Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/396

 Davies says she refused honourably brilliant offers of ‘protection,’ that of all women he ever saw she had ‘the greatest pretence to (justification for) vanity,’ and that her sole passion was to be admired.



HORTON, ROBERT JOHN WILMOT- (1784–1841), political pamphleteer, only son of Sir Robert Wilmot, bart., of Osmaston, Derbyshire, by his first wife, Juliana Elizabeth, second daughter of the Hon. John Byron, and widow of the Hon. William Byron, was born on 21 Dec. 1784. He was educated at Eton, and on 27 Jan. 1803 matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated B.A. 1806, and M.A. 1815. In July 1815 he unsuccessfully contested the borough of Newcastle-under-Lyme against Sir John Chetwode. He was, however, returned for that borough at the general election in June 1818, and continued to represent it until his retirement from the House of Commons at the dissolution in July 1830. His first reported speech in the house was in the defence of the Windsor establishment in February 1819 (Parl. Debates, xxxix. 587–8), and in the same year he opposed Sir Francis Burdett's motion for reform (ib. xl. 1477–81). In the following year he was selected to second the address at the opening of the session (ib. new ser. i. 33–5), and in 1821 he was appointed under secretary of state for war and the colonies in Lord Liverpool's administration, in the place of Henry Goulburn [q. v.] He was admitted to the privy council on 23 May 1827, and in the following year resigned office with others of the Huskisson party. He still continued to take an active part in the debates. In February 1828 he voted for Lord John Russell's motion for the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (ib. xviii. 782), and on 18 March 1829 spoke warmly in favour of the second reading of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill (ib. xx. 1190–1200). From 1831 till 1837 he was governor and commander-in-chief of the island of Ceylon. He was knighted on 22 June 1831 (London Gazettes, 1831, i. 1255), and made a G.C.H. On the death of his father in July 1834 he succeeded to the baronetcy, and died at Sudbrooke Park, Petersham, on 31 May 1841, in his fifty-seventh year. He was a man of cultivated tastes, and took great interest in the political and social questions of the day. Greville, in recording his attendance at one of Wilmot-Horton's lectures at the Mechanics' Institute, says: ‘He deserves great credit for his exertions, the object of which is to explain to the labouring classes some of the truths of political economy, the folly of thinking that the breaking of machinery will better their condition, and of course the efficacy of his own plan of emigration. … He is full of zeal and animation, but so totally without method and arrangement that he is hardly intelligible. The conclusion, which was an attack on Cobbett, was well done, and even eloquent’ (, Memoirs, 1st ser. 1874, ii. 97–8).

He married, on 1 Sept. 1806, Anne Beatrix, eldest daughter and coheiress of Eusebius Horton of Catton, Derbyshire, by whom he had four sons and three daughters. He assumed the additional name of Horton by royal license on 8 May 1823, in compliance with the directions in his father-in-law's will (London Gazettes, 1823, i. 755). His widow survived him many years, and died on 4 Feb. 1871. She was the subject of Byron's lines, ‘She walks in beauty’ (, Poetical Works, 1855, ii. 15). Some letters written by Wilmot-Horton to Mrs. Leigh relating to the destruction of Byron's ‘Memoirs,’ and the proposed repayment to Moore of the 2,000l. by her and Lady Byron, are preserved among the Addit. MSS. in the British Museum (31037, ff. 47–60). The ‘Memoirs’ were destroyed by Wilmot-Horton and Colonel Doyle, acting as the representatives of Mrs. Leigh, after a meeting at Mr. Murray's house (, Memoirs of Thomas Moore, 1853, iv. 192; see also, Memoirs of John Murray, i. 445).

He was the author of the following works:  ‘Speech delivered in the Town Hall of Newcastle-under-Lyne, on the occasion of the Election of the Mayor and other Corporate Officers of that Borough,’ &c., London, 1825, 8vo. No. 17 of a series.  ‘A Letter to the Duke of Norfolk on the Catholic Question,’ London, 1826, 8vo.  ‘A Letter to the Electors of Newcastle-under-Line [on the Catholic Question],’ London, 1826, 8vo.  ‘A Letter [to Sir Francis Burdett; in reply to his speech in opposing a parliamentary grant of 30,000l. for the purposes of emigration]’ [London, 1826], 8vo.  ‘Speech … in the House of Commons on the 6th of March, 1828, on moving for the production of the evidence taken before the Privy Council upon an Appeal against the compulsory Manumission of Slaves in Demerara and Berbice,’ London, 1828, 8vo.  ‘Protestant Securities suggested, in an Appeal to the Clerical Members of the University of Oxford,’ London, 1828, 8vo; 2nd edition, to which is prefixed a Letter to the Bishop of Rochester, London, 1828, 8vo.  ‘A Letter to the Bishop of Rochester, in Explanation of his Suggestion 