year jointure for Lady Harriet.4 ‘Tall and commanding in person, but without any pretensions to good looks’, she snubbed her American mother-in-law as her social inferior but became the premier hostess of the age, recalled by Greville as ‘more of a precieuse than any woman I have known’.5 Baring paid £1,400 for the home secretary Peel’s house in Great Stanhope Street in February 1825, and settled briefly at Buckenham House near Thetford, part of the Petre estate purchased by his father in 1822 with a view to bringing in a Member. He was returned there at the general election of 1826.6

Like his relations, he generally sided with the Whigs. Some doubts persist concerning the votes, speeches and committee involvement of the various Barings. This Member, who is knownto have kept notes, partly in shorthand, for speeches in February 1827, February 1828 and June 1831,7 was the only Baring to vote against the Clarences’ grant, 16 Feb., andfor inquiry into the mutiny at Barackpoor, 22 Mar. 1827. He voted for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., to postpone the committee of supply until the ministerial uncertainty was resolved, 30 Mar., and for inquiry into the Irish miscellaneous estimates and chancery delays, 5 Apr. More of a reformer than his father, he divided for inquiry into electoral irregularities at Leicester, 15 Mar., and to disfranchise Penryn, 28 May. He presented Hampshire petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 11 June 1827.8

The appointment of the duke of Wellington as premier in January 1828 deprived Baring of the honour of seconding