STOPFORD (AFTERWARDS STOPFORD-SACKVILLE), Sackville George (1840-1926), of Drayton House, Thrapston, Northants.

The sixth longest surviving MP of the first reform era, Stopford was elected uncontested as a Conservative at the 1867 Northamptonshire North by-election after polling last at Northampton in 1865. He was a silent member during the period, but exhibited some dissent over the details of Disraeli’s reform bill.

Stopford, whose mother had been the niece and heiress of the fifth and final duke of Dorset, was educated at Eton and Christ Church, where he completed a B.A. in Law and Modern History. He was admitted to the Inner Temple in 1863 but was never called to the bar, and graduated with an M.A. from Christ Church, Oxford in 1865.1Hampshire Advertiser, 13 Dec. 1862; Morning Post, 10 Mar. 1865. He was appointed to the Northamptonshire militia in 1862 and as a JP for the county in 1863, initiating a lifelong commitment to its local administration. Within months of graduating in 1865, he unsuccessfully contested the borough of Northampton as a Conservative. He favoured a reduction in military expenditure, the extension of a national system of education, moderate parliamentary reform and a system of voluntary church rates in the towns but not rural parishes.2Northampton Mercury, 1 July 1865. His youth played against him – ‘Northampton is not a nursery ground for suckling politicians’, the Liberal Northampton Mercury remarked – and he came bottom of the poll with 950 votes, 300 behind the second placed Liberal. 3Northampton Mercury, 8 July 1865. He subsequently entered the diplomatic service and was employed in the Foreign Office as an attaché at Lisbon. He resigned his post in 1867 to offer at Northamptonshire North, where he again stood as a Conservative, and was returned without a contest.4Northampton Mercury, 8 Oct. 1926. During his campaign he re-affirmed his support for moderate measures of parliamentary, church rate and educational reform, and called for closer co-operation between the army and the militia.5Northampton Mercury, 26 Jan., 16 Feb. 1867.

Stopford made no recorded speeches during his first brief parliament, but he maintained an average attendance of the division lobbies, voting in 115 out of 330 divisions and serving on three private bill committees.6PP 1867 (0.143), lvi. 23; PP 1867-68 (481), lvi. 1. He sided with the Conservative leadership in most votes. However he demonstrated an independent streak over the government’s reform legislation, voting in the minorities that opposed providing a shared seat to the universities of London and Durham, 17 June 1867, and giving boroughs with a population over 250,000 a third member, 1 July 1867. He also voted against the government in the minorities that supported the defraying of returning officers’ costs by county rates, 27 June 1867, and the transfer of the costs of electoral courts to constituencies charged with corruption, 14 July 1868.

Stopford name was changed by royal licence to Stopford-Sackville in 1870 and he continued to represent Northamptonshire North – speaking occasionally in the Commons – until his defeat in 1880. He unsuccessfully contested the Bosworth division of Leicestershire in 1885 and North Cambridgeshire at the 1894 by-election. He was eventually re-elected as a Conservative in 1900 for the single-member division of Northamptonshire North, but was defeated in 1906. Outside parliament he ‘devoted practically the whole of his life to public work in Northamptonshire’, serving as a commanding officer of the Northamptonshire militia, magistrate, chairman and vice chairman of quarter sessions and chairman of the county council from 1889.7The Times, 7 Oct. 1926; Northampton Mercury, 8 Oct. 1926. He was found dead in his bath at the Carlton Club, following a probable heart attack, on 6 October 1926.8The Times, 7 Oct. 1926. His will was resworn at £322,094. He died without issue and was succeeded in his estates by his nephew Nigel Stopford Sackville (1901-1972).9England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, 1927, 190 (17 Feb. 1927).