Family and Education

b. 3 Aug. 1786, o.s. of Sir Uvedale Price, 1st bt. of Foxley and Lady Caroline Carpenter, da. of George Carpenter†, 1st earl of Tyrconnel [I]. educ. Eton 1793-1802; Christ Church, Oxf. 1805; Edinburgh Univ. 1807-8. m. 8 July 1823, his cos. Jane Mary Anne, da. of Rev. Robert Price, canon of Salisbury, s.p. suc. fa. as 2nd bt. 11 Sept. 1829. d. 5 Nov. 1857.

Offices Held

Steward, Hereford 1845-d.

Biography

Price, who counted Lord Milton^* and John Fazakerley^* among his closest friends, had defeated another Whig, Sir George Cornewall^† of Moccas Court, to come in for his native Herefordshire in 1818 with the anti-Catholic Tory Sir John Geers Cotterell.^*  A member of Brooks’s and Grillion’s, he generally divided with opposition, and readily expressed support for retrenchment and ‘a limited and moderate reform of Parliament’.  In his long parliamentary career, he was rarely sure of an uncontested return despite the close attention he paid to patronizing local causes, the Agricultural Society, race meetings, the Herefordshire Association in London, and county and city meetings.  Knowing that some of his erstwhile supporters were pro-Catholic ministerialists, he issued a conciliatory canvassing address at the 1820 general election in which he acknowledged past and present political differences and reiterated his commitment to the county and to ‘promoting the general welfare and preserving unimpaired the constitution of the state’.1  Financial exhaustion rendered opposition unlikely when, on the hustings, he identified taxation and the repressive legislation introduced after Peterloo, which restricted petitioning and freedom of the press, as the most important issues in the last Parliament; and, as agreed at the agriculturists’ meeting, 7 Feb., he urged the freeholders to petition for government action on poverty and distress.2

In the 1820 Parliament, which until 1824 Price attended assiduously (voting in most of the reported divisions), he divided consistently with the Whig opposition to Lord Liverpool’s ministry on most major issues, including parliamentary reform, 18 Apr., 9, 10 May 1821, 20 Feb. 1822, 25 Apr. 1822, 20 Feb., 24 Apr., 2 June 1823, and Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr. (a vote commonly misattributed to Pryse Pryse), 10 May 1825, for which he also presented a petition from Kingsburn, 21 Apr. 1825.3  He gave fairly steady support to the ‘Mountain’ on economy and retrenchment and was commended for doing so at the Hereford dinner for Joseph Hume^*, 7 Dec., which he addressed and was instrumental in organizing, 7 Dec. 1821.4  He supported the parliamentary and extra-parliamentary campaigns on behalf of Queen Caroline and presented or forwarded several Herefordshire addresses to her.5 Presenting a petition from Leominster for the restoration of her name to the liturgy, inquiry into the Milan commission and an end to her prosecution, 1 Feb. 1821, he claimed that most of his constituents agreed with the petitioners on the liturgy question and expressed his disappointment at the outcome of the House’s recent votes ‘in direct opposition to the sentiments of nine tenths of the whole community’.6  He voted to make Leeds a scot and lot borough under the Grampound disfranchisement bill, 2 Mar., and to disqualify civil officers of the ordnance from voting at parliamentary elections, 12 Apr.  Before voting against government on the revenue, 6 Mar., he presented the Herefordshire agriculturists’ petition for action on distress and condemned the taxes on working horses and malt as particularly harmful.7  He voted to repeal the latter, 21 Mar., 3 Apr.  When Hume was a guest at Foxley for the Hereford dinner, 7 Dec. 1821, they claimed publicly that they had been in general agreement on politics that session.  Afterwards Price led the delegation that accompanied Hume to Monmouth, where the ruling anti-Beaufort party made them honorary freemen.8

Bringing up a radical distress petition from Ross, 15 Feb., he said that ‘trifling reductions’ were of no avail and called for the ‘most rigid and severe economy throughout every department of the state’; but he now rejected the petitioners’ demand for a ‘reduction of the interest of the public debt’ as unsound.  On parliamentary reform, which the petitioners advocated, he added:

