CHERRY, George Henry (1793-1848), of 9 Gloucester Place, Portman Square, Mdx.

Cherry was a member of the Berkshire branch of a family said to be descended from the Lords of Beauval, Liguiere and Villencourt, and first found in Northamptonshire in about 1508. His grandfather George Cherry, a sailor, lost a leg at the battle of Finisterre, was transferred to civil duties, and rose to become chairman of the board of commissioners for victualling the navy. In 1778 he secured a post in the Bengal civil service for his eldest son George Frederick, whose knowledge of native languages brought him to the attention of the governor-general Lord Cornwallis. He was appointed resident at Oude (1794) and Benares (1796), where he was killed, 14 Jan. 1799, ‘at the hands of Vizier Ali’, the reputed son of the nabob of Oude, during a breakfast meeting between them. C. Minchin, Annals of Anglo-Indian Fam. ed. M.A. Morris, 1-15, 28; Cornwallis Corresp. ii. 326; iii. 114; H. Furber, Private Rec. of Indian Governor-Generalship, 88, 105. His widow and young son George Henry returned to London and took a house in Gloucester Place directly the estate had been settled. Cherry gained a first in classics at Oxford. His mother died in January 1819, leaving him in full possession of personal estate valued at over £33,000, property in Chatham, Kent, and the lease of their London home, and in September he married a niece of the Barne brothers of Sotterley and Dunwich, with whose family he was already connected through his aunt Rosanna’s marriage to Henry Sawbridge. PROB 9/2/709; 11/1613/58; IR26//635/124; 773/93; Gent. Mag. (1815), i. 189; (1819), ii. 368. He came in for Dunwich at the general election of 1820 as the guest of the Barnes.

Cherry, who is not known to have spoken in debate, voted against Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 30 Apr. 1822, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May 1825, and parliamentary reform, 20 Feb. 1823, 26 Feb. 1824. He generally divided with Lord Liverpool’s ministry, but cast a few wayward votes on issues of economy and retrenchment: against the appointment of an additional Scottish baron of exchequer, 15 May 1820, for army reductions, 14 Mar., against including arrears in the duke of Clarence’s grant, 18 June 1821, for admiralty economies, 1 Mar., and abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. 1822. He divided with government on the revenue, 4 July 1820, their handling of the queen’s case, 6 Feb., and the malt duty repeal bill, 3 Apr. 1821, and against more extensive tax reductions to relieve distress, 11, 21 Feb. 1822. He was in the minority of 39 opposed to the referral of the Calcutta bankers’ petition to a select committee, 4 July 1822. He voted against repealing the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr., and was in the government minority against inquiry into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. 1823. In the summer of 1823 he gave up his London home and moved to Denford House, Kintbury, Berkshire, which he had purchased from William Hallet in 1822. VCH Berks. iv. 213; Herts. Archives, Drake Garrard mss D/EGd/E9 [NRA 18355]. He was in the minority against the usury laws repeal bill, 27 Feb. 1824. His vote with government on the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar. 1826, is the last recorded for him.

Left without a seat by the Barnes in 1826, Cherry did not stand for Parliament again. He built and endowed Holy Trinity church at Denford, served as sheriff of Berkshire, 1829-30, when he took a leading part in bringing the ‘Swing’ rioters to justice, and bought further properties in the county and neighbouring Oxfordshire and Wiltshire. VCH Berks. iv. 213, 217, 383; Minchin, 14; The Times, 7, 29 Dec. 1830. He died in January 1848, having bequeathed them to his elder son, George Charles Cherry (1821-87), and settled the Chatham estates on his wife, Warburton Davies and Henry Barne Sawbridge, in trust for his other children. In 1884 his younger son Apsley (1832-1907) succeeded his uncle to Lamer Park and took the additional surname of Garrard. He married late in life and in 1887 succeeded his bachelor brother to Denford. Berks. Chron. 15 Jan.; Gent. Mag. (1848), i. 217; PROB 11/2069/102; IR26/1797/108; Minchin, 28-30.