Francis Robert Bonham (6 September 1785 – 26 April 1863) was a British party agent and politician.

Early life

He was the only surviving son (another two died in infancy) of Francis Warren Bonham, a landowner from Kildare who had moved to London with his wife Dorothea. After home schooling Bonham was accepted into

Corpus Christi College, Oxford Corpus Christi College (formally, Corpus Christi College in the University of Oxford; informally abbreviated as Corpus or CCC) is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom. Founded in 1517, it is the 12th ...

where he finished his BA in 1807, joining

Lincoln's Inn The Honourable Society of Lincoln's Inn is one of the four Inns of Court in London to which barristers of England and Wales belong and where they are called to the Bar. (The other three are Middle Temple, Inner Temple and Gray's Inn.) Lincoln ...

in 1808 and being called to the bar (although he never practised law) in 1814.

Political career

In August 1830 he was elected a Member of Parliament for Rye and served as assistant

Tory Party The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed ...

whip until 1831, when he was defeated in the

general election A general election is a political voting election where generally all or most members of a given political body are chosen. These are usually held for a nation, state, or territory's primary legislative body, and are different from by-elections ( ...

. After his defeat he continued to work in Rye as a party agent for the 1832 election, and until 1837 acted as the Tory Party's chief electoral expert (replacing

William Holmes William is a male given name of Germanic origin.Hanks, Hardcastle and Hodges, ''Oxford Dictionary of First Names'', Oxford University Press, 2nd edition, , p. 276. It became very popular in the English language after the Norman conquest of Engl ...

). He served as

Storekeeper of the Ordnance The Principal Storekeeper of the Ordnance was a subordinate of the Master-General of the Ordnance and a member of the English (and later British) Board of Ordnance from its constitution in 1597. He was responsible for the care and maintenance of ...

Robert Peel Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet, (5 February 1788 – 2 July 1850) was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1834–1835 and 1841–1846) simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer ...

's first government from 1834 and in 1835 was again returned to parliament, this time for

Harwich Harwich is a town in Essex, England, and one of the Haven ports on the North Sea coast. It is in the Tendring district. Nearby places include Felixstowe to the north-east, Ipswich to the north-west, Colchester to the south-west and Clacton-on- ...

where he served until 1837 and again also served as assistant whip.

Later life

Despite being out of parliament in 1841 Peel again appointed him Storekeeper of the Ordnance, a position he resigned in 1845 after a scandal involving improperly-bought railway shares. He remained as an unpaid volunteer until 1853, when he was appointed as a Commissioner for Income Tax to prevent him from becoming bankrupt. He died on 26 April 1863 at home, with many of his papers having been collected by Peel and destroyed apart from a few texts now in the Peel papers of the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom and is one of the largest libraries in the world. It is estimated to contain between 170 and 200 million items from many countries. As a legal deposit library, the British ...

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Bonham, Francis Robert 1785 births 1863 deaths Alumni of Corpus Christi College, Oxford Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies UK MPs 1830–1831 UK MPs 1835–1837 Members of Lincoln's Inn Tory MPs (pre-1834)