Viscount Forbes, commissioned in his father’s regiment at the age of nine, was the nephew of the Prince of Wales’s friend Lord Moira, who drew father and son into the circle of Carlton House Whigs. On coming of age he was returned unopposed for county Longford on the family interest, with the active support of Lord Grenville’s government, which had made his father a British peer and an Irish privy councillor and placeholder that year. Francis Horner, reporting on 26 Dec. 1806 that he had met Forbes ‘frequently’ in the House, added ‘I like his sedateness, gentleness and sense’.
Forbes remained in opposition on the dismissal of his friends and voted for Brand’s motion against their successors, 9 Apr. 1807. The Castle could find no candidate to challenge him at the ensuing election. He voted against the address, 26 June, and for Whitbread’s ‘state of the nation’ motion, 6 July 1807, but was subsequently a lax attender until 1809, when he appeared in at least one minority list for Folkestone’s motion against abuses 17 Apr.,
Appointed a.d.c. to the Regent in 1811, Forbes felt obliged to offer his resignation to Col. McMahon, 17 Mar. 1812, as his ‘political opinions’ did not ‘in the least accord with those of the ministers’. McMahon and Moira decided to hold this back, lest it should ‘seem to exhibit abandonment of our dear unhappy Prince’, and persuaded Forbes to retract it, regarding his post as a purely military one. He agreed on condition ‘that I shall be considered as perfectly free on every occasion which will come before the House of Commons’. He proceeded to exhibit his freedom, voting for Catholic claims, 24 Apr. 1812, against the sinecure tellerships of the Exchequer, 7 May, and for Stuart Wortley’s motion for a stronger administration, 21 May. When there was no change, Forbes was furious. Creevey wrote, 1 June:
he has received such usage from his master, either on his uncle’s account or his own voting in Parliament, that he won’t go near him, and ... he came to dine yesterday with the yellow lining and the Prince’s buttons taken away from his coat. He said never again would he carry about him so degrading a badge of servitude to such a master.
Geo. IV Letters, i. 30, 35, 39, 47, 48.
Apart from voting in the majority for Catholic relief, 2 Mar. 1813, Forbes seems to have absented himself from the first session of the Parliament of 1812, and while Peel regarded him as ‘decidedly in opposition’ (5 June 1813), the viceroy, an old friend of his father, was less sure. He noted that the father was ‘by no means so violent as he was’ and that Forbes was prepared to become custos rotulorum in succession to his father to do away with the effect of the latter’s threat of resignation on Sir Thomas Newcomen’s appointment as co-governor: ‘I really should not be surprised if he came over to us. He avoided attending Parliament latterly though much pressed so to do.’