National Portrait Gallery in 1898); a group of portraits by Sir Joshua Reynolds, including 'Lady Crosbie,' 'Collina' (Lady Gertrude Fitzpatrick), 'Sylvia' (Lady Anne Fitzpatrick), and 'The Fortune-teller' (portraits of Lord Henry and Lady Charlotte Spencer-Churchill); and he owned master-pieces of portraiture by Gainsborough and Romney. In 1894 Sir Charles was made a trustee of the National Gallery. His private collection, which descended to his eldest son, now known as the Tennant gallery, is housed at 34 Queen Anne's Gate, London, S.W., and is open to the public on Wednesdays and Saturdays. Tennant was till near the close of his life a liberal in politics. He was elected for Glasgow at a bye-election in 1879, and at the general election in 1880 won Peebles and Selkirk from the conservative member, Sir Graham Graham Montgomery, by 32 votes. He retained the seat till 1886, when he was defeated by the liberal-unionist, Mr. Walter Thorbum, by 50 votes. In 1890 he unsuccessfully contested the Partick division of Lanarkshire against Mr. Parker Smith, and made no further attempt to enter the House of Commons, in which he played no prominent part. In July 1885, on Gladstone's recommendation, he was created a baronet. By 1904 his economic views had undergone a change, and he became in that year a member of Mr. Chamberlain's tariff reform commission. He died at Broad Oaks, Byfleet, Surrey, on 4 June 1906, and was buried in Traquair churchyard.
Tennant married twice : firstly, on 1 Aug. 1849, Emma (d. 1895), daughter of Richard Winsloe of Moimt Nebo, Taunton, Somerset, by whom he had six sons and six daughters; his eldest surviving son, Edward Priaulx Tennant (6. 31 May 1859), succeeded to the baronetcy in 1906, and was raised to the peerage in 1911 as Baron Glenconner; the youngest son, Harold John Tennant, was elected M.P. for Berwickshire in 1895, and served in muior posts in the liberal administrations of Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Mr. Asquith; Emma Alice Margaret, the youngest daughter, became in 1894 second wife of Mr. Asqviith, prime minister from 1909. Sir Charles married secondly, in Nov. 1898, Marguerite, youngest daughter of Colonel Charles W. Miles of Burton Hill, Mahnesbury, by whom he had four daughters.
A portrait in oils, painted by W. W. Ouless in 1900, and a bust by McAllum in 1870 are in the possession of Lord Glenconner at The Glen, Traquair.
[Scotsman, Glasgow Herald, and Dundee Advertiser, 5 June 1906; Blair's Sketches of Glasgow Necropolis, 1857; A Hundred Glasgow Men, 1886; Who's Who, 1905; Catalogue of Pictures in Tennant Gallery; private information.]
TENNANT, Sir DAVID (1829–1905), speaker of the House of Assembly of the Cape of Good Hope, born at Cape Town on 10 Jan. 1829, was the eldest son of Hercules Tennant, sometime civil commissioner and resident magistrate of Uitenhage and author of 'Tennant's Notary's Manual for the Cape of Good Hope,' by his first wife Aletta Jacoba, daughter of Johannes Hendricus Brand, member of the court of justice at the Cape, and sister of Sir Christoffel Brand, first speaker of the Cape House of Assembly. His grandfather, Alexander Tennant, who belonged to an Ayrshire family, landed on his way to India at the Cape, where he eventually decided to settle. After being educated at a private school in Cape Town young Tennant was admitted on 12 April 1849 attorney at law of the supreme court, and practised also as a notary public and conveyancer and in the vice-admiralty court of the colony, with much success. For many years he was registrar of the diocese of Cape Town and legal adviser to the bishop; during his tenure of office there took place the prolonged litigation concerning Bishop Colenso.
In May 1866 he was returned to the House of Assembly of the Cape of Good Hope as member for the electoral division of Piquetberg, which he continued to represent until his retirement in 1896. On 18 June 1874 he was unanimously elected speaker of the House of Assembly in succession to his uncle. Sir Christoffel Brand, and was re-elected unopposed in 1879, 1884, 1889, and 1894, holding the position for nearly twenty-two years. During this long period his rulings were seldom questioned and his personal influence in the house was very great. At the close of the session of 1893, when he was accorded a special vote of thanks for his services in the chair, the prime minister, Cecil Rhodes bore witness to 'the firmness and impartiality with which he had maintained the dignity and rights of the house' (Debates of the House of Assembly, 1893, p. 368). He retired on a pension on 26 Feb. 1896, when he again received the thanks of the house for his services in the chair.
Tennant was closely identified with the educational life of the colony, and for some years was a member of the council of the
