Humphry Morice (MP for Launceston)
Humphry Morice (1723 – 18 October 1785) was a
He was the son of Humphry Morice, MP, who embezzled large sums of money from the Bank of England and his daughter's trust fund and was widely believed to have poisoned himself to forestall exposure.
The death of his second cousin in 1750 brought Morice great wealth and the electoral control of two Cornish boroughs, but his poor health and perhaps his personality prevented him from achieving high office. After 1760, he was frequently abroad in Italy, where he was a patron of the painter Pompeo Batoni.
He briefly achieved ministerial office in 1762 as
Early life
He was the firstborn son of Humphry Morice, Governor of the Bank of England, by Morice's second wife Catherine.[1] He succeeded his father in 1731, but did not inherit any great estate from him,[2] as his father was discovered to have been embezzling on a large scale for years.[3] In 1750, however, the younger Humphry inherited considerable wealth and the estate of Werrington, Cornwall (then in Devon) upon the death of his second cousin, Sir William Morice, 3rd Baronet. The estate brought with it electoral patronage which allowed Morice to select the members of parliament for the Cornish boroughs of Newport and Launceston; Morice had himself returned for the latter to replace his cousin after inheriting the estate.[2]
Political biography
Sir William Morice, a
Morice again appealed to Newcastle in 1757, when the latter was forming his
In October 1758,
With two Parliamentary boroughs at his command, Morice aspired to higher political office, largely without success.[1] A number of circumstances impeded his rise. When Newcastle was whipping MPs in October 1755 to ensure their support of the Ministry's military actions in North America, his election manager, Viscount Dupplin, warned him that he must write directly to Morice, who was apt to be "high and a little touchy".[2][8] In 1759, a group of men attempted to extort money from him by accusing him of sodomy, then a capital crime.[12] Morice prosecuted them for extortion, and two were sentenced to prison and the pillory, but the strain badly affected his health, and he went to Italy in 1760 to recover.[8][13] The trip also allowed him to gratify his sense of aesthetics. A friend of the architect John Chute, he took with him a letter of introduction from Horace Walpole to Sir Horace Mann in Florence, through which he passed on the way to Naples.[8] His stay there was prolonged; in the spring of 1761, he visited Rome, where he had his portrait painted by Pompeo Batoni and became one of Batoni's most important English clients, purchasing the artist's Diana and Cupid. An avid collector of paintings, particularly landscapes, Morice built up a notable collection at his house, "The Grove", in Chiswick, which Walpole would admire in later years.[14][15] Morice was also an avid sportsman and foxhunter, and particularly tender to animals;[16] in Batoni's portrait, he is depicted after a day's hunting outside Rome, with three of his hounds about him.[15]
As a result of his travels, he was absent from England upon the death of George II. Peter Burrell wrote to Newcastle to ask that Morice's interests not be forgotten, but he was turned out of the Board of Green Cloth in the new administration.[8] His resentment of what he considered an injustice on Newcastle's part was evidently communicated to his friends; Richard Bull, Morice's member for Newport since 1756, declined a secret service pension, explaining that he could not accept rewards from Newcastle while Morice was out of favour. When John Lee was dying in the autumn of 1761, Morice wrote to Newcastle from Naples, declaring that he would accept only the King's candidate for the anticipated vacancy at Newport, not Newcastle's, owing to the slight given him.[2] He had returned to England for the autumn session of Parliament by the time of Lee's death in November, and arranged for the return of William de Grey, recently appointed solicitor general to Queen Charlotte, at the by-election.[6]
Morice now became an adherent of the rising
While Morice continued to support successive administrations, he made no reported speeches in Parliament, and seems to have attended sporadically. In the autumn of 1767, he wrote to the
Illness and legacies
His health was indeed declining: Horace Walpole thought he looked "dreadfully ill" at a dinner party at Princess Amelia's in 1779, and the following year, reported him "confined in Paris by the gout".[18] He did not attend Parliament during the turbulent early months of 1780, and stood down from Parliament at that year's general election.[2] His travels abroad did his health little good, as he was confined with gout at Chiswick within a week of his return that autumn. By the summer of 1781, he had recovered, but was attacked again that autumn. His condition declined, and he went to Bath in hopes of a cure. While there, he received the news that Margaret, the widow of Sir Robert Brown, had died and left him a life interest in an estate worth £1,500 per year.[18]
Morice drew up his will in July 1782 at The Grove, just before leaving England for what proved to be the last time.
