Richard Romney Sedgwick (29 May 1894 – 20 January 1972) was a British historian, civil servant and diplomat. He was the elder son of Professor

Adam Sedgwick Adam Sedgwick (; 22 March 1785 – 27 January 1873) was a British geologist and Anglican priest, one of the founders of modern geology. He proposed the Cambrian and Devonian period of the geological timescale. Based on work which he did on W ...

, 1854–1913, and Laura Helen Elizabeth Robinson. He married Mana St David Hodson, daughter of Professor T.C.Hodson, in 1936; they had one son and one daughter. Sedgwick was educated at Westminster School and

Trinity College, Cambridge Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Founded in 1546 by Henry VIII, King Henry VIII, Trinity is one of the largest Cambridge colleges, with the largest financial endowment of any college at either Cambridge ...

. He became a Fellow of the college in 1919. He edited ''

The History of Parliament The History of Parliament is a project to write a complete history of the United Kingdom Parliament and its predecessors, the Parliament of Great Britain and the Parliament of England. The history will principally consist of a prosopography, in w ...

'' volumes that covered the House of Commons during the years 1715–1754. His work and that of his collaborators demonstrated that the Whig and

Tory A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. Th ...

parties survived Queen Anne's death in 1714 and continued to exist during the reigns of

George I George I or 1 may refer to: People * Patriarch George I of Alexandria (fl. 621–631) * George I of Constantinople (d. 686) * George I of Antioch (d. 790) * George I of Abkhazia (ruled 872/3–878/9) * George I of Georgia (d. 1027) * Yuri Dolgor ...

and

George II George II or 2 may refer to: People * George II of Antioch (seventh century AD) * George II of Armenia (late ninth century) * George II of Abkhazia (916–960) * Patriarch George II of Alexandria (1021–1051) * George II of Georgia (1072–1089) * ...

Eveline Cruickshanks Eveline Cruickshanks (1 December 1926 – 14 November 2021) was an historian of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century British political history, specialising in Jacobitism and Tory (British political party), Toryism. She was of English, Scottish ...

, in her work on the Tories and the

Jacobite rising of 1745 The Jacobite rising of 1745, also known as the Forty-five Rebellion or simply the '45 ( gd, Bliadhna Theàrlaich, , ), was an attempt by Charles Edward Stuart to regain the Monarchy of Great Britain, British throne for his father, James Franci ...

, paid tribute to Sedgwick: "My greatest debt is to the late Romney Sedgwick, a staunch Whig, whose wit and erudition I greatly admired, for a series of discussions, heated at times, but, as I well know, much enjoyed on both sides".Eveline Cruickshanks, ''Political Untouchables; The Tories and the '45'' (Duckworth, 1979), p. vi.

Works

*‘The Inner Cabinet from 1739 to 1741’, ''English Historical Review'' 34 (1919), pp. 290–302. *John, Lord Hervey, ''Some Materials towards Memoirs of the Reign of King George II'' (editor, 3 volumes, 1931). *‘Sir Robert Walpole 1676–1745: The Minister for the House of Commons’, ''Times Literary Supplement'' (24 March 1945), pp. 133–134. *''The House of Commons 1715–1754'' (editor, 2 volumes, 1970).

Notes

{{DEFAULTSORT:Sedgwick, Romney 1890s births 1972 deaths 20th-century British historians