DUNCOMBE, Charles (1764-1841), of Duncombe Park, Helmsley, Yorks.

Duncombe continued to sit unopposed for Newport as the paying guest of its patron, Sir Leonard Worsley Holmes*. A lax attender, who is never known to have spoken in debate, when present he gave general support to the ministry of Lord Liverpool, from whom he extracted an assurance of promotion to the peerage in May 1820. Black Bk. (1823), 153; Session of Parl. 1825, p. 461; Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1235. He voted against more extensive tax reductions, 11 Feb. 1822, Catholic claims, 30 Apr. 1822, 10 May 1825, and the accompanying bill to disfranchise Irish 40s. freeholders, 26 Apr. 1825. He divided against inquiry into the prosecution of the Methodist missionary John Smith for inciting slave riots in Demerara, 11 June 1824, and for the duke of Cumberland’s annuity bill, 10 June 1825. That December he informed Lord Sidmouth, a ‘good Protestant’ whom he wished was still ‘in the administration’, that his eldest surviving son William Duncombe* had been asked to stand for Yorkshire at the next dissolution in place of the pro-Catholic James Archibald Stuart Wortley, and thereby ‘give an impetus to the cause’. Devon RO, Sidmouth mss, Duncombe to Sidmouth, 2, 3 Dec. 1825. At the 1826 dissolution he retired from the Commons in anticipation of his peerage, which Liverpool had requested from the king, 17 Apr. 1826. Geo. IV Letters, iii. 1235.

Duncombe spent his retirement at Duncombe Park tending an art collection which by 1831 included works by Poussin, Rubens and Leonardo da Vinci. T. Allen, Hist. Yorks. iii. 471. He died in Arlington Street in July 1841. Gent. Mag. (1841), ii. 315. By his will, dated 3 June 1831 and proved under £700,000, he left £100,000 to his second surviving son Arthur Duncombe*, £60,000 to each of his younger sons Augustus (1814-80), dean of York, and Octavius (1817-79), Conservative Member for the North Riding of Yorkshire, 1841-59, 1867-74, and annuities of £1,000 to his two surviving daughters and £400 to his eight grandchildren. The residue passed to William, his successor in the family estates and barony. PROB 11/1951/617; IR26/1575/584.