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Edward Horsman

1911 Encyclopedia Britannica

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EDWARD HORSMAN (1807-1876), English politician, was the son of a well-to-do gentleman of Stirling, and connected on the mother's side with the earls of Stair. He was educated at Rugby and Cambridge, and was called to the Scotch bar in 1832, but then took to politics. He was elected to parliament as a Liberal for Cockermouth in 1836, and represented that constituency till 1852, when he was defeated; in 1853 he was returned for Stroud, and sat there till 1868; and from 1869 till he died he was member for Liskeard. He was a junior lord of the treasury in Lord Melbourne's administration for a few months during 1841, and became prominent for attacking Lord John Russell's ecclesiastical policy in 1847 and subsequent years. In 1855, under Lord Palmerston, he was made chief secretary for Ireland, but resigned in 1857. He gradually took up a position as an independent Liberal, and was well known for his attacks on the Church, and his exposures of various "jobs." But his name is principally connected with his influence over Robert Lowe (Lord Sherbrooke) in 1866 at the time of Mr Gladstone's Reform Bill, to which he and Lowe were hostile; and it was in describing the Lowe-Horsman combination that John Bright spoke of the "Cave of Adullam." Horsman died at Biarritz on the 30th of November 1876.