A descendant of the famous inventor Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), Arkwright was a lawyer who reflected his family’s traditional Tory values in Parliament. Arkwright’s father John, was one of five sons of Richard Arkwright junior, the only son and heir of the immensely wealthy Sir Richard. Richard Arkwright, or ‘Dick’ as he was known in the family, was therefore the great-grandson and namesake of the pioneering capitalist. John and his brothers were set up as country gentlemen by their father, who purchased landed estates on their behalf and settled vast fortunes upon them.
Arkwright was groomed for the law and practised as a barrister on the Oxford circuit and a revising barrister for Monmouthshire, Cheltenham and Gloucester prior to his entry into Parliament.
His family’s staunch support for the Church of England was reflected in his votes against the abolition of church rates and Anglican tests at Oxford University, 7, 21 Mar. 1866. In his maiden speech, 14 May 1866, he defended his constituency’s right to return two MPs, which was threatened by the Liberal government’s reform bill. Asking a series of rhetorical questions, each beginning ‘I will not ask why’, Arkwright highlighted inconsistencies in the government’s treatment of small boroughs, which were as ‘illogical and tyrannical an injustice as has ever been contemplated by any government’. (The government proposed partially disenfranchising all boroughs with a population under 8,000 which disproportionately affected Conservative seats, rather than 10,000 which would have had a more equal impact on both parties). He voted with the Conservatives and Adullamites in favour of Earl Grosvenor’s amendment for a parallel redistribution scheme and Lord Dunkellin’s proposal for a rateable rather than a rental franchise, 27 Apr., 18 June 1866.
In the divisions on the Derby government’s representation of the people bill the following year, Arkwright generally voted with the majority of Conservative MPs, dividing against enfranchising compounders and lodgers and expanding the copyhold franchise. He also opposed increasing the representation of the largest towns at the expense of the small boroughs and supported attempts to safeguard minorities, dividing in favour of Lowe’s amendment to introduce cumulative voting, and the minority clause, 5 July, 8 Aug. 1867. In the same session Arkwright briefly intervened to speak as a member of the select committee on the county Waterford election, in order to correct erroneous comments made by other MPs. He stated that no evidence had been presented of undue influence from landlords that would have justified any violence, 25 July 1867.
After opposing Gladstone’s Irish church resolutions, 3 Apr. 1868, Arkwright was re-elected at the general election later that year and continued to represent Leominster until 1875, when he took the Chiltern Hundreds. In 1887 a special Act of Parliament made Arkwright a trustee of the Hampton Court estate owned by his inept elder brother John Hungerford Arkwright. Cleverer and possessing a cool legal mind, Arkwright was in effect appointed to oversee his brother’s management of the estate. The situation was humiliating for John Hungerford Arkwright and placed a strain on their fraternal relations. The estate was eventually sold off in the early twentieth century. A clever man who possessed a cool legal mind, Richard Arkwright later became a heavy drinker.