Go To Section
MOSTYN, Sir Thomas, 6th Bt. (1776-1831), of Mostyn, Flints. and Gloddaeth, Caern.
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Biography Detail
Related Resources
Family and Education
b. 20 Oct. 1776, o.s. of Sir Roger Mostyn, 5th Bt.* educ. Westminster till 1793; Christ Church, Oxf. 1793. unm. suc. fa. as 6th Bt. 26 July 1796.
Offices Held
Sheriff, Caern. 1798-9, Merion. 1799-1800.
Lt.-col. commdt. Flints. fusiliers 1803.
Biography
Mostyn was thwarted in 1796 when he attempted to succeed his late father to the county seat which his family had virtually monopolized throughout the century. Although returned after a contest, he was unseated on petition, on the grounds of his being still a minor. He informed the House by letter, 27 Apr. 1797, that he would offer no defence. John Lloyd*, who replaced him, resigned the seat in his favour in 1799 and Mostyn was returned unopposed for the rest of his life. Like his father, whose virtues he proposed to imitate, he was a member of Brooks’s Club and ‘was generally to be found ... among the ranks of the opposition party’. Although he does not appear to have spoken in debate, he was heard giving ‘a view hollo’ and crying ‘We have killed the fox’ on the success of the censure of Melville in April 1805, and he voted steadily with the Whigs, when present, on all major issues: they justifiably described him in 1810 as one of their ‘thick and thin’ men. He voted for parliamentary reform, 21 May 1810 (probably also on 1 July 1819) and for Catholic relief. He was criticized for his conduct by the Flintshire Tories at the election of 1812 and in his address in 1818 admitted that his views did not please ‘a large portion’ of his constituents. In 1830 he reminded them that he had never, in more than 30 years, given a vote ‘by which the liberty of the subject has been abridged, or any additional tax imposed on the country’.1
Mostyn, ‘a thorough gentleman’, was better known as a sportsman: a member of the Four in Hand Club, ‘a pattern to masters of foxhounds’ and ‘always more or less on the turf’. ‘Nimrod’ said of him:
A single man, possessed of a fine fortune, and at ease in his circumstances, the expense is not an object to him, and his conduct in the field is particularly gentle-manlike; added to which no man, did his health permit him to enjoy it, is more fond of the sport.
His constant companions were a hunting parson (Rev. ‘Griff’ Lloyd, a brother of his brother-in-law Edward Pryce Lloyd*) and a favourite hound called ‘Lady’, to whom he erected a monument.2 He died 17 Apr. 1831.
