Henry Beaufoy (November 1750 – 17 May 1795) was a British Member of Parliament.

Life

Beaufoy was the son of a Quaker wine merchant; after marrying, he conformed to the

Church of England The Church of England (C of E) is the established Christian church in England and the mother church of the international Anglican Communion. It traces its history to the Christian church recorded as existing in the Roman province of Britain ...

. He was educated at Hoxton Academy and

Warrington Academy Warrington Academy, active as a teaching establishment from 1756 to 1782, was a prominent dissenting academy, that is, a school or college set up by those who dissented from the established Church of England. It was located in Warrington (then p ...

, going on to

Edinburgh University The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 1582 ...

in the early 1770s. He was a founder of

Hackney College New City College (NCC) is a large college of further education with campuses in East London and Essex. The college was formed in 2016 with the amalgamation of separate colleges, beginning with the merger between Tower Hamlets College and Hackney C ...

. He was elected a

Fellow of the Royal Society Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS, ForMemRS and HonFRS) is an award granted by the judges of the Royal Society of London to individuals who have made a "substantial contribution to the improvement of natural science, natural knowledge, incl ...

in February 1782. Beaufoy was returned as

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house members of ...

(MP) for

Minehead Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, north-west of the county town of Taunton, from the boundary with the county of Devon and in proximity of the Exmoor National P ...

(1783–1784) and

Great Yarmouth Great Yarmouth (), often called Yarmouth, is a seaside town and unparished area in, and the main administrative centre of, the Borough of Great Yarmouth in Norfolk, England; it straddles the River Yare and is located east of Norwich. A pop ...

from 1784 until his death. He was a staunch advocate of the repeal of the

Test and Corporation Acts The Test Acts were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and nonconformists. The underlying principle was that only people taking communion in ...

, which limited the civil rights of non-members of the

. He voted for abolition of the slave trade on 18 April 1791, but on 25 April 1792 announced his conversion to gradual abolition, in the hope that ‘the conclusions of my understanding may ultimately correspond with the dictates of my heart’. He expressed his fear that ‘too precipitate a benevolence augmented, while it hoped to have diminished, the sum of human calamity’, claiming that a cessation of the trade must aggravate the plight of the existing slave population of the West Indies, and that if it spelt ruin for the planters, no other country would abolish the trade and thereby destroy its colonies. He chaired the committees' of the House which on 1 May 1792 reported in favour of gradual abolition. The 1792 Slave Trade Bill passed the House of Commons mangled and mutilated by the modifications and amendments of Pitt, it lay for years, in the House of Lords. Biographer

William Hague 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 ...

considers the unfinished abolition of the slave trade to be Pitt's greatest failure. He was Secretary to the Board of Control in 1791–1793. He was a witness in

John Horne Tooke John Horne Tooke (25 June 1736 – 18 March 1812), known as John Horne until 1782 when he added the surname of his friend William Tooke to his own, was an England, English clergyman, politician, and Philology, philologist. Associated with radica ...

's trial for high treason in 1794. Beaufoy was buried in St Mary's,

Ealing Ealing () is a district in West London, England, west of Charing Cross in the London Borough of Ealing. Ealing is the administrative centre of the borough and is identified as a major metropolitan centre in the London Plan. Ealing was histor ...

. He had married in 1778 Elizabeth Jenks, daughter of William Jenks of

Shifnal Shifnal is a market town and civil parish in Shropshire, England, about east of Telford, 17 miles (27 km) east of the county town of Shrewsbury and 13 miles (20 km) west-northwest of the city of Wolverhampton. It is near the M54 mo ...

: they had no children.

References

Sources

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Beaufoy, Henry 1750 births 1795 deaths Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies British MPs 1780–1784 British MPs 1784–1790 British MPs 1790–1796 Fellows of the Royal Society