Canterbury, Charles Manners-Sutton
CANTERBURY, CHARLES MANNERS-SUTTON, 1st Viscount (1780-1845), speaker of the House of Commons, was the elder son of Charles Manners-Sutton (q.v.), afterwards archbishop of Canterbury, and was born on the 29th of January 1780. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he graduated B.A. in 1802, and was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1806. At the general election of this year he was returned to parliament in the Tory interest as member for Scarborough, and in 1809 became judge-advocate-general in the ministry of Spencer Perceval. He retained this position until June 1817, when he was elected speaker in succession to Charles Abbot, created Baron Colchester, refusing to exchange this office in 1827 for that of home secretary. In 1832 he abandoned Scarborough and was returned to parliament as one of the members for the university of Cambridge. Before the general election of 1832 Manners-Sutton had intimated his desire to retire from the position of speaker and had been voted an annuity of £4000 a year. The ministry of Earl Grey, however, reluctant to meet the reformed House of Commons with a new and inexperienced occupant of the chair, persuaded him to retain his office, and in 1833 he was elected speaker for the seventh time. Some feeling had been shown against him on this occasion owing to his Tory proclivities, and the Whigs frequently complained that outside the House he was a decided partisan. The result was that when a new parliament met in February 1835 a sharp contest ensued for the speakership, and Manners-Sutton was defeated by James Abercromby, afterwards Lord Dunfermline. In March 1835 the retiring speaker was raised to the peerage as Baron Bottesford and Viscount Canterbury. In 1835 he was appointed high commissioner for Canada, but owing to domestic reasons he never undertook the appointment. He died in London on the 21st of July 1845 and was buried at Addington. His first wife was Lucy (d. 1815), daughter of John Denison of Ossington, by whom he had two sons and a daughter. Both his sons, Charles John (1812-1869), and John Henry Thomas (1814-1877), succeeded in turn to the viscounty. By his second wife, Ellen (d. 1845), widow of John Home-Purves, he had a daughter.
Note - this article incorporates content from Encyclopaedia Britannica, Eleventh Edition, (1910-1911)
