Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/431

 the exchequer, and on 6 Dec. 1380 was appointed chief baron. He is mentioned as levying a fine in 1382–3 (Surrey Fines, Surrey Archæol. Soc.) In November 1383 he pleaded in parliament for confirmation of a pardon lately granted him (Rolls of Parliament, iii. 164 b). Dugdale, through an error, thought that Plesyngton was removed from the bench on 27 June 1383, but this really took place on 5 Nov. 1386. The ostensible reasons for his removal were that he prevented the king from receiving certain fines for marriage, and refused to hear apprentices and others of the law, telling them they knew not what they said, and did more harm than good to their clients, so that pleaders did not dare appear before him against sheriff's escheators, &c., and the king lost many fines (Deputy-Keeper Publ. Rec. 9th Rep. p. 244). The true reason would, however, appear to be that he was closely attached to the party of Thomas of Woodstock, duke of Gloucester [q. v.], and had so incurred the king's enmity. In the parliament of 1387 Plesyngton was spokesman for the Duke of Gloucester and other lords appellant, but he was not restored to his office. He died on 27 Sept. 1393 (Chetham Soc. Publ. cv. 232). But nevertheless, on the fall of Gloucester in September 1397, Plesyngton was condemned for his support of the duke, and his property was declared forfeit; this sentence was reversed in the first parliament of Henry IV in 1399 (Rolls of Parliament, iii. 384, 425, 450). By his wife Agnes he had a son, Sir Robert de Plesyngton, who was twenty-four years of age in 1393, and represented Rutland in the parliament of January 1397 (Return of Members of Parliament, i. 252). This Robert had two sons, Henry and John; his male line became extinct in William, son of Henry. John de Plesyngton was ancestor in the female line of the families of Flowers of Whitwell, Rutland, Stavely of Nottinghamshire, and Sapcott of Burleigh (Visitation of Rutland, pp. 29–30, Harleian Society).

[Foss's Judges of England, iv. 67–70; Bridge's Northamptonshire, ii. 505; Wright's History of Rutland, p. 29; Abram's History of Blackburn, p. 612; other authorities quoted.] 

PLEYDELL-BOUVERIE, EDWARD (1818–1889), politician, second son of William Pleydell-Bouverie, third earl of Radnor, by his second wife, Anne Judith, third daughter of Sir Henry Paulet St. John Mildmay, bart., was born on 26 April 1818. Educated at Harrow and at Trinity College, Cambridge, whence he graduated M.A. in 1838, he was a précis writer to Lord Palmerston from January to June 1840. He was called to the bar at the Inner Temple on 27 Jan. 1843, and in the following year he was returned to parliament in the liberal interest as member for Kilmarnock. That constituency he represented until 1874, when his candidature proved unsuccessful. He was a prominent figure in the House of Commons. From July 1850 to March 1852 he was under-secretary of state for the home department in Lord John Russell's administration, and from April 1853 to March 1855 he was chairman of committees, while Lord Aberdeen was prime minister. In March 1855, when Palmerston became premier, Pleydell-Bouverie was made vice-president of the board of trade, and in August was transferred to the presidency of the poor-law board. That position he held until 1858. In 1857 he was appointed one of the committee of the council on education. He was second church estate commissioner from August 1859 to November 1865, and from 1869 he was one of the ecclesiastical commissioners for England.

Though a staunch liberal, he belonged to the old whig school, and in his last parliament he often found himself unable to agree with the policy of the liberal prime minister, Mr. Gladstone. In 1872, when a charge of evasion of the law was made against Mr. Gladstone in connection with the appointment he made to the rectory of Ewelme, Bouverie expressed regret ‘that the prime minister should amuse his leisure hours by driving coaches-and-six through acts of parliament, and should take such curious views of the meaning of statutes’ (, 8 March 1872, p. 1711; see art. ).

When the Irish university bill was introduced, Bouverie finally broke with Mr. Gladstone (March 1873). He denounced the measure as miserably bad and scandalously inadequate to its professed object. He voted against the second reading on 10 March, when the government was defeated (ib. 11 March 1873, p. 1760). Subsequently, in letters addressed to the ‘Times,’ he continued his attacks on the measure and on its framers.

After his retirement from parliament he became in 1877 associated with the corporation of foreign bondholders, and was soon made its chairman. Under his guidance the debts of many countries were readjusted; and the corporation's scheme for dealing with the Turkish debt was confirmed by the sultan's iradé of January 1882. Bouverie was also director of the Great Western railway company and of the Peninsular and Oriental company. He addressed numerous letters to the ‘Times’ newspaper under the signature of ‘E. P. B.’ He died at 44 Wilton Crescent, London, on 16 Dec. 1889. 