I have never been of opinion that it would be advisable to make any immediate and comprehensive change in the whole system of our representation, in the nature as well as extent of our elective franchise; but at the same time I have thought that it would be consistent with a sound, safe and wise policy to undertake a gradual and temperate reform of those abuses which in the lapse of time have crept into our representative system, and have disfigured … our constitution … Every succeeding year has confirmed me in my opinions and when I consider the number of petitions which have been laid upon the table of this House, and the great anxiety which prevails out of doors on this important subject, I cannot help thinking that such a reform would not only be of advantage to the country, but is due to the earnest wishes and repeated supplications of a suffering, but of a patient and loyal people.9

Supporting Althorp’s resolutions criticizing the ministry’s inadequate relief proposals, he countered Wolrych Whitmore’s arguments and asserted:

Nobody in opposition said … that the present low prices of agricultural produce were caused by the weight of taxation … [only] that as an extraordinary stimulus, which had now ceased to operate, had been given to agriculture during the war, and as the cessation of it had rendered it necessary to look for some measures whereby the farmer might be enabled to grow his produce cheap, a remission of taxation appeared at once to be the most practicable and the most natural way of proceeding.

Intervening later, he endorsed Althorp’s call for greater reductions and a temporary abandonment of the sinking fund, and called for an end to ‘every useless place … no matter what might be the parliamentary influence of the party who held it, or of any of his near relations’.  Referring again to the Ross petition, he confirmed that he had had a change of heart, if not opinion, and was now prepared to dispense with the sinking fund for a short period as a ‘conciliatory measure’ to afford ‘immediate relief’ to the agricultural interest.10  He presented another Herefordshire distress petition, 18 Mar., and in May forwarded the county’s memorial for repeal of the agricultural horse tax to the treasury.11  He presented favourable petitions, 27 Apr., 4 June, and voted to consider criminal law reform, 4 June 1822.12  During the recess he stewarded the Bromyard races, and joined other Herefordshire Members in endorsing the Haw Bridge scheme.13

Possibly under duress, Price signed the unsuccessful requisition for a county meeting to petition for further action against distress, and attended that convened in lieu by the lord lieutenant Lord Somers, 17 Jan. 1823, when a petition based on proposals for abolishing the sinking fund, the placemen system, the hop duties and agricultural taxes, put to the meeting by the liberal Edmund Lechmere Charlton^† after prior consultation with Edward Ellice^* and Lord Grey, was adopted in preference to the original petition from the Hereford Pitt Club and the ‘Norfolk petition’ proposed by William Cobbett^†.14  Presenting it, 21 Feb., Price claimed that many had approved it to prevent Cobbett’s being carried, while others ‘who agreed in the prescriptive measures it suggested’ had refused to sign ‘from an objection to the unqualified censure which it cast upon the past conduct of ministers’, and he warned that ‘unless government altered its system’ it risked alienating its supporters.15  Presenting the 700-signature Cobbettite petition, 27 Feb., he expressed regret that ‘such doctrines … had received even the apparent sanction of so many respectable names’ and called again for the ‘strictest economy into every branch of the public expenditure’.  The radical Lord Folkstone condemned his ‘rash conduct’ as a county Member in pronouncing ‘such an unqualified judgement on the opinions of his constituents’.  Price’s comments in committee of supply, 10 Mar., were too quiet to be reported by the Times.  On 8 July 1823 he married his cousin Jane, on whom his father settled £300 a year for her private use.16

