Sheridan: Ilchester’s parliamentary playwright

The Irish playwright and theatre manager, Richard Brinsley Sheridan, was also a leading politician during the troubled reign of George III. This was a period of political factionalism at home and military danger abroad, and Sheridan strode the political stage alongside great parliamentarians like Edmund Burke, Charles James Fox and the Younger Pitt. For five years of his long parliamentary career, he was MP for Ilchester.

In this pre-democratic age, constituency elections were usually either in the control of some local or national ‘big-wig’, or they were very expensive contests for the votes of the restricted franchise. For over 25 years from 1780, the Midlands constituency of Stafford was the latter for Sheridan, as its MP. He coveted a more prestigious seat like Westminster, but lost it in the May 1807 general election.

Fortunately for him, a seat was found for him at Ilchester, which had been ‘purchased’ by his patron, the Prince of Wales, from Sir William Manners, who controlled the borough, and was said to have been promised a peerage in return. Manners had previously demonstrated his control of Ilchester’s elections by demolishing many houses so as to reduce the qualifying electorate, and make them easier to influence.

Whilst Ilchester’s MP, Sheridan focussed on those issues close to his heart, such as regulation of theatres, the state of Ireland, the French wars, and, as a supporter of the Prince of Wales, the various Regency crises.

Theatrical affairs intruded into his parliamentary career most dramatically on 24 February 1809, when he was attending a debate on the conduct of the war in Spain. As the parliamentary report records, during the speech of the Foreign Secretary, George Canning: “A cry of Fire! fire! frequently interrupted the latter part of the right hon. Secretary’s speech, and Mr. Sheridan, in a low tone, stated across the table, that Drury-lane theatre was on fire.”

Another MP suggested that the debate be adjourned “in consequence of the extent of calamity, which the event just communicated to the house, would bring upon a respectable individual, a member of that house.” Sheridan stoically declined this offer, saying that “whatever might be the extent of the individual calamity”, he did “not consider it of a nature worthy to interrupt their proceedings on so great a national question.” Others agreed, and the debate proceeded as Sheridan left to view the disaster.

At the 1812 general election, Sheridan abandoned Ilchester, yearning for a more ‘independent’ seat, free from obligations to patrons, even though he thought he could win again at Ilchester. He returned to his previous seat at Stafford, but lost it, and never sat in Parliament again.

Despite a long and celebrated political career at the centre of affairs, his actual achievements were relatively few, and it is as a playwright and not a politician that he is largely remembered. An early 20^th century book on Parliament neatly summed up his parliamentary career: “He had a position of great eminence in the House, but he never carried much weight.”