Turnip townshend biography of williams

Home / Celebrity Biographies / Turnip townshend biography of williams

He also continued to be active as a committee chairman during the remainder of the session, and on 26 Jan. he reported from the committees considering James Hoare's bill and the bill for the sale of part of Charles Morris’s estate, and on 9 Feb. from that for the bill for improving the collection of tolls from Chancery Lane into Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

The new Lady Townshend brought with her a fortune believed to be in the region of £30,000, or as Sir Miles Cooke reported it, ‘She weighs 30,000 p[ounds]’.27

Townshend returned to the House for the new Parliament on 6 Dec. 1698, after which he was present on 68 per cent of all sitting days. The elections that month confirmed the extent of Townshend’s interest within Norfolk and saw him successfully promoting the claims of his brother, Roger, at Great Yarmouth, and of his kinsman, Ashe Windham^‡, for the county seat in partnership with Holland.

Although at the close of May 1709 Marlborough had expressed himself ‘very well pleased’ with his junior partner, by August it was apparent that their appraisal of the situation was starkly at odds. As time went by, the increase in city populations due to the Industrial Revolution further increased the demand for food, and this was met in the main by the growing of cereal crops in eastern Europe, and an ever increasing supply of food from the New World.

In this case, Townshend’s local popularity and his reputation for moderation seems to have helped attract some of the Tory voters away from their candidate, Sir Jacob Astley^‡, bt. He criticized it as a tack of extraneous material on a money bill, though he insisted on his respect for the prince. A letter of 16 Mar. 1705 from Robert Harley, later earl of Oxford, noted that Townshend would not agree to be sent to Vienna.50 Townshend, second choice for the posting after William Paget, 2nd Baron Paget, indeed refused the offer of the mission to Vienna in April.

He eventually retired from public life in 1730 and spent the rest of his life concentrating on agricultural improvements on his estates, an activity that helped earn him the soubriquet of ‘Turnip Townshend’.136 Full details of the latter phase of his career will be covered by the second part of this work.

In contrast to the case of his kinsman Walpole, no scent of corruption accompanied Townshend into his retirement.

He wrote again about the same matter later in the month, on 22 Oct., emphasizing the ‘very ill consequence if any one of our friends be put upon that office’.55 Townshend himself was, not surprisingly, absent at the opening of the new Parliament on 25 October. Townshend was later forecast by Oxford as one of those opposed to the claim of James Hamilton, 4th duke of Hamilton [S], to take his seat in the House as the British duke of Brandon, and at the division on 20 Dec.

Townshend voted as expected in favour of barring Scots peers holding post-Union British titles from sitting in the Lords.

On 18 Jan. 1712 Townshend received the proxy of Charles Howard, 4th Baron Howard of Escrick, which was vacated the following day by Howard’s appearance. 1714;9 sec. On 7, 11 and 19 Feb. he further acted as a manger in conferences on the ‘whimsical’ place clause to the regency bill.

The Industrial Revolution was beginning to move into first gear and by the end of the 18th century the demand for food in the new industrial centres was fast outstripping local production.