Beaumont, a forceful public speaker who had the wealth of the Blacketts’ Yorkshire lead mines at his disposal, had succeeded his ailing father as Member for Northumberland in 1818 with the tacit endorsement of the duke of Northumberland and the Liverpool ministry, despite turning down their request to stand jointly there with Henry Thomas Liddell*.
Beaumont formalized his adhesion to the Whigs in June and joined Brooks’s, sponsored by the radical Whig Henry Grey Bennet* and Lord Grey’s son-in-law John Lambton*, 11 July 1820. Until the summer of 1822 he divided unstintingly with the main Whig opposition and fairly regularly with the ‘Mountain’ for economy, retrenchment and tax reductions. He supported the London merchants’ petition for relaxation of commercial restrictions, 8 May 1820. As discussed with Grey, who considered his letter ‘well written and sensible’, he suggested that agriculture and manufacturing would be better represented if the Members designated for Leeds under the Grampound disfranchisement bill were awarded to the North and East Ridings of Yorkshire, 19 May 1820. (His amendment for the separate enfranchisement of the West Riding under the Grampound bill attracted bipartisan support but failed by 126-66, 12 Feb. 1821.)
He had famously failed to woo Grey’s daughter Elizabeth, and his engagement to the Catholic Sir John Swinburne’s daughter Elizabeth was terminated in August 1823, when, in a fit of delusion, he accused Lady Swinburne of adultery, naming Grey (whom he later threatened to prosecute for libel for declaring him insane) among her paramours.
My opinion of Mr. Beaumont is unchanged. Had he been a person of moderate fortune and properly educated, he would have been an amiable and accomplished man, whereas now he is evidently (though not without some good qualities) the mere slave of his passions and his habits.
J.C. Hodgson, Hist. Northumb. iv. 329; Losh Diaries, ii. 21; Grey mss, Lambton to Grey, 9 Feb. 1825.
Shortly after Beaumont returned to England, Brandling’s death in February 1826 caused a by-election in Northumberland. During it, and undeterred by hostile intrigues, constant criticism of his parliamentary conduct and absence and parental disapproval of his reputed liaisons, Beaumont contradicted reports of his retirement and issued canvassing notices for the anticipated general election. Perceiving that Howick, whose aristocratic supporters backed the anti-Catholic Tory Matthew Bell*, posed the greater threat to his re-election, he spoke for the Canningite Liddell on the hustings, 21 Feb., but distanced himself from him in defeat. Denouncing the Whig-Tory coalition, he said that his politics were ‘pro-Catholic’ and ‘in opposition to the leading parties of the state’. Making his mother the scapegoat, he attributed his recent absences to ‘domestic difficulties’.
Beaumont voted for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., and a 50s. pivot price for corn imports, 9 Mar. 1827. He objected to the award to the duke of Clarence because of the ‘breathless haste with which it had been presented to Parliament, and the want of sympathy with the distress of the people it glaringly betrayed’, 16 Mar. 1827. He demanded clarification of William Sturges Bourne’s tenure of the home office (as Lord Lansdowne’s locum) in Canning’s ministry, 11 May, asked Russell that day when he proposed moving the repeal of the Test Acts, and on the 15th proposed a motion of no confidence in the new administration. To the regret of Canning, who had looked forward to demolishing it, he withdrew it three days later.
The lady is young, pleasing in her appearance and unaffected in her manners. But she does not appear to me either handsome or clever. With the exception of a little vehemence against the Quakers and the Irish Association, there was nothing eccentric in Beaumont’s sentiments and his manners are always good. Beaumont is certainly a man of good talents. He has a good memory, has read much but without any regular system and his imagination often runs away with him. He would be very pleasant in conversation, were he not too fond of metaphysical subtleties, and did not a little disguised Aristocracy now and then show itself.
Losh Diaries, ii. 73-74.
Beaumont had recently resigned from Brooks’s, and the Wellington administration’s patronage secretary Planta was ‘doubtful’ of his support for Catholic emancipation in 1829. However, he divided for it, 6, 30 Mar., having presented a favourable petition from Blyth, 26 Mar. His father died, worth £60-120,000, 31 July 1829, having left virtually everything unrestricted by entail and settlements to his mother.
Beaumont was one of the 28 ‘opposition Members’ who voted against Knatchbull’s amendment to include reference to distress in the address, 4 Feb. 1830. He voted to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., and to enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb. He considered distress ‘general’ and caused by ‘overwhelming taxation’ that only remissions could relieve, and would have liked to see it investigated by a select committee, 8 Mar. However, he did not think the ministry, whose policies and poor public standing he criticized, had grasped its true extent, and made this his reason for opposing Davenport’s state of the nation motion, 23 Mar. A rebuke from the chancellor of the exchequer Goulburn failed to deter him from harrying the former commissioner of woods and forests Charles Arbuthnot over the architect John Nash’s lease purchases and on public access to St. James’s Park, 29 Mar. From now until 7 June he divided fairly steadily with the revived Whig opposition, including for Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., 17 May, reform, 28 May, and the abolition of capital punishment for forgery, 24 May, 7 June. He made way for Campbell at Stafford at the general election that summer and declared early for Northumberland, where he was returned unopposed with Bell after Liddell declined a contest. On the hustings, he reaffirmed his view that taxation was the ‘prime cause of the national distress’, stated that vested rights should not be allowed to prevent the abolition of rotten boroughs, and called for retrenchment and reform.
Ministers listed him among their ‘foes’, but having rebuked Daniel O’Connell for calling them ‘madmen’, 5 Nov., he ‘contrived’ to be shut out of the division on the civil list by which they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830.
He divided for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July, and against adjourning its consideration in committee, 12 July 1831, but he does not seem to have supported its details. His failure to vote at its passage, 21 Sept., was attributed to ill health, for which he had received three weeks’ leave, 15 Sept. His mother had died, 10 Aug., and by her will (proved under £180,000), he was obliged to provide £50,000 each and a share in the interest on £150,000 for his three brothers and two sisters.
Beaumont’s conduct at the general election of 1832, when he topped the poll and Bell defeated Ord, and his collusions to ensure that the Liberal and Conservative petitions were subsequently abandoned, damaged him locally.