Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/53

 became solicitor to the treasury. He was appointed permanent under-secretary of state for the home department on 28 June 1817, and held that office until July 1827, when he retired on a pension of 1,000l. a year. He was also keeper of the state papers from 23 May 1826 to his death. On 28 June 1828 he was gazetted a privy councillor. He was one of the ecclesiastical commissioners for England, and chairman of the Somerset quarter sessions. He resigned the chairmanship in 1845. In the formation of the record commission he rendered valuable service to Peel when home secretary, and became commissioner 10 June 1852. The commission published ‘State Papers of Henry VIII,’ in eleven volumes quarto, the last appearing in 1852. Hobhouse superintended the editing, and took great pains to produce an accurate text. Under his direction a permanent system of arrangement of the state papers was laid down, based upon a plan existing in the offices of the secretaries of state. His death took place at Hadspen House on 13 April 1854. He married, 7 April 1806, Harriett, sixth daughter of John Turton of Sugnall Hall, Staffordshire; she died at Bournemouth on 7 May 1858, aged 73, having had eight children. The fourth son, Arthur, was created Baron Hobhouse in 1885, and died 6 Dec. 1904.

[Gent. Mag. 1854, ii. 79–80; Dod's Peerage, 1854, pp. 301–2; Times, 18 April 1854, p. 9.]  HOBHOUSE, JOHN CAM, (1786–1869), statesman, the eldest son of Sir Benjamin Hobhouse, bart. [q. v.], by his first wife, Charlotte, daughter and heiress of Samuel Cam of Chantry House, Bradford, Wiltshire, was born at Redland, near Bristol, on 27 June 1786. His mother was a dissenter, and Hobhouse was sent at an early age to the school of the unitarian, John Prior Estlin [q. v.], at Bristol. He was afterwards removed to Westminster School, whence he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he obtained the Hulsean prize in 1808, and graduated B.A. 1808, M.A. 1811. While at Cambridge he founded the ‘Whig Club’ and the ‘Amicable Society’ (, Life of Lord Byron, p. 60), and became the close and intimate friend of Byron, with whom he afterwards travelled across Portugal and Spain to Gibraltar, Albania, Greece, and Constantinople. Hobhouse returned to England in 1810, and in 1813 followed the track of the French and German armies through Germany, and was present at Paris in May 1814 when Louis XVIII entered the capital. In January 1815 he acted as ‘best man’ at Byron's wedding. Upon Napoleon's escape from Elba, Hobhouse again went to Paris, and in the following year he published an account of the ‘Hundred Days’ in which he displayed his marked dislike of the Bourbon dynasty and his sympathy with Napoleon. The book was severely criticised in the ‘Quarterly Review’ (xiv. 445–52), and the French translation of it was seized by the government, and the printer and translator sentenced to imprisonment, as well as to the payment of a fine (Gent. Mag. 1819, vol. lxxxix. pt. ii. p. 450). In the autumn of 1816 Hobhouse visited Byron at Villa Diodati, near Geneva, and they subsequently visited Venice and Rome together (cf., Murray, i. 388). During this period Hobhouse wrote the notes for the fourth canto of ‘Childe Harold,’ which was afterwards dedicated to him by Byron. In February 1819 Hobhouse contested the seat at Westminster, which had become vacant by the death of Sir Samuel Romilly in the previous year. Though he stood in the radical interest, and was supported by Sir Francis Burdett, who gave 1,000l. towards the electioneering expenses, he was defeated on a severe contest by George Lamb, the brother of Lord Melbourne, by 4,465 votes to 3,861. Hobhouse became a member of ‘The Rota,’ a political dinner club for the discussion and promotion of radical reforms, to which Bickersteth, Burdett, Douglas Kinnaird, and others belonged. At this time he wrote several political pamphlets, and a reply written by him to an anti-reform speech of Canning attracted considerable attention. For an anonymous pamphlet published in 1819, entitled ‘A Trifling Mistake,’ &c., Hobhouse was held to be guilty of a breach of privilege by the House of Commons (Parl. Debates, xli. 995–6, 989–1004, 1009–1026), and was committed to Newgate on 14 Dec. in that year. To the question ‘What prevents the people from walking down to the house and pulling out the members by the ears, locking up their doors, and flinging the key into the Thames?’ he answered that ‘their true practical protectors … are to be found at the Horse Guards and the Knightsbridge barracks’ (pp. 49–50). On 5 Feb. 1820 the court of king's bench refused to interfere with the speaker's warrant ( and, Reports, 1820, iii. 420), and Hobhouse had to content himself with a long protest in the ‘Times,’ the first part of which appeared on the 8th, and was continued daily until it was concluded on the 15th. He remained in Newgate until the dissolution of parliament on 29 Feb. Previously to his release he issued his address ‘to the independent electors of Westminster’ (Reform of Parliament, Westminster Election, &c., 1820, pp. 6–8). This time he suc-