Author: Lechmere, Edmund
Biography:
LECHMERE, Edmund (1747-98: ancestry.co.uk)
He was born on 8 Sept. 1747 and baptised on 7 Oct. at Hanley Castle, Worcs., the son of Edmund Lechmere, landowner and sometime MP, and his first wife Elizabeth Charlton, daughter of Sir Blundel Charlton, who had married in 1732. He was educated at Queen’s College Oxford (matric. 1764, BA 1768, MA 1770). He entered the Inner Temple in 1771, was called to the bar in 1774, and later served as MP for Worcester 1790-96. Initially a supporter of William Pitt the Younger, during the course of the war he began to oppose a number of government measures. He voted against the Seditious Meetings Acts (1795), the conduct of the war (1796), and further loans (1796). He voted for peace negotiation (1796) and for an inquiry into the national finances (1796). He spoke frequently on the plight of the poor and opposed grain exports. However, in 1793 he opposed Wilberforce on the slave trade as an attack on property rights, and only supported regulation. Elections proved ruinously expensive for him and to avoid his creditors he moved to Holyrood, Edinburgh, but was arrested for debt in 1797. However, his immunity as an MP was upheld and sanctuary conceded. He died at his apartments in the Abbey, Edinburgh, on 20 Oct. 1798 and was buried at Canongate on the 24th. He seems not to have married. A death notice recorded that he left a natural daughter but her name is unknown. The youthful Poems and Translations(1770) is his only known volume of verse. (ancestry.co.uk 11 Dec. 2021; historyofparliamentonline.org 11 Dec. 2021; Hereford Journal 31 Oct. 1798; Chester Chronicle 9 Nov. 1798; GM Nov. 1798, 997; E. P. Shirley, Hanley and the House of Lechmere [1883]) AA