WORSLEY HOLMES, Sir Leonard Thomas, 9th bt. (1787-1825), of Westover, Calbourne, I.o.W.

Worsley Holmes’s family had been connected with the Isle of Wight since the sixteenth century and included several governors of the island and Members of Parliament for its boroughs. W. Berry, Hants Genealogies, 134, 136-9, 350-3. On his father’s death in 1811 he had inherited about £15,000, property at Westover (built by his maternal grandfather as a hunting lodge), and effective powers of nomination over the Members for Newport and Yarmouth. VCH Hants, v. 218; PROB 11/1522/231; IR26/171/120. A post-1814 memorandum indicates that he also coveted the island’s other borough of Newtown, though he never secured a controlling stake. I.o.W. RO, Heytesbury mss JER/HBY/232/15. His marriage to his second cousin brought him additional land in Ireland, chiefly around Ardagh, in county Limerick. Ibid. 112/1; 121/2. For a time Worsley Holmes had placed his considerable influence at the disposal of the 1st Marquess Wellesley, an unsuccessful contender for the premiership in 1812, allegedly in the hope of reviving his grandfather’s peerage. He was retrospectively listed by Greville as part of the Wellesley-Canning connection, 22 Mar. 1820. Grey mss, Goodwin to Grey, 24 Dec. 1812; Greville Mems. i. 92.

At the 1820 general election he was again returned unopposed for Newport, where he thanked the compliant corporators for their ‘unbounded confidence, in once more entrusting to him the selection of a colleague’. He had earlier canvassed the inhabitants on behalf of his friend John Fleming II*, an aspirant to the county representation, and pronounced himself flattered by the response. Hants Telegraph, 20, 27 Mar.; Hants Chron. 27 Mar. 1820. A very lax attender, who is not known to have spoken in debate, he was inaccurately assumed to have voted ‘for ministers always’ by a radical commentary of 1823, this being the line he had pursued, 1815-20. Black Bk. (1823), 164. He was granted a week’s leave on urgent private business, 3 July 1820. That September he supervised the annual training of his yeomanry troop. Hants Telegraph, 18 Sept. 1820. On 26 Jan. 1821 he divided with opposition against the omission of Queen Caroline’s name from the liturgy. He arrived on the Isle of Wight, 5 Feb. 1821, and paired against the forgery punishment mitigation bill, 23 May. Ibid. 5 Feb. 1821. On 28 July 1821 he provided the inhabitants of Newport with the means to celebrate the king’s coronation. Ibid. 30 July 1821. According to a correction in The Times, he voted in the minority for a gradual reduction of the salt duties, 28 Feb. 1822. The Times, 4 Mar. 1822. He was in Newport on 9 July 1822 for the visit of the bishop of Winchester, and his gifts to the poor of meat and blankets in the winter of 1822-3 were the subject of laudatory press notices. Southampton Co. Chron. 11 July 1822, 9, 30 Jan. 1823. Next spring he was again preoccupied with a mustering of the yeomanry, whose exemplary discipline was said to reflect ‘the highest possible credit on their worthy commander’. Ibid. 20 Mar., 10 Apr. 1823. No trace of parliamentary activity has been found for 1823 or 1824. In February 1824 he chaired a meeting of a savings bank in Newport, but that September it was noted by his auditor that his ‘continued indisposition’ prevented his attendance even to local affairs. Hants Chron. 9 Feb. 1824; Heytesbury mss 232/18.

Worsley Holmes died at his mother’s house in January 1825. Posthumous confirmation of his continued attachment to ministers came from his friend and executor William Mount*, who informed Liverpool, 20 Jan.:

The health of Sir Leonard had been declining for some months, and it was his intention ... to have made your lordship acquainted with his inability to attend Parliament and have offered his seat to your lordship for any friend you might wish to succeed him for the remainder of the present session. Berks. RO, Mount mss D/EMt F14.

Obituaries paid tribute to his ‘benevolence’ and at his funeral a cortège nearly a mile in length followed his coffin to its interment in the family vault at Arreton. The Times, 14 Jan.; Hants Chron. 17 Jan. 1825; Gent Mag. (1825), i. 182-3. His surviving accounts reveal benefactions to schools, hospitals, evening lectures in Newport church, the Isle of Wight Institution, and the Society for the Promotion of Christian Knowledge. He also subscribed to the Vectis lodge of freemasons and the Hampshire hunt. In the financial year 1820-1, when his Isle of Wight property gave him a rental income of £8,110 and his lands in Limerick, Wicklow and Waterford produced £2,608, his charitable donations totalled £170, but in 1823-4, when his income fell to £4,481 and £2,000 respectively, his subscriptions were reduced to £94. Heytesbury mss 139/1-9. By the terms of his will, dated 27 Nov. 1824, his landed property passed to his eldest daughter Elizabeth, then a minor. (The trustees were Mount, his distant cousins the 2nd Baron Yarborough and the Rev. Henry Worsley of Godshill, the Newport solicitors Thomas Sewell and William Hearn, and Robert Clark of Carisbrooke.) His younger daughter Anne Emily received legacies worth £30,000, charged on his real and personal estate, while his widow, who had been provided with a marriage settlement, was named as residuary legatee. In 1833 Elizabeth Holmes married Sir William Henry Ashe A’Court (1809-91), who, in accordance with his father-in-law’s will, took the name of Holmes after his own. PROB 11/1702/430; IR26/1046/781; Heytesbury mss 121/2. He sat as a Conservative for the Isle of Wight, 1837-47, and succeeded as 2nd Baron Heytesbury in 1860. A bas-relief marble monument to Worsley Holmes was completed in 1829 and placed over his tomb the following year. Hants Chron. 11 May 1829, 11 Oct. 1830.