocate and de Horsey does not appear to have sought a return to the Commons. Instead he was increasingly preoccupied with yachting, and he died at Cowes in 1860. He was succeeded in turn by his two sons: William Henry Beaumont de Horsey (1826-1915), a general, and Algernon Frederick Rous de Horsey (1827-1922), an admiral.12HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 913. His half-brother, Harry Spencer Waddington (1781-1864), was Conservative MP for West Suffolk, 1838-59.