Notwithstanding the effects of the Italian climate, Morice succumbed to illness on 18 October 1785. Two
Notes
- ^ Basset was the grand-nephew of Humphry's second cousin, Sir William, and the nephew of Sir John St Aubyn, whom Humphry turned out of Parliament on the death of Sir William.
References
- ^ a b c Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "Morice, Humphry (1723–85), of Werrington, Devon.". In Sedgwick, Romney (ed.). The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ Namier, Sir Lewis (1964). "Morice, Humphry (1723?–85), of Werrington, Devon.". In Namier, Sir Lewis; Brooke, John(eds.). The House of Commons 1754-1790. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "Morice, Humphry (c.1671–1731), of the Grove, Chiswick, Mdx.". In Sedgwick, Romney (ed.). The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "Morice, Sir William, 3rd Bt. (?1707–50), of Werrington, Devon.". In Sedgwick, Romney (ed.). The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "Launceston". In Sedgwick, Romney (ed.). The House of Commons 1715-1754. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d Cruickshanks, Eveline (1964). "Newport". In Namier, Sir Lewis; Brooke, John (eds.). The House of Commons 1754-1790. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g Cruickshanks, Eveline (1964). "Launceston". In Namier, Sir Lewis; Brooke, John (eds.). The House of Commons 1754-1790. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 18 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j Robbins, Alfred Farthing (1894). Lee, Sidney (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 39. London: Smith, Elder & Co. . In
- ^ Bucholz, Robert O. (2005). "Department of the Lord Steward" (PDF). Database of Court Officers. Loyola University. pp. 26–27. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
- ^ Namier, Lewis (1964). "Tylney, John, 2nd Earl Tylney [I] (1712–84), of Wanstead, Essex". In Namier, Sir Lewis; Brooke, John (eds.). The House of Commons 1754-1790. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
- ^ Namier, Lewis (1964). "Burrell, Peter II (1723–75), of Langley Park, Beckenham, Kent". In Namier, Sir Lewis; Brooke, John (eds.). The House of Commons 1754-1790. The History of Parliament Trust. Retrieved 19 October 2014.
- ISBN 0719033012.
- ISBN 978-1136836374.
- ^ ISBN 0870993518.
- ^ ISBN 9780300126808.
- ^ "Werrington and the Morice Family". Notes and Queries. 3rd Series. I: 422. 1862.
- ^ Robbins, Sir Alfred (1888). Launceston, Past and Present. Walter Weighell. pp. 268–269. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
- ^ a b c d Robbins, Alfred F. (August–September 1891). "The Three Humphry Morices". The Western Antiquary. 11 (1–2): 7–9. Retrieved 20 October 2014.
- ^ a b Robbins, Alfred F. (1899). "Humphry Morice's Will". Notes and Queries. 9th Series. III: 241.
- ISBN 978-1107000513.
- ^ Burke, John; Burke, Sir Bernard (1838). A genealogical and heraldic history of the extinct and dormant baronetcies of England. Scott, Webster, and Geary. p. 57.
- ^ "Brown v. Claxton". The English Reports. Vol. 57. London: Stevens & Sons. 1905. p. 988.
Further reading
- The Trial of Samuel Scrimshaw and John Ross, for a Conspiracy in Sending Threatening Letters to Humphrey Morice. M. Cooper. 1759.