Sir John Edward Swinburne, 6th Baronet (6 March 1762 – 26 September 1860) was an English politician and patron of the arts.
Life He was born at Bordeaux. The Swinburne family of Capheaton Hall was traditionally Roman Catholic and Jacobite, but at age 25 Swinburne inherited the baronetcy and went into politics as a Protestant Whig. He became Member of Parliament for Launceston in 1788.Philip Henderson, Swinburne: the portrait of a poet (1976), p. 6; Google Books. There was a vacancy there, because the sitting MP George Rose had accepted an office under the Crown, and had to step down;historyofparliamentonline.org, Launceston, 1754-1790. Swinburne from 1786 had intended to stand for Northumberland, but Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland managed his selection for the Cornwall constituency.Roland G. Thorne, The House of Commons 1790-1820 (1986), p. 303; Google Books. He went no further in Parliament, but remained a political leader in Northumberland, and an associate of Charles Grey who was elected for the constituency in 1786.historyofparliamentonline.org, Percy, Hugh, Earl Percy (1785-1847).
Swinburne was a supporter of most reforms associated with the Whigs, including reapportioning Parliamentary representation and abolishing the slave trade. He generally endorsed the goals of the French Revolution to establish civil rights and democracy. In 1793 Swinburne learned of a British government effort to undermine France's economy with counterfeit currency, which he discovered included the involvement of the Duke of York, commander of the British army in Flanders; Brook Watson, a Bank of England director; and William Playfair, a Tory writer who Swinburne said was managing the effort. Swinburne reported the activity to Grey, contributing to its disclosure in Parliament by Richard Brinsley Sheridan.John Philipson, "A Case of Economic Warfare in the Late 18th Century." Archaeologia Aeliana 5 XVIII, pp. 151-157Peter Isaac, "Sir John Swinburne and the Forged Assignats from Haughton Mill" 'Archaeologia Aeliana 5 XVIII, pp. 158-163 https://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archiveDS/archiveDownload?t=arch-3433-1/dissemination/AAseries5/AA518new/archael518-000-000-PDFs/archael518-151-163-economic.pdf
Swinburne completed the work on the north front of Capheaton Hall envisaged by his father. It was carried out by William Newton.Capheaton Hall site, History.Images of England page.
He was a Fellow of the Royal Society, Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London, and the first president of the Society of Antiquaries of Newcastle upon Tyne.Philosophical Transactions Part 2 (1833), Royal Society of London, p. 48; Google Books.
Patron He was a patron to William Mulready: they shared an enthusiasm for boxing. Mulready taught the Swinburne family and painted their portraits. He also supported John Hodgson, who referred in his History of Northumberland to Swinburne as a "munificent contributor to the embellishments and materials of this work".John Hodgson, A History of Northumberland, in three parts, Part 2, Volume 1 (1827), p. 234; Google Books.
Swinburne was also president of the Artists' Benevolent Fund.
Family He married Emma, daughter of Richard Henry Alexander Bennet of Babraham, Cambridgeshire, on 13 July 1787; she was a niece of Frances Julia (née Burrell, daughter of Peter Burrell), second wife of the 2nd Duke of Northumberland. Their children were:
Edward (1789–?), who married Anna Antonia Sutton (1801–1845) in 1819; 7 children, among them Sir John Swinburne, 7th Baronet. Charles HenryFor more on Charles Henry see: (1797–1877), Royal Navy officer; he married Jane Henrietta, daughter of George Ashburnham, 3rd Earl of Ashburnham, and they had six children, of whom the first was the poet Algernon Charles Swinburne. Elizabeth (1790–1790); Julia (1795–); Emily Elizabeth (1798– ), who married Henry George Ward in 1824; Frances (1799–1821); Elizabeth (1805–1896), married John William Bowden in 1828.John Debrett, Debrett's Baronetage of England (1835) p. 95; archive.org.William James Gordon-Gorman, Converts to Rome: a biographical list of the more notable converts to the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom during the last sixty years (1910), p. 28; archive.org.
He died, aged 98, in December 1860.
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External links Royal Academy of Arts page