In 1824 Price showed less commitment to opposition and cast only a handful of votes with them: on ordnance reductions, 27 Feb., the complaint against lord chancellor Eldon, 1 Mar., the window tax, 2 Mar. (and again, 17 May 1825) and Irish first fruits revenues, 25 May.  He voted in condemnation of the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June, and possibly for the Irish insurrection bill, 14 June 1824.  He presented a petition from Ross supporting the county courts bill, 24 May.17  Endorsing the prospective Whig candidate for Hereford, Edward Bolton Clive^*, at a party dinner, 30 Aug., he reaffirmed his commitment to retrenchment and reform; but he also expressed satisfaction with recent ministerial appointments, particularly that of Canning as foreign secretary.18  On 29 Dec. 1824 he presided at the Hereford dinner in honour of three eminent and wealthy local radicals, the horticulturist Thomas Andrew Knight of Downton Castle, the merchant Benjamin Lloyd and Walter Wilkins^*, whose nominations as Hereford freemen had been rejected by the corporation.  Reports of Price’s consequent exclusion from city functions proved unfounded.19  He voted for hearing the Catholic Association at the bar of the House, 18 Feb., and against the bill outlawing them, 21, 25 Feb. 1825.  He divided steadily against the grant to the duke of Cumberland, 27 May-10 June, and for inquiry into chancery arrears, 7 June 1825.  He addressed and chaired meetings in Herefordshire throughout the 1825-6 banking crisis and did all he could to save the ‘Whig’ Hereford City and County Bank.20  Although appointed to bring in the Hereford railway bill, 23 Feb. 1826, there is no record of Price’s attendance before the dissolution.  Writing on 22 May 1826 to Milton from Foxley, where his mother lay terminally ill and his father’s Essay on the Picturesque yielded a late friendship with the Ledbury poet Elizabeth Barrett (Browning), he noted:

I had almost determined to make my appearance on the night of Lord John’s motion on reform [28 Apr.], but it so happened that just at that moment, in addition to her usual state of suffering, my poor mother had to contend with an attack of fever which lasted some days, and made me really afraid of being absent … I have been a very impartial observer of all your conflicts with the agriculturists from this distant quarter, and in some respects I am not sorry to observe them from a distance, since just at present it would not perhaps be politic to show the bearing of my mind too strongly on the corn question.  The landed gentlemen must be prepared for a change of system, and prohibitory duties must cease in respect to corn, as they already have ceased on so many other articles of commerce.  What is the precise amount of protection to which we are entitled is another question.  I shall probably be for a higher duty than you would concede, though I do not carry my pretensions very far.  I am rather inclined to [David] Ricardo’s^* plan of having a descending scale. … I have not the least reason to apprehend any disturbance in this county, but the contest for the city will be very severe.21

His return in June was unopposed.  On the hustings, he reaffirmed his support for retrenchment and moderate reform and expressed his gratitude to Canning ‘for having broken asunder those ties which bound us far too closely to the more despotic governments of the continent’ and recognizing newly independent states.  He acknowledged his political differences with Peel, yet spoke highly of his abilities and legal reforms, which he maintained the opposition had helped to bring about.22  At the city election he and his father split their votes between the pro-emancipation Tory Lord Eastnor^* and Clive, and Price proposed the vote of thanks to the sheriff and officers.23

He continued to attend Parliament irregularly until after his father’s death in 1829.  When present, he tended to act with Clive.  He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., inquiry into the allegations against Leicester corporation, 15 Mar., and the spring guns bill, 23 Mar.; and voted to postpone supplies pending resolution of the succession to Liverpool as premier, 30 Mar., and to refer the Irish miscellaneous estimates to a select committee, 5 Apr. 1827.  He did not apparently vote on the corn bill, but he was present at the agriculturists’ meetings that petitioned against change.24  He voted to disfranchise Penryn for electoral corruption, 28 May, and presented Herefordshire petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 31 May, 7 June.  He stayed away from the Hereford meeting that sent an address of support to Peel and the seceders who refused to serve under the pro-Catholic Canning as premier, but otherwise he adopted his customary high profile at constituency meetings.25  Reflecting on the Canning and Goderich ministries in a letter to Milton, 4 Oct. 1827, he remarked:

