571 William Nicholson

Constituency : Petersfield 1868-74, 1880-85

William  took  Petersfield   ( unopposed  strangely )  when  the  Tory  William  Jolliffe  was  elevated  to  the  peerage.

William  was  from  a  family  of  gin  distillers. He  was  educated  at  Harrow  and  Cambridge. Between  1845  and  1869  he  played  first  class  cricket. He  gave  loans  for  purchasing  the  freehold  at  Lord's  and  building  the  new  pavilion.

William  was  an  old-fashioned  Whig  who  rebelled  over  disestablishing  the  Irish  Church. He  was  defeated  in  1874  but  won  the  seat  back  in  1880.

In  April  1885  William  declared  that  he  was  resigning  from  the  Liberal  party  and  would  contest  the  next  election  as  a  Liberal-Conservative. He  said  the  Liberals  were  just  a  remnant  of  disunited  Whigs  and  radicalsThe  Conservatives  adopted  him  as  their  candidate  but  he  was  defeated  by  the  Liberal, Viscount  Wolmer. He  lost  again  in  1886.

He  died  in  1909  aged  83. Two  of  his  sons  became  Tory  MPs. He  was  the  great  grandfather  of Emma  Nicholson  who  defected  from  the  Tories  to  the  Liberal  Democrats.