Sir Henry Cavendish, 2nd Baronet PC (29 September 1732 – 3 August 1804) was an

Anglo-Irish Anglo-Irish people () denotes an ethnic, social and religious grouping who are mostly the descendants and successors of the English Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland. They mostly belong to the Anglican Church of Ireland, which was the State rel ...

politician noted for his extensive recording of parliamentary debates in the late 1760s and early 1770s.

Early life

Cavendish was the son of

Sir Henry Cavendish, 1st Baronet Sir Henry Cavendish, 1st Baronet (13 April 1707 – 31 May 1776), was a British politician who held several appointments in the Kingdom of Ireland. Biography Cavendish was the son of William Cavendish and Mary Tyrell. He was descended from Sir ...

, and his wife Anne (née Pyne), daughter of Henry Pyne and Anne Edgcumbe, and granddaughter of Sir

Richard Pyne Sir Richard Pyne (1644 – December 1709) was an Irish landowner, barrister and judge. He held office as Lord Chief Justice of Ireland from 1695-1709.Ball, F. Elrington ''"The Judges in Ireland 1221-1921"'' London John Murray 1926 pp.59-69 Bac ...

Lord Chief Justice of Ireland The Court of King's Bench (or Court of Queen's Bench during the reign of a Queen) was one of the senior courts of common law in Ireland. It was a mirror of the Court of King's Bench in England. The Lord Chief Justice was the most senior judge ...

and his wife Catherine Wandesford, a granddaughter of the leading Anglo-Irish statesman

Christopher Wandesford Christopher Wandesford (24 September 1592 – 3 December 1640) was an English administrator and politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1629. He was Lord Deputy of Ireland in the last months of his life. Life Wandesford w ...

. This branch of the Cavendish family descended from Henry Cavendish, illegitimate son of

Henry Cavendish Henry Cavendish ( ; 10 October 1731 – 24 February 1810) was an English experimental and theoretical chemist and physicist. He is noted for his discovery of hydrogen, which he termed "inflammable air". He described the density of inflammable a ...

of Tutbury Prior, eldest son of Sir William Cavendish and

Bess of Hardwick Elizabeth Cavendish, later Elizabeth Talbot, Countess of Shrewsbury ( Hardwick; 13 February 1608), known as Bess of Hardwick, of Hardwick Hall, Derbyshire, was a notable figure of Elizabethan English society. By a series of well-made marri ...

and elder brother of

William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire William Cavendish, 1st Earl of Devonshire (27 December 1552 – 3 March 1626) was an English nobleman, politician, and courtier. Early life William Cavendish was the second son of Sir William Cavendish and Bess of Hardwick. Following his ...

(the ancestor of the

Dukes of Devonshire Duke of Devonshire is a title in the Peerage of England held by members of the Cavendish family. This (now the senior) branch of the Cavendish family has been one of the wealthiest British aristocratic families since the 16th century and has b ...

). The Pyne family were substantial landowners in

County Cork County Cork () is the largest and the southernmost Counties of Ireland, county of Republic of Ireland, Ireland, named after the city of Cork (city), Cork, the state's second-largest city. It is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Munster ...

, and owned the celebrated Ballyvolane House, and Mogeely Castle, Mogeely.

Member of Parliament

He sat in the

Irish House of Commons The Irish House of Commons was the lower house of the Parliament of Ireland that existed from 1297 until the end of 1800. The upper house was the Irish House of Lords, House of Lords. The membership of the House of Commons was directly elected, ...

for Lismore from 1766 to 1768 and from 1776 to 1791 (when he was declared not duly elected in the 1790 election). He instead represented

Killybegs Killybegs () is a town in County Donegal, Ireland. It is the largest fishing port in the country and on the island of Ireland. It is located on the south coast of the county, north of Donegal Bay, near Donegal Town. Its Irish name means 'littl ...

from 1791 to 1797, also serving as Vice-Treasurer of Ireland and as Receiver-General in Ireland. In 1779 he was admitted to the

Irish Privy Council His or Her Majesty's Privy Council in Ireland, commonly called the Privy Council of Ireland, Irish Privy Council, or in earlier centuries the Irish Council, was the institution within the Dublin Castle administration which exercised formal execut ...

. He again represented Lismore from 1798 to the Act of Union in 1800/01. Cavendish was also a member of the

British House of Commons The House of Commons is the lower house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Like the upper house, the House of Lords, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England. The House of Commons is an elected body consisting of 650 memb ...

for

Lostwithiel Lostwithiel (; ) is a civil parish and small town in Cornwall, England, United Kingdom at the head of the estuary of the River Fowey. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 2,739, increasing to 2,899 at the 2011 census. The Lostwi ...

between 1768 and 1774.

Parliamentary diarist

He is chiefly remembered for the enormous amounts of notes he took of the debates in this session of Parliament using

Gurney A stretcher, gurney, litter, or pram is an apparatus used for moving patients who require medical care. A basic type (cot or litter) must be carried by two or more people. A wheeled stretcher (known as a gurney, trolley, bed or cart) is often ...

's system of

shorthand Shorthand is an abbreviated symbolic writing method that increases speed and brevity of writing as compared to Cursive, longhand, a more common method of writing a language. The process of writing in shorthand is called stenography, from the Gr ...

