British Member of Parliament (died 1796)
Richard Beckford (died 12 August 1796) was an English Whig [1] politician.[2]
Biography
Beckford was one the first mixed-race Members of Parliament of the Parliament of the United Kingdom and served for the constituencies of Bridport , Arundel and Leominster from 1780 until his death in 1796.[3]
He previously, unsuccessfully, attempted to be elected to Hindon in both 1774 , against Thomas Brand Hollis and Richard Smith , and the 1775 by-election when both Smith and Hollis were removed from office for bribery, but was unsuccessful.[4]
Beckford's father, William Beckford , was an MP and plantation owner , whilst his mother was a Jamaican slave.[5]
References
^ "Summary of Individual | Legacies of British Slavery" . www.ucl.ac.uk .
^ "BECKFORD, Richard (d.1796), of Nicholas Lane, Lombard St., London | History of Parliament Online" . www.historyofparliamentonline.org . Retrieved 2023-01-10 .
^ Lees, Rebecca (October 28, 2020). "Who were the first MPs from ethnic minority backgrounds?" – via commonslibrary.parliament.uk.
^ "BECKFORD, Richard (D.1796), of Nicholas Lane, Lombard St., London | History of Parliament Online" .
^ Goodrich, Amanda (2019-02-07). Henry Redhead Yorke, Colonial Radical: Politics and Identity in the Atlantic World, 1772-1813 . Routledge. ISBN 978-0-429-61883-3 .
See also