I should like to hear what Althorp says about the state of politics.  I have always regretted that so much was done last session without any consultation with him, and without much with yourself; for it appears to me that both one and the other ought to have been consulted far earlier than Burdett, or many others who seem to have taken a lead in the new arrangements of last session; and that if you had been consulted much mischief might perhaps have been prevented.  As matters are at present, I fear Lord Grey is separated for ever from the large body of Whigs, and that alone is a great evil.  The loss of Canning, I suspect with you, will be grievously felt.  He seemed to have made up his mind as to the course he was to pursue, and he had the energy and confidence in his own powers sufficient to carry his plan into effect.  Our present premier, though very amiable, is of a different calibre, and moreover he is removed from the House of Commons where he would have been far more powerful than he is in his more dignified situation.  Nevertheless, anything is better than having recourse again to the seceders, and I am very much of opinion that if we act wisely we shall not be too nice.  I absolutely sicken at the thought of the return of Peel to power: if he were once fairly established in office again heaven knows [when] we should see the end of his reign: but you know my opinions of this great statesman, and I will say no more about politics.26

He claimed that he would have rejected the baronetcy awarded to his father in December 1827 as insufficient, had it been given ‘directly to me’, but consoled himself that the inferior honour placed him under less pressure to become an ‘out and out’ ministerialist.  He was in any case ‘perfectly prepared to give fair support to the [Goderich] government, firmly persuaded as I am that if we lose this administration we have very little hopes of ever getting a better’.27  As the duke of Wellington succeeded Goderich as prime minister before Parliament reassembled in 1828, Price’s allegiance was not tested.

In opposition, he voted, 26 Feb., and presented petitions, 28 Feb., 10 Mar., for repeal of the Test Acts, and divided against sluicing the franchise at East Retford, 21 Mar. 1828.  He is not known to have voted on the corn question, but he divided for Catholic relief, 12 May.  He presented an anti-slavery petition from Ross, 4 June, and voted against the ministry’s expenditure proposals, 20, 23 June 1828.  At the Hereford meeting, 24 Feb. 1829, Price spoke strongly but to little effect against the anti-Catholic petition adopted.28  He voted for emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., and to permit Daniel O’Connell to take his seat without swearing the oath of supremacy, 18 May. That month he became a patron and founder member of the Hereford Association for superseding the use of climbing boys in chimneys.29  He probably voted for Lord Blandford’s reform resolutions, 2 June.  He succeeded as 2nd baronet and inherited everything when his father died in September 1829, but Foxley with its picturesque grounds and mansion was already hopelessly encumbered.30

The Herefordshire Pitt Club resolved to take up the agriculturists’ cause in September 1829, and at the Hereford Agricultural Society dinner, 8 Feb. 1830, Cotterell and Thomas Smythies took Price to task for failing to vote against government on the address, 4 Feb., and his previous support for free trade and currency reform.  Responding, he said that he adhered to Wellington’s view that abandoning the latter would only make matters worse, and that although he acknowledged that government had underestimated the scale and extent of the current depression, he could not support the Ultras’ petition.  This caused it to be abandoned and all others were entrusted to Cotterell.31  In the House, Price voted for inquiry into Newark’s petition of complaint against the duke of Newcastle’s electoral influence, 1 Mar., and to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5, 15 Mar.  He divided steadily with the revived Whig opposition until 14 June, including for Jewish emancipation, 7 May, for which he also paired, 5 Apr., parliamentary reform, 28 May, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June.  Despite expressions of dissatisfaction and a challenge by an anonymous candidate, his return at the general election in August was unopposed, but he had to canvass assiduously.  In Ledbury his fellow Whig John Biddulph, who accompanied him through that town, had to refuse him a bed for the night as his wife ‘thought Lady P. had slighted her’.32  On the hustings, Price expressed pleasure at the progress made in civil and religious liberty since 1826, but bemoaned the current levels of distress and the deterioration in foreign policy since Canning’s death.  He made it clear that although he wished to see colonial slavery abolished he would not, as the Quakers had requested, commit himself to support all measures against it.  On reform, he reaffirmed his opposition to ‘sudden and comprehensive change in the whole system, in the nature as well as in the extent of our elective franchise’, annual parliaments and universal suffrage, and emphasized his commitment to reform as a remedial step to stop decayed boroughs returning Members while Birmingham, Leeds, Manchester and other large towns remained unrepresented.33

