Richard Grosvenor, 1st Baron Stalbridge

Richard de Aquila Grosvenor, 1st Baron Stalbridge PC (January 28 1837 – May 18 1912), known from 1845 until 1886 as Lord Richard Grosvenor, was a British politician, a younger son of Richard Grosvenor, 2nd Marquess of Westminster.

During an adventurous youth, he toured the western United States and was present at the sack of the Summer Palace during the Second Opium War.

A leading figure in the Liberal Party, he was Member of Parliament for Flintshire from 1861 until 1886. He was appointed a Privy Councillor in 1872. He opposed Gladstone on the issue of Home Rule and resigned his seat in protest (by accepting appointment as a Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds). He was subsequently created Baron Stalbridge and became a leader of the Liberal Unionist Party from the House of Lords.

Family

He married Hon. Beatrice Vesey, daughter of Thomas Vesey, 3rd Viscount de Vesci, on 5 November 1874, but she died of pleurisy in 1876, shortly after the birth of their only child:
*Hon. Elizabeth Grosvenor (1875–1931), married Admiral Sir Aubrey Clare Hugh Smith

He married his second wife, Eleanor Hamilton Stubber (d. 1911), on 3 April 1879. They had five children:
*Hugh Grosvenor, 2nd Baron Stalbridge (1880–1949), twin
*Hon. Blanche Grosvenor (1880–1964), twin, married Lt. Col. James Holford
*Hon. Gilbert Grosvenor (1881–1939), married Effie E. Cree; no issue
*Captain Hon. Richard Eustace Grosvenor, MC (1883–1915), killed in World War I
*Hon. Eleanor Lilian Grosvenor (1885–?), married Major Josceline Grant; mother of Elspeth Huxley

Later life

On April 15 1882, he was appointed honorary colonel of the Dorset Yeomanry (Queen's Own), a post he held until 1895. In 1891, he was appointed chairman of the London and North Western Railway, of which he had long been a director and had eagerly promoted. He was also a director of the Channel Tunnel Company, which contemplated a submarine railroad between England and France.

He inherited Motcombe House in 1891. The house was demolished after he contracted typhoid fever in 1894 and a new house built in 1895. However, much of the estate was sold off in 1905 to raise money, and the family moved to London. Lord Stalbridge had, in 1887, agreed to pay off some of the debts of his fellow Liberal, Lord Sudeley, and the resulting financial entanglement severely reduced his wealth.

He died at his house in London in 1912, a year after his second wife.

External links

* [http://www.portregis.com/timeline/TimelineNotes.htm Port Regis timeline]
* [http://www.thepeerage.com/p969.htm#i9690 thePeerage.com]