BARLOW, Francis William (1775-1805), of Middlethorpe, Yorks.

Barlow, a Yorkshire landowner and magistrate, was with his regiment at Coventry at the time of the general election of 1802. When one of the corporation candidates was frightened into withdrawing, he declared ‘he’d be hanged if he himself wouldn’t come forward, for he didn’t care a button for the threats of an opposition mob’. He deposited £1,500 and was gladly accepted as the corporation candidate; a choice not altogether correctly criticized as one of

‘... a boy without a beard,

Who knows no more of commerce than his sword’.

His chairing was accompanied by his regimental band.T. W. Whitley, Parl. Rep. Coventry, 226-30; The Times, 7 July 1802.

On 4 Mar. 1803 Barlow was in the minority for inquiry into the Prince of Wales’s financial prospects. On 11 July the House was informed that he had been charged by the lieutenant-colonel of his regiment with improper conduct and was under arrest pending a court martial.CJ, lviii. 597. The trouble arose from ‘an altercation against a gaming debt, when some reflections were cast on his military character’. A month later he was honourably acquitted on every charge.The Times, 14 July, 1, 8 Sept. 1803. He joined opposition to Addington on Pitt’s naval motion, 15 Mar. 1804, and probably also on the volunteer bill four days later. In May he was listed ‘Fox’ and in September ‘Fox and Grenville’. He opposed Pitt’s additional force bill in June 1804 and voted for its repeal, 6 Mar. 1805. He was in the opposition majority hostile to Melville on 8 Apr. 1805. No speech of his survives. He died at a London coffee house, 6 May 1805.Gent. Mag. (1805), i. 485.