Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/119

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Stuart-Wortley-Mackenzie
113
Stubbs

his views. He took part against Peel in the cabinet discussions which preceded his change of policy on the subject of the corn laws, but the latter is said to have been sanguine as to his ultimate conversion. On 19 Dec. 1845 he died unexpectedly, of suppressed gout and apoplexy, at Wharncliffe House, Curzon Street. Greville, who knew him well, says no man ever died with fewer enemies. He had not first-rate abilities, but from his strong sense, liberal opinions, and straightforward conduct was much looked up to by the country gentlemen. He gave signal proof of his personal courage during the reform riots in Yorkshire. His party never forgave him his conduct during the reform struggle, and he was very unjustly charged with insincerity and double-dealing; but Peel clearly appreciated the sterling worth of his character. He undoubtedly did good service in obviating the necessity for a creation of peers. Greville thinks he appeared to most advantage when he prevented the tory peers from overruling the law lords in allowing O'Connell's release on a writ of error. He had made a special study of criminal jurisprudence, and as a chairman of quarter sessions is said to have been unequalled.

A portrait of Wharncliffe by Sir Francis Grant, P.R.A., belongs to the Earl of Wharncliffe. Another portrait was engraved after H. P. Briggs by F. Holl.

Wharncliffe married, in 1799, Lady Caroline Mary Elizabeth Creighton, daughter by his second wife of John, first earl of Erne. She died on 23 April 1853. The issue of the marriage was three sons and one daughter, Caroline, who married the Hon. John Chetwynd Talbot.

The eldest son, John Stuart-Wortley, second Baron Wharncliffe (1801–1855), born on 20 April 1801, graduated B.A. from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1822, with a first-class in mathematics and a second in classics. He represented Bossiney from 1823 to 1832, and the West Riding of Yorkshire from 1841 till his succession to the peerage. He acted with the Huskisson party till appointed secretary to the board of control on 16 Feb. 1830 in the last tory ministry before the Reform Bill. He shared his father's views on the reform question. He was an unsuccessful candidate for Forfarshire in 1835, and twice failed to obtain election for the West Riding of Yorkshire, but in 1841 won a great triumph for his party in that constituency. He was an enlightened agriculturist and a cultivated man. Besides publishing pamphlets on the abolition of the Irish viceroyalty, on the institution of tribunals of commerce, and a letter to Philip Pusey on drainage in the ‘Journal of the Agricultural Society,’ he was author of ‘A Brief Inquiry into the True Award of an Equitable Adjustment between the Nation and its Creditors,’ 1833, 8vo, and translator and editor of Guizot's ‘Memoirs of George Monk,’ 1838, 8vo. He died at Wortley Hall, near Sheffield, on 22 Oct. 1855. By his wife, Georgiana, third daughter of Dudley Ryder, first Earl of Harrowby [q. v.], he had three sons and two daughters. The eldest son, Edward Montagu Granville Stuart-Wortley, born on 15 Dec. 1827, was on 15 Jan. 1876 created Earl of Wharncliffe and Viscount Carlton.

The first Lord Wharncliffe's youngest son, James Archibald Stuart-Wortley (1805–1881), was born in London on 3 July 1805. He graduated B.A. from Christ Church, Oxford, in 1826, and was soon after elected fellow of Merton. He was called to the bar from the Inner Temple in 1831, and took silk ten years later. In 1844 he became counsel to the bank of England, and in the following year was appointed solicitor-general to the queen-dowager and attorney-general to the Duchy of Lancaster. In 1846 he was sworn of the privy council, and was judge-advocate-general during the last months of Peel's second administration. In 1850 he became recorder of London, and was solicitor-general under Lord Palmerston in 1856–7. From 1835 to 1837 he represented Halifax, and from 1842 to 1859 sat for Buteshire. He died at Belton House, Grantham, on 22 Aug. 1881. Stuart-Wortley married, in 1846, the Hon. Jane Lawley, only daughter of Paul Beilby, first lord Wenlock. His second son, Mr. Charles Beilby Stuart-Wortley, Q.C., M.P. (b. 1851), was under-secretary for the home department from 1885 to 1892.

[Doyle's Official Baronage; Burke's Peerage; Greville Memoirs (1888), passim; Wellington Corresp. vol. viii.; Gent. Mag. 1846 i. 202–4, 1855 ii. 643; Corresp. of Earl Grey with William IV and Sir H. Taylor; Ryall's Eminent Conservatives (with portrait); Ann. Reg. 1881, ii. 138–9; Brit. Mus. Cat.]

G. Le G. N.

STUBBS, GEORGE (1724–1806), animal painter and anatomist, the son of John Stubbs, a currier, was born at Liverpool on 24 Aug. 1724, and brought up to his father's business. He was scarcely eight years old when he began to study anatomy at his father's house in Ormond Street, Liverpool, a neighbour, Dr. Holt, lending him bones and prepared subjects to draw. When fifteen his father gave way to his son's desire to be a painter, and died soon afterwards, leaving his widow in comfortable cir-