The administration counted him among their ‘foes’ and he divided against them on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830.  He presented many Herefordshire anti-slavery petitions 8, 12, 22 Nov.34  On 11 Dec., assuming that he was the Member on the ministerial benches with ‘a sneer on his countenance’ alluded to by Robert Gordon, Price quipped: ‘I have now discovered that it is as dangerous to smile as to speak in this House’, and used the occasion to declare his confidence in the Grey ministry and Althorp as chancellor; but he refused to be drawn into condemning any pension arrangements, including the Irish ones criticized by Gordon, until the details were ‘fully understood’.35  To Milton, 15 Dec. 1830, he observed that his own finances required attention as a result of his purchase of a ‘small house in Stratton Street’ and the redemption of a mortgage to the 5th earl of Peterborough (d. 1814).  On politics he commented:

Our ministers are going on pretty well, but not without receiving every now and then attacks from quarters that ought to be friendly: Althorp bears it well, and puts down opposition by a conduct as plain and straightforward as that we used to see him display when sitting on the other side of the House.

Although he regretted the proposed increase in the army, he was prepared to ‘trust to ministers’ knowledge’, and preferred ‘even this addition to the regular forces, to calling in … the yeomanry … popular amongst the country gentlemen’.36  He was not consulted over arrangements to counter the riots and incendiarism in Herefordshire that winter.37

According to Denis Le Marchant^†, Price, a ‘dull Herefordshire baronet’, thought lord chancellor Brougham’s oration on the state of his court, 22 Feb. 1831, ‘prodigiously fine indeed’ and reminiscent of ‘Demosthenes or some of those fellows one reads of at school’.38  Taken to task by ‘Philalethes’ in the Hereford Journal, he faced strong constituency pressure to prove his commitment to parliamentary and tithe reform.  He announced on presenting reform petitions from Ross, Kington and certain Herefordshire freeholders, 26 Feb., that he ‘entirely concurred’ in their prayer.  He again praised Ross for petitioning for the ministerial bill, and endorsed its claim to have its former seat restored should one like East Retford become ‘available’, 18 Mar.39  He sent a letter of support apologizing for his absence on parliamentary business from the county reform meeting, 19 Mar.  He presented and endorsed their petition in favour of the bill, adding that it ‘would of itself ensure that all other requisite reforms in the administration of public affairs’ were enacted, 21 Mar.  He explained that Bromyard’s petition for parliamentary reform, tax and tithe reductions, which he also presented that day, had been ‘adopted before details of the bill were announced’.40 He divided for its second reading, 22 Mar., and against Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr.  In a letter read out at the Hereford reform dinner to Lechmere Charlton, the self-proclaimed local champion of the cause, 2 Apr., Price described his attempt to persuade ministers to revise their decision to deprive Leominster of a Member, or, alternatively, to create a new constituency for the Whig strongholds of Ledbury and Ross.41  Leominster’s reprieve was announced, 18 Apr. 1831, together with the decision award the county a third seat.

Price’s return at the ensuing general election was assured, but, with other reformers in the field and the Tories active, a contest seemed inevitable until Lechmere Charlton made way for the Whig banker Kedgwin Hoskins, and Cotterell retired.42  On the hustings he stressed the reformers’ achievement in returning five supporters of the bill from Herefordshire, instead of the previous three, and countered allegations by the Tories, substantiated by cited extracts of his 1830 election speech, that his commitment to ‘extensive reform’ was recent and based on self-interest:

