1641 Cecil Beck

Constituency : Wisbech 1906-10, Saffron  Walden  1910-21, 1921-22 ( Independent )

Cecil  took  over  from  Arthur  Brand  at  Wisbech.

Cecil  was  born  in  South  Africa. He  was  educated  at  Haileybury  and  Cambridge. He  became  a  barrister  and  an  under-writer  at  Lloyds.

The  local  party  were  not  happy  with  Cecil  and  chose  another  candidate  for  the  January  1910  election.He  moved  on  to  Chippenham  to  try  and  hold  John Dickson-Poynder's  seat  but  was unsuccessful. He  tried  Saffron  Walden  in  December  and  won  by  40  votes.

In  1912  Cecil  became  parliamentary  private  secretary  to  the  chief  whip, Percy  Illingworth. He  also  took  the  chair  of  the  Liberal  Insurance  Committee. He  became  a whip  in  1915 and  then  Vice-Chamberlain  of  the  Household  when  the  coalition  government  was  formed. Lloyd  George  made  him  Controller  of  Finance  in  the  Ministry  of  National  Service  headed  by  Neville  Chamberlain.

Cecil  easily  defeated  Labour  as  the  Coalition  candidate  in  1918.

Cecil  was  knighted  in  1920.

In  1921   Cecil  resigned  the  government  whip  and  signed  up  to  Horatio  Bottomley's  Independent  Parliamentary Group. He  went  looking  for  a  London  seat  but  after  Bottomley's  exposure  as  a  fraud  in  1922,  he  decided  not  to  stand.

He  died  in  1932  aged  55.