MYDDELTON, Richard (1726-95), of Chirk Castle, Denb.

Myddelton and his son successively represented Denbigh throughout this period without a contest. Myddelton adhered to Newcastle, although his ambition of an English peerage, for which he applied in 1754 and again in 1761, was not satisfied.Add. 32995, f. 260; 32917, ff. 387-8. Both in 1754 and 1761 Newcastle treated him as one of Lord Powis’s group, inviting him through Powis to attend the opening of the session. Attempts were made to gain him over to Bute through Sir John Wynn, who on 26 Oct. 1762 urged him to attend the meeting at the Cockpit, and trust Fox; next, on 19 Nov., Fox himself asked him to attend that meeting.Chirk Castle mss, NLW. But his name does not appear in Fox’s list of Members favourable to the peace preliminaries, and he continued to appear in Newcastle’s list of ‘friends’. Still, he did not vote against the preliminaries—most probably he was absent.

When the parliamentary whip was sent out by Grenville in November 1763, Myddelton was omitted; but after the meeting at the Cockpit Grenville wrote to him saying it was through an oversight.Grenville letter bk. Over general warrants he was apparently expected to vote with Government. ‘I did not see Mr. Myddelton last Tuesday [14 Feb.] in the House’, wrote Edward Kynaston to Jenkinson on 16 Feb., ‘a line from Mr. Grenville may be proper to be sent to him.’Jenkinson Pprs. 266. But on 18 Feb. Myddelton voted against the Government; and Newcastle continued to class him as ‘sure friend’, both before and after the year of the Rockingham Administration. Myddelton voted with Opposition over the land tax, 27 Feb. 1767, and with Administration on the nullum tempus bill, 17 Feb. 1768. He was treated by Grafton as a friend, and on 1 Nov. 1768 was sent the official invitation to attend at the Cockpit before the opening of the session.Chirk Castle mss. He voted against the Government over Wilkes, 27 Jan. 1769, his only known vote on that issue; but when over Grenville’s Act, on 25 Feb. 1774, he again voted against the Government, North included him among those who ‘generally vote with and are friends’. In 1770 the parliamentary whip was sent to him,Ibid. and presumably also in other years, although not extant among his papers; on 20 Sept. 1776 Robinson specially notified him that some business would probably come up in the House ‘in which your interest and connexions at Denbigh are much concerned’. He was absent from all the crucial divisions, February-April 1780, but in Robinson’s survey made before the general election was still classed as ‘pro’. He was again absent from the divisions of February-March 1782, barring one: on 27 Feb. he voted for peace with America. On the vote of no confidence in North’s Administration, Myddelton is placed by Robinson in the column of ‘persons who stayed away’.Abergavenny mss.

Robinson, in his survey of December 1783, wrote about Myddelton: ‘Attends very little but may be hopeful’.Laprade, 96. In fact Myddelton’s name never appears in any division list between 27 Feb. 1782 and his withdrawal from the House in May 1788. There is perhaps no other man with so poor a record for attendance and voting as Myddelton in his last 20 years; nor is he ever mentioned as having spoken in the House.

He died March 1795.