I have always been of opinion that there were advantages in the present very varied form of our representation, which ought not to be abandoned except for the attainment of great and beneficial objects. The exercise of their franchise by persons in the very humblest class of society, by the lowest order of freemen, or even by those whose right arises from their boiling a pot the night previous to an election has never appeared to me as unattended with some good, however little disposed I might be to enlarge and extend such rights of voting.  But when this bill was introduced it was clear to me that under existing circumstances we had to make our election; that it was not possible to put an end to all nomination by means of close corporations and by individuals, and not to give something of a counterbalance by establishing a constituency large in numbers indeed, but of which property would form an essential and necessary qualification … At all former periods I have found the advocates of reform sitting on the opposition side of the House of Commons, with a government decidedly averse to the consideration of the question.  In such a state of things it would have been most unwise to have attempted any great change; all that could be done was to introduce measures for a gradual amendment of the representative system.  These measures were resisted; the transfer of the elective franchise from boroughs convicted of corruption to large unrepresented towns was not conceded; and whilst the people were becoming every day more anxious for reform, the administration were declaring their more determined opposition to it, even in its most mitigated shape.  It was under these circumstances that a change of government took place … The bill was introduced …  I considered it to afford a great practical remedy for a great and crying evil, and I should have been ashamed of myself if I had allowed any minor doubts and difficulties to have had weight with me, and to have prevented me giving it my most zealous and cordial support. … In the very extent of the change there is safety, in the very comprehensiveness of the plan there is security for the future.43

 He divided for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July 1831, and Littleton, who dined with him on the 10th, noted that ‘as usual’ the bill was the ‘sole topic’ of conversation.44  He voted against adjournment, 12 July, and consistently for its details.  He was criticized in the local press for failing to vote against government on Lord Chandos’s amendment enfranchising £50 tenants-at-will, 18 Aug., for which there was strong constituency support.45  He kept silent on the bill’s details, but voiced support for the procedural reforms, including Saturday sittings, which hastened its progress, 29 July.  He voted for the bill’s passage, 21 Sept., and the second reading of the Scottish measure, 23 Sept.  That day, as chairman of the Pembrokeshire election committee, he reported their decision voiding the election because of the ‘culpable neglect … partiality … and inefficiency’ of the sheriff and his officers.  He raised no objection to printing the committee’s report and evidence, and was a majority teller against suspending the new writ, 26 Sept.46  He divided for Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct.  At the county meeting, 5 Nov. 1831, which addressed the king commending the Grey ministry and the bill, following its rejection by the Lords, he suggested that the anti-reform clergy were acting contrary to their own interests, warned of the danger of treating agriculture and manufacture as enemies rather than interdependent and, cautioning against complacency, voiced his fear that as with emancipation, the Tories would try to introduce and take the credit for bringing about reform.  When pressed, he and Hoskins now attributed the alleged shortcomings of the government’s game bill to Lords’ amendments.47  Afterwards, he interrupted his holiday at Aberystwyth to write to the Hereford Journal to deny ‘Philalethes’s’ allegations that his speech proved that he was an enemy of the established church.48  Price voted for the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831, and ‘left Herefordshire for the express purpose of voting’ for its committal, 20 Jan. 1832, but, being ‘delayed on the road’, he ‘arrived just after the divisions were over’.49  He voted silently for its details and third reading, 22 Mar., and for the address requesting the king to appoint only ministers who would carry it unimpaired, 10 May.  When its passage was assured, he intervened to object to inferences that the advocates of reform were opposed to a monarchy, and referred to an unpresented petition from Ross, calling for supplies to be withdrawn pending the bill’s passage, as proof of ‘the greatest interest felt’ in its fate ‘even in my quiet part of the country’, 17 May.  He voted for the Irish reform bill, 25 May, and paired, 1 June, and divided, 15 June 1832, against Conservative amendments to the Scottish measure.  He divided with government in both divisions on the Dublin election controversy, 23 Aug. 1831, on the Russian-Dutch loan, 26 Jan., 12, 16, 20 July, relations with Portugal, 9 Feb., and the navy civil departments bill, 6 Apr. 1832.  He advocated a combination of prompt government measures and self-help through charities to prevent the spread of cholera, 14 Feb.  After moving the Lords’ amendments to the metropolis bill, 24 May, he joined Clive in endorsing the Herefordshire anti-slavery petitions presented by Hoskins, but, whereas they voted for the immediate appointment of a select committee on colonial slavery, he expressed support for the government amendment postponing it, and so alienated many of his erstwhile supporters.50  The appointment of Grey’s brother Henry Grey as bishop of Hereford had reignited a controversy over absenteeism and pluralism in the diocese into which Price waded by recommending Clive’s son-in-law Henry Wetherell for the vacant post of dean.51  He suggested postponing consideration of the corn laws, on which he had ‘not made up my mind’, for ‘full and fair discussion’ next session, 1 June 1832.

