Heathcote’s father, who was knighted on his appointment as sheriff of Staffordshire in 1784, was the eldest son of Michael Heathcote of Buxton, Derbyshire, and his heiress wife Rachel (née Edensor) of Hartington. He had prospered as a barrister, purchased the mansion (1778) and manor (1784) of Longton with its potteries and coal seams and married the eldest daughter of Sir Nigel Gresley of Drakelow, whose estates and influence extended into Derbyshire, Leicestershire and Staffordshire. The eldest of their ten children, at least two of whom were deaf and dumb, Heathcote excelled academically, graduated in classics at Oxford and was intended for the bar or the church, but preferred country pursuits.
I told my friends most distinctly that I was no advocate of reform in its common and hackneyed sense, but only so far as I believed it to be perfectly safe and consistent with the preservation of our ... form of government ... All that I contended for was that where abuses were obvious, and the correction of them was practicable, they might in all cases be corrected and removed with an honest and steady hand ... My property, my connections, and the political conduct of my family, which had always been most loyal and disinterested, as well as my own on many trying occasions, might, I thought, afford them a sufficient guarantee, that I should never be the person to desire change of a violent and dangerous kind ... I should equally, I said, disguise my real sentiments, were I to describe myself entirely favourable or entirely hostile to the claims of the Roman Catholics. I differed alike with that party, which would resist all concessions in limine, and with that, which would remove at once all restraint and concede all that is asked without looking to consequences, or requiring any countervailing safeguards.
Derbys. RO, Gresley of Drakelow mss D77/41/1, Fowler to Gresley, 7 July; Staffs. Advertiser, 19 July 1823.
He attributed his defeat by John Evelyn Denison to his ‘late start’ and urged his supporters to challenge the corporation through the courts.
Heathcote was widowed for the second time in September 1825, and unlike Gresley (who had been defeated at Lichfield), he did not scour the country in search of a seat at the 1826 general election. Probably on the Staffordshire Member Littleton’s recommendation, he started late on the corporation interest at Coventry where the corporation had advertised for a ‘No Popery’ Tory opposed to free trade, and topped the poll with Bilcliffe Fyler, so defeating the sitting Whigs.
I have no intention of relinquishing my seat for Coventry, previous to a dissolution ... nor any desire to occupy it one day afterwards. In the meantime I shall take leave to exercise my own discretion as to the period when my attendance in the House may be most likely to promote the interests of my constituents or the public.
Coventry Mercury, 11 Apr. 1830.
From 28 Apr. 1830 he divided steadily with the revived Whig opposition, including for Jewish emancipation, 17 May. Later that month both Coventry papers carried critical reviews of his recent votes.
A prominent figure at Staffordshire meetings in 1831 and 1832, Heathcote overcame his initial reluctance to support the Grey ministry’s reform bill, declared for the ballot and triennial parliaments and unsuccessfully contested the new Stoke constituency as a Liberal in 1832. He prevailed there in January 1835, but retired a year later.