CHILD, Sir Richard, 3rd Bt. (1680-1750), of Wanstead, Essex.

A member of the October Club, with an estate of over £10,000 a year, Child was returned for his county as a Tory in 1715 but voted for the septennial bill in April 1716. In 1715 he purchased an Irish peerage from the Duchess of Munster (afterwards Kendal), George I’s mistress.Luttrell v. 383; Coxe, Walpole, i. 95. On learning of this the English ministers wrote to Stanhope in Hanover, 28 Aug. 1716:

My Lord Townshend and Mr. Methuen are extremely concerned at what you write about the probability of Sir Richard Child’s immediate promotion to the peerage. They apprehend that such a mark of his Majesty’s favour to that gentleman, who is a Tory, may have a very ill effect at this juncture, and that it will at least revive many pretensions among the Whigs which are in every respect better founded, so that it will be of great disservice to his Majesty to do it at present; for which reason they desire you would use your utmost endeavours at least to get it deferred till after the next session, by which means his Majesty will have the service of Sir R. Child in the House of Commons for one session longer; and they make no doubt but the evident reasonableness of this delay will reconcile Sir R. Child to acquiesce in it, if he can have his Majesty’s assurance of its being done at that time.

As a result, the King told the Duchess that Child would be made a peer ‘at the end of next session of Parliament, provided he does not press to be made till then’,Coxe, Walpole, ii. 74, 79. but in fact he had to wait two sessions. In 1719 he voted for the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, but against the peerage bill. He lost his seat in 1722, was returned unopposed in 1727, voting consistently with the Government, but stood down in 1734 in favour of his son, who was defeated. Dying at Aix-en-Provence in March 1750, he was buried on 29 May at Wanstead, which he had rebuilt on a vast scale.