DASHWOOD, Sir James, 2nd Bt. (1715-79), of Kirtlington Park, Oxon.

Inheriting estates in Oxfordshire so extensive that the owner could ride from Kirtlington to Banbury on his own lands,J. Townsend, Oxfordshire Dashwoods, 24. Dashwood built himself ‘a vast new house’ at Kirtlington, the largest in the county after Blenheim, ‘situated so high’, Horace Walpole wrote (4 Aug. 1753, to John Chute) ‘that it seems to stand for the county as well as himself’. Returned unopposed as a Tory for the county in 1740, he abstained on the motion for the dismissal of Walpole in February 1741. Re-elected unopposed in 1741 and 1747, he voted against the Government in all recorded divisions, refusing in 1745 to join the association in defence of the Hanoverian succession.R. J. Robson, Oxfordshire Election of 1754, p. 2. In 1747 he attended the anniversary dinner of the independent electors of Westminster, at which treasonable healths were said to have been drunk, being chosen one of their stewards for the following year.Gent. Mag. 1747, p. 150. The 2nd Lord Egmont wrote of him in his electoral survey, c. 1749-50:

He is deemed strongly tainted with Jacobitism, yet I don’t think him irreclaimable. He has a great fortune, is of a rough temper with a great deal of spirit — if he would speak more and attend a little business he is capable of acquiring a very great influence among the Tories.

In October 1753 he anticipated the Administration by moving for the repeal of the Act for the naturalization of the Jews, making a violent speech against it.AEM & D Angl. 51, ff. 189-90. A month later he moved for the repeal of the Plantation Act, under which foreigners could be naturalized after seven years residence in the colonies.Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 364.

He died 10 May 1779.