Writing to Lord Holland, 20 Aug. 1832, Price attributed the ‘considerable disinclination’ of voters to register which then preoccupied him to the shilling fee and the ‘newness of the measure’, but he was confident that it affected the parties equally, and correctly predicted that Hereford and the three Member county would return four reformers and one anti-reformer at the general election in December.52  Criticized for putting party before constituency interests, he remained vulnerable to the last, but was spared a contest by the Conservatives’ decision to field a single candidate.53  He almost lost his seat to a Conservative in January 1835, and, conscious of the anger generated by his support for a fixed duty on corn, he retired rather than risk defeat in 1841.54  His finances were already in disarray when he succeeded Clive as high steward and Liberal Member for Hereford in 1845, and overspeculation in railways and the iron trade, financed by ‘a damaging series of mortgages’, virtually bankrupted him.55  His petition of 5 Oct. was gazetted, 19 Oct. 1855, and dismissed, 15 Apr. 1856, following the sale of the Foxley estates to the Conservative John Davenport^†.56  Price’s resignation from Parliament was repeatedly called for, but delayed until Clive’s son George (1806-80) could replace him in February 1857.57  He died without issue in November 1857 at his London home in Stratton Street, so extinguishing the baronetcy, and was buried at the church he had rebuilt at Yazor.58  He left everything to his wife.59

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Margaret Escott

Notes

Price's parliamentary conduct cannot be charted with certainty owing to some confusion in the records between him and Pryse Pryse, Whig Member for Cardigan Boroughs, Richard Price, Member for Radnor Boroughs, and George Rice Rice (later Trevor), Member for Carmarthenshire.

