Sir Massey Lopes, 3rd Baronet

"Local Taxation". Caricature by Ape published in Vanity Fair in 1875.

Sir Massey Lopes, 3rd Baronet PC (14 June 1818-20 January 1908), known as Massey Franco until 1831 and as Massey Lopes from 1831 to 1854, was a British Conservative politician and agriculturalist.

Lopes was the eldest son of Sir Ralph Lopes, 2nd Baronet, and his wife Susan, daughter of Abraham Ludlow. Henry Lopes, 1st Baron Ludlow, was his younger brother. His father, originally Ralph Franco, has succeeded to the estates and title of his uncle Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes, 1st Baronet, in 1831, and assumed the same year the surname of Lopes in lieu of his patronymic. Both the Lopes and Franco families were of Sephardic-Jewish origins. Lopes was educated at Winchester and Oriel College, Oxford. He unsuccessfully contested Westbury in 1853, but was returned to Parliament for the same constituency in 1857. In 1868 he was elected for Devonshire South, defeating Lord Amberley. In Parliament he was the member of a group including Henry Chaplin, Albert Pell and Clare Sewell Read, that supported farming interests, and was chairman of the Agricultural Business Committee. He was appoimted High Sheriff of Devon for 1857^[1].

In 1874 Lopes was appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty in the second Conservative administration of Benjamin Disraeli, a post he held until the government fell in 1880. Bad health forced him to decline the post of Financial Secretary to the Treasury in 1877. His health also forced him to leave Parliament in 1885. The same year he was sworn of the Privy Council but declined a peerage. He was later an Alderman of the Devonshire County Council from 1888 to 1904. He was also for many years a Director of the Great Western Railway. He was greatly interested in scientific farming, and completely rebuilt his Maristow estate.

Lopes married firstly Bertha, daughter of John Yarde-Buller, 1st Baron Churston. They had one son and two daughters. After her death in 1872 he married secondly Louisa, daughter of Sir Robert Newman, 1st Baronet. There were no children from this marriage. Lady Lopes died in April 1903. Lopes survived her by five years and died in January 1908, aged 89. He was succeeded in the baronetcy by his only son Henry, who was created Baron Roborough in 1938.

References

1. ^ London Gazette: no. 21964. p. 379. 3 February 1857. Retrieved 2008-09-29.

• Lee, Sir Sidney (editor). The Dictionary of National Biography. Supplement. January 1901-December 1911. Oxford University Press.
• Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990.
• Leigh Rayment's List of Baronets
• www.thepeerage.com

External links

• Hansard 1803–2005: contributions in Parliament by Sir Massey Lopes

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by James Wilson	Member of Parliament for Westbury 1857–1868	Succeeded by John Lewis Phipps
Preceded by Sir Lawrence Palk Samuel Trehawke Kekewich	Member of Parliament for Devonshire South 1868–1885 With: Samuel Trehawke Kekewich 1868–1873 John Carpenter Garnier 1873–1884 John Tremayne 1884–1885	Constituency abolished
Political offices
Preceded by The Earl of Camperdown	Civil Lord of the Admiralty 1874–1880	Succeeded by Thomas Brassey
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Ralph Lopes	Baronet (of Maristow) 1854–1908	Succeeded by Henry Yarde Buller Lopes