Thomas Manners-Sutton, 1st Baron Manners

Thomas Manners-Sutton, 1st Baron Manners, PC (February 24, 1756-May 31, 1842), was a British lawyer and politician who served as Lord Chancellor of Ireland from 1807 to 1827.

Manners-Sutton was the was the sixth son of Lord George Manners-Sutton, third son of John Manners, 3rd Duke of Rutland. His elder brother the Most Reverend Charles Manners-Sutton was Archbishop of Canterbury from 1805 to 1828 and the father of Charles Manners-Sutton, 1st Viscount Canterbury, Speaker of the House of Commons from 1817 to 1834. His father had assumed the additional surname of Sutton on succeeding to the estates of his maternal grandfather Robert Sutton, 2nd Baron Lexinton.

Manners-Sutton was educated at Charterhouse and Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and was called to the Bar, Lincoln's Inn, in 1780. He was elected Member of Parliament for Newark in 1796, a seat he held until 1805, and served under Henry Addington as Solicitor-General from 1802 to 1805. From 1800 to 1802 Manners-Sutton was Solicitor General to the Prince of Wales (later King George IV).

In 1805 he became a Baron of the Exchequer, which he remained until 1807. The latter year he was admitted to the Privy Council, raised to the peerage as Baron Manners, of Foston in the County of Lincoln, and appointed Lord Chancellor of Ireland, in which position he served until 1827. A staunch protestant, Lord Manners was an opponent of Catholic emancipation and argued against the Catholic Relief Act 1829 in the House of Lords.

Lord Manners married firstly, Anne Copley, daughter of Sir Joseph Copley, 1st Baronet, of Sprotborough, in 1803. They had no children. After his wife's death in 1814 he married secondly the Hon. Jane Butler, daughter of James Butler, 9th Baron Cahir. They had one son, John Thomas Manners-Sutton. Lord Manners died in May 1842, aged 86. He was succeeded in the Barony by his only son, the second Baron.

A family relation, Evelyn Levett Sutton, graduate of Trinity College, Cambridge, acted as private chaplain to Lord Manners-Sutton. [ [http://books.google.com/books?id=NPQVAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA48&dq=%22trinity+college%22+levett&ei=HPXJSOzKII2EtAOZl6nYDA Extracts from Registers and Deeds, Wynford B. Grimaldi, Diocese of Canterbury, 1900] ]

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