720 Ughtred Kay-Shuttleworth

Constituency  : Hastings  1869-80, Clitheroe  1885-1902

The  medievally-monikored  Ughtred  took  over  from  the  deceased  Frederick  North  to  whom  he  was  related  by  marriage.

Ughtred  was  the  son  of  James Kay-Shuttleworth  an  economist  and  civil  servant  who  had  been  made  a  baronet. His  mother was  from  an  old  Lancashire  landed  family. He  lived  at  Gawthorpe  Hall  near  Burnley  which  gives  me  a  personal  connection  here; it  was  there  that  my  future  wife  and  I  decided  we  were  going  steady.

Ughtred  was  interested  in  education, penal  matters  and  housing. He  chaired  a  number of  Prison  Conferences  in  the  1880s. In  1874  he  had  a  resolution  passed  which  called  for  a  reform  of  metropolitan  government  in  London.

Ughtred  was  unseated  in  1880 when  he  came  behind  Thomas  Brassey  and  a  Tory. Brassey  attributed  his  defeat  to  "general  causes".

Ughtred  blamed  Chamberlain  for  the  Liberal  setbacks  in  1885  writing  " I  get  letters  daily  from  politicians  of  various  degrees  of  Radicalism, attributing  their  difficulties  or  disasters  to  our  friend  Chamberlain  and  his  programme, and  the  spirit  in  which  he  has  thrust  it  forward".

In  1886  Gladstone  made  Ughtred  Under-Secretary  of  State  for  India.Two  months  later  he  was  Chancellor  of  the  Duchy  of  Lancaster  after  Edward  Heneage's  resignation  over  Home  Rule. He  was  Parliamentary  and  Financial  Secretary  to  the  Admiralty  from  1892  to  1895.As  the  First  Lord  was  a  peer  Lord  Spencer  he  was  the  Admiralty's  spokesman  in  the  Commons. In  office  Ughtred  found  that   his  hands  were  pretty  effectively  tied  by  the  previous  government's  commitments.

Ughtred  was  dismayed  by  the  1900  election  in  his  home  county. He  wrote  "I  hoped  Lancashire  would  have  done  better . The  great-town  populations  go  sadly  astray".

In  1902  Ughtred  was  raised  to  the  peerage  as  Baron  Shuttleworth.

Ughtred  lost  both  his  sons  in  the  First  World  War.

Ughtred  died  in  1939  aged  95 by  which  time  he  was  blind  and  bedridden. His  daughter  Rachel  lived  on  at  Gawthorpe  Hall  into  my  lifetime  dying  in  1967  after  which  the  house  went  to  the  National  Trust.