Family and Education

b. 25 Aug. 1794, 2nd and posth. s. of John Stuart*, Visct. Mountstuart. educ. Eton 1808; Christ’s, Camb. 1812. m. 13 July 1818, Hannah, da. of William Tighe* of Woodstock, co. Kilkenny, 2s. 1da. Took additional name of Crichton 21 Mar. 1817; patent of precedence as son of a mq. 28 May 1817.

Offices Held

Ld. lt. Bute 1854-d.

Constable, Cardiff Castle 1823.

Biography

Crichton Stuart, who had taken his mother’s surname in 1817, was returned for the family seat of Cardiff Boroughs by his brother the 2nd Marquess of Bute at the first election after he came of age, his uncle making way for him. He came home from the Continent for the purpose and was the first member of the family to meet with opposition. To disarm his opponents, his brother had to come to an arrangement which lasted only for that Parliament. Crichton Stuart’s politics in any case alienated his brother’s friends and he gave up the boroughs in 1820, transferring to the safer and cheaper seat for Bute, before making a comeback at Cardiff at the next election.

Unlike his brother, Crichton Stuart sided with opposition and, paradoxically, joined the circle of Whig reformers formed by the man who presented the strongest threat to his return in 1818, Lewis Weston Dillwyn of Penlle’rgaer. He voted 20 times with opposition in his first Parliament and paired with them twice, on issues such as the resumption of cash payments, the Windsor establishment, criminal law reform, government expenditure, reform of the Scotch burghs, Tierney’s censure motion 18 May 1819, the navy estimates, the malt duty and the foreign enlistment bill. In the second session he voted for Althorp’s motion for a committee on the state of the country, 30 Nov. 1819, Buxton’s motion to limit the operation of the seditious meetings prevention bill to three years, 6 Dec., Hutchinson’s to exclude Ireland from its scope, 13 Dec., for the newspaper reporters’ clause the same day, against the seizure of arms bill, 16 Dec., and against the newspaper stamp duties bill, 20 and 22 Dec. Crichton Stuart was not a debater, speaking only in opposition to the seizure of arms bill in his first Parliament, but he continued in the same line after 1820. Such was his reputation as a friend of the people that he had the distinction of being refused an opening by the Cardiff Tories in 1832, despite family ties. He died 7 Sept. 1859.

R.D. Rees ‘Parl. Rep. S. Wales 1790-1830’ (Reading Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1962), ii. 527; see CARDIFF.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes