Constituency : Brighton 1857-64
William was a wealthy ( in part from slavery ) clergyman's son from County Londonderry. He was educated at Eton and Cambridge. He was briefly an army man between 1834 and 1836 but thereafter occupied himself as a writer and art collector, particularly of Italian Old Masters. He was often venomously critical of the National Gallery's policies. In 1849 he dramatically announced that he was selling his entire collection. He first stood in Brighton in 1847 and then Westminster in 1852 but was unsuccessful.He offended the queen with a pamphlet attacking Prince Albert for supposedly engineeering Palmerston's dismissal in 1851. Despite being a Radical in favour of suffrage extension and the ballot he was a strong supporter of Palmerston and decisively beat the Peelite ex-minister Alfred Hervey at Brighton in 1857.
William had concerns for the working man and George Eliot thought he was moving towards some form of Socialism. He became an avowed atheist. He was fiercely opposed to public inoculation against disease.
William had an excitable nature and may have suffered from bipolar disorder. He was cultured and aristocratic in bearing.
In 1860 Willliam criticised the government for not doing more to investigate the fate of the Franklin Expedition to the North Pole in which his stepbrother lost his life.
William's health deteriorated in 1863 and he announced his retirement in 1864, the Tories capturing the seat in the by-election. In 1868 he felt recovered enough to stand again but wasn't successful. He then withdrew from public life altogether, his wife lamenting in 1877 "how shattered his health and spirits have become, and how (to see if it would do him any good ) we have wandered from on place to another with no cheering result".
He died in 1884 aged 69.
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