• 1. Hereford Jnl. 9 Feb. 1820.
• 2. Add. 38280, f. 12; Worcs. RO, Lechmere mss, Beauchamp to Sir A. Lechmere, 17 Feb.; Hereford Jnl. 16, 23 Feb., 8, 22 Mar. 1820.
• 3. The Times, 22, 25 Apr. 1825.
• 4. Hereford Jnl. 12 Dec. 1821.
• 5. The Times, 21 Nov., 15 Dec. 1820; Hereford Jnl. 10 Jan., 14 Mar. 1821.
• 6. The Times, 21 Nov., 15 Dec. 1820; Hereford Jnl. 10 Jan., 14 Mar. 1821.
• 7. The Times, 7 Mar. 1821.
• 8. Ibid. 14 Dec. 1821, 8 Jan. 1822.
• 9. TNA C110/96 (ii), Price to T. Jay, 3 Mar. 1818; The Times, 16 Feb.; Hereford Jnl. 20 Feb. 1822.
• 10. The Times, 22 Feb. 1822.
• 11. Ibid. 19 Mar.; Hereford Jnl. 29 May 1822.
• 12. Hereford Jnl. 17 Apr.; The Times, 5 June 1822.
• 13. Hereford Jnl. 5 June, 17, 24 July, 15 Aug. 1822.
• 14. The Times, 26 Nov., 6 Dec. 1822, 25, 28 Jan., 10 Feb. 1823; Hereford Jnl. 11, 18 Dec. 1822, 22 Jan. 1823; Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 14, 21 Jan. 1823.
• 15. The Times, 26 Nov., 6 Dec. 1822, 10, 20, 22, 25, 28 Jan., 10 Feb. 1823; Hereford Jnl. 11, 18 Dec. 1822, 8, 15, 22 Jan. 1823.
• 16. Gent. Mag. (1823), ii. 368; Herefs. RO, Pateshall mss A95/ET/64.
• 17. The Times, 25 May 1824.
• 18. Ibid. 3 Sept. 1824.
• 19. Hereford Independent, 13 Nov., 11 Dec. 1824, 1 Jan., 1, 8 Oct. 1825; Hereford Jnl. 15 Dec. 1824.
• 20. Herefs. RO X21, notice of Kington and Radnorshire Bank, 20 Dec. 1825; CJ, lxxxi. 94; TNA C110/97, Price to T. Jay, Feb.-Apr.; Hereford Jnl. 15, 22 Mar., 19 Apr., 14 June; Hereford Independent, 15 Apr. 1826.
• 21. Oxford DNB sub Price, Sir Uvedale; Fitzwilliam mss 125/16.
• 22. The Times, 2 June; Hereford Jnl. 7, 14, 21 June 1826.
• 23. Hereford Jnl. 21 June 1826; Fitzwilliam mss, Price to Milton, 4 Oct. 1827.
• 24. Hereford Jnl. 7 Feb. 1827.
• 25. The Times, 1, 8 June; Hereford Jnl. 3, 24 Oct.; Hereford Independent, 20 Oct. 1827.
• 26. Fitzwilliam mss.
• 27. Ibid. Price to Milton, 8 Dec.; Add. 51687, Lansdowne to Holland, 8 Dec. [1827].
• 28. Hereford Jnl. 25 Feb. 1829.
• 29. Ibid. 20 May 1829.
• 30. PROB 11/1768; IR26/1235/42.
• 31. Hereford Jnl. 16 Sept. 1829, 10 Feb. 1830.
• 32. Ibid. 7, 28 July, 4, 11 Aug.; Herefs. RO, diaries of John Biddulph of Ledbury [Biddulph diary] G2/IV/J/57, 21-22 July 1830.
• 33. Hereford Jnl. 11 Aug. 1830.
• 34. Ibid. 8, 15, 22 Nov. 1830.
• 35. According to Parl. Deb. (ser.3), i. 1022, Price merely ‘concurred in … [Gordon’s] opinion that every government should be watched with the utmost vigilance’.
• 36. Fitzwilliam mss, Price to Milton, 15 Dec. [1830].
• 37. Hereford Jnl. 1, 8, 15, 22, 29 Dec. 1830, 19 Jan. 1831.
• 38. Three Diaries, 10.
• 39. Hereford Jnl. 2, 9, 23 Feb. 1831.
• 40. Ibid. 23, 30 Mar. 1831.
• 41. Ibid. 6 Apr. 1831.
• 42. Biddulph diary, 20 Apr.-1 May 1831; Pateshall mss A95/V/EB/595; A95/V/W/a/130; The Times, 11 Apr.; Hereford Jnl. 27 Apr., 4 May; Globe, 30 Apr., 2 May 1831.
• 43. The Times, 9 May; Hereford Jnl. 11 May 1831.
• 44. Three Diaries, 102.
• 45. Hereford Jnl. 24 Aug. 1831.
• 46. CJ, lxxxvi. 844, 863-4, 866; Carmarthen Jnl. 23, 30 Sept.; The Times, 27 Sept. 1831.
• 47. Hereford Jnl. 19, 26 Oct., 2, 9 Nov.; The Times, 7 Nov. 1831.
• 48. Hereford Jnl. 16, 30 Nov., 14 Dec. 1831.
• 49. Ibid. 25 Jan. 1832.
• 50. Ibid. 8 Feb., 30 May, 6, 13, 20 June 1832.
• 51. Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 2 May; The Times, 2, 13, 25 June 1832.
• 52. Add. 51837.
• 53. Biddulph diary, 17 Sept., 27 Nov., 15, 18 Dec.; Hereford Jnl. 20 Dec. 1832.
• 54. Hereford Times, 14 Nov. 1857.
• 55. Ibid. 26 July, 2, 9 Aug., 27 Sept.; The Times, 26, 31 July, 1 Aug. 1845; Herefs. RO, schedule of privately held Foxley mss.
• 56. London Gazette, 19 Oct. 1855, 22 Jan., 8 Feb., 7 Mar., 15 Apr. 1856; Pateshall mss A95/ET/64.
• 57. The Times, 22 Oct., 31 Dec. 1855; Hereford Jnl. 16, 23 Jan., 6, 13 Feb., 13 Mar. 1856.
• 58. Gent. Mag. (1857), ii. 689; Hereford Times, 14 Nov. 1857.
• 59. PROB 11/2262/923; IR26/2110/1149.