. The 1768 to 1774 Parliament has otherwise been termed the unreported Parliament, making Cavendish's notes an important historical source. During this time the reporting of parliamentary debates was forbidden. The notes, which include speeches by

Edmund Burke Edmund Burke (; 12 January ew Style, NS1729 – 9 July 1797) was an Anglo-Irish Politician, statesman, journalist, writer, literary critic, philosopher, and parliamentary orator who is regarded as the founder of the Social philosophy, soc ...

George Grenville George Grenville (14 October 1712 – 13 November 1770) was a British Whig statesman who served as Prime Minister of Great Britain, during the early reign of the young George III. He served for only two years (1763-1765), and attempted to solv ...

Lord North Frederick North, 2nd Earl of Guilford (13 April 17325 August 1792), better known by his courtesy title Lord North, which he used from 1752 to 1790, was Prime Minister of Great Britain from 1770 to 1782. He led Great Britain through most of the ...

and

Charles James Fox Charles James Fox (24 January 1749 – 13 September 1806), styled ''The Honourable'' from 1762, was a British British Whig Party, Whig politician and statesman whose parliamentary career spanned 38 years of the late 18th and early 19th centurie ...

, are now stored in the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

. Cavendish's original notebooks have gone missing but they were all transcribed by a clerk and fifty longhand manuscripts are in the

British Library The British Library is the national library of the United Kingdom. Based in London, it is one of the largest libraries in the world, with an estimated collection of between 170 and 200 million items from multiple countries. As a legal deposit li ...

.Peter D. G. Thomas, �
Cavendish, Sir Henry, second baronet (1732–1804)
��, ''Oxford Dictionary of National Biography'', Oxford University Press, 2004, accessed 21 August 2011. They have 15,700 pages with nearly 3,000,000 words. There are gaps in these volumes, where the clerk could not decipher Cavendish's hand. Cavendish only managed to fill in the gaps for twelve volumes out of fifty. Selections from these volumes were published in two volumes in 1839 and 1841. The debates on American affairs were published by R. C. Simmons and P. D. G. Thomas in the twentieth century. Cavendish also kept a record of the Irish House of Commons between 1776 and 1789 (currently in the

Library of Congress The Library of Congress (LOC) is a research library in Washington, D.C., serving as the library and research service for the United States Congress and the ''de facto'' national library of the United States. It also administers Copyright law o ...

). These amount to thirty-seven longhand volumes (containing more than 2,000,000 words) and forty-five of originally fifty-four shorthand journals. According to P. D. G. Thomas, "The fullness and accuracy of both diaries, in so far as that can be established by comparison with other sources, is remarkable...fewer than 100 omissions have been detected among the 12,000 speeches he noted at Westminster, and he seems to have captured much of the debating verbatim".

Personal life

Cavendish married Sarah Bradshaw, the daughter of Richard Bradshaw and Deborah Thompson, in 1757; they had eight children. In 1792 she was raised to the

Peerage of Ireland The peerage of Ireland consists of those Peerage, titles of nobility created by the English monarchs in their capacity as Lordship of Ireland, Lord or Monarchy of Ireland, King of Ireland, or later by monarchs of the United Kingdom of Great B ...

as Baroness Waterpark, in the County of Dublin, in honour of her husband. Cavendish died in August 1804, aged 71, and was succeeded in the baronetcy by his son

Richard Richard is a male given name. It originates, via Old French, from compound of the words descending from Proto-Germanic language">Proto-Germanic ''*rīk-'' 'ruler, leader, king' and ''*hardu-'' 'strong, brave, hardy', and it therefore means 'st ...

. Lady Waterpark died in August 1807, aged 67. The second son, George Cavendish was a politician. The third son,

Augustus Gaius Julius Caesar Augustus (born Gaius Octavius; 23 September 63 BC – 19 August AD 14), also known as Octavian (), was the founder of the Roman Empire, who reigned as the first Roman emperor from 27 BC until his death in A ...

, who took the surname Bradshaw in order to inherit a legacy from his grandfather, was the defendant in a celebrated

criminal conversation At common law, criminal conversation, often abbreviated as ''crim. con.'', is a tort arising from adultery. "Conversation" is an old euphemism for sexual intercourse that is obsolete except as part of this term. It is similar to breach of pr ...

action brought by George Frederick Nugent, 7th Earl of Westmeath in 1796, and was required to pay £10000 damages. The Westmeaths later divorced and Augustus married the former Countess. Cavendish's daughter, the younger Sarah, married

Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris Arthur Annesley, 1st Earl of Mountnorris Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS (7 August 1744 – 4 July 1816) was an Irish peer. He was the son of Richard Annesley, 6th Earl of Anglesey, and Juliana Donovan, Countess of Anglesey, who belonged to the ...

Notes

References

*Kidd, Charles, Williamson, David (editors). ''Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage'' (1990 edition). New York: St Martin's Press, 1990, * *

External links

Ireland. Parliament. House of Commons debates, 1776-1789
scan of Cavendish transcript in the Library of Congres
MSS27292
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cavendish, Sir Henry, 2nd Baronet 1732 births 1804 deaths Baronets in the Baronetage of Great Britain British MPs 1768–1774 18th-century Anglo-Irish people Henry Cavendish, 02nd Baronet Irish MPs 1761–1768 Irish MPs 1776–1783 Irish MPs 1783–1790 Irish MPs 1790–1797 Irish MPs 1798–1800 Members of the Privy Council of Ireland Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for constituencies in Cornwall Commissioners of the Treasury for Ireland Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Waterford constituencies Members of the Parliament of Ireland (pre-1801) for County Donegal constituencies