Charles Ross MP

The ODNB shows the MP Charles Ross 'politician' (1799-1860) as a 'West India proprietor' (although no further evidence is given). It is not yet clear whether the Charles Ross in the ODNB is the same man as the recipient of the award for an estate tentatively identified as Drummond Castle.

If this is the same Charles Ross then he was co-heir with his cousin Col. John Ross of their uncle, Robert Ross of Henrietta Street and Bybrook, together with two of Robert Ross's natural children, Samuel Ross and Mary Haverfield (all of whom q.v.). Charles Ross was the son of General Alexander Ross (1742-1827). Charles Ross left £70,000 (resworn from £50,000).

And if it is the same person, this Charles Ross was the son of Major-General Alexander Ross of Savile Row, Mdx. and Castlemilk, Dumfries and Barbara Evelyn Isabella, daughter of Sir Robert Gunning, 1st bt., of Horton, Northants. General Alexander Ross has an entry in the ODNB as 'army officer', in which Charles Ross has a sub-entry as follows: 'Ross's only son, Charles Ross (1799–1860), politician, was educated at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford (matriculated February 1818; BA, 1822; MA, 1824; DCL, June 1834). A West India proprietor [sic], he was tory MP for the ‘rotten boroughs’ of Orford, Suffolk (1823–6), and St Germans, Cornwall (1826–31), and for Northampton (1832–7). He was briefly a lord of the Admiralty (July to November 1830) and a lord of the Treasury (December 1834 to April 1835), and was a commissioner of the audit board. He married in 1825 Mary, daughter of Charles Cornwallis, second Marquess Cornwallis (1774–1823) [see under Cornwallis, Charles, first Marquess Cornwallis], and they had children. He edited the Correspondence of Charles, First Marquis Cornwallis (3 vols., 1859). He died at his residence, 60 Portland Place, London, on 21 March 1860.'

Identified by Judd as a 'West Indian' MP.

John Stuart Mill described Ross as one of ‘the hack official jobbing adventurer Tories’. He opposed Catholic Emancipation and parliamentary Reform: his History of Parliament entry makes no mention of any intervention on slavery between 1822 and 1832.

The son of Charles and Mary Ross was Alexander Ross (1829-88), a barrister, was Conservative MP for Maidstone from 1880-1888.

National Probate Calendar 1860; B. H. Soulsby, ‘Ross, Alexander (1742–1827)’, [also including Charles Ross 1799-1860] rev. Roger T. Stearn, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2011; accessed 25 March 2014; Entry by David R. Fisher in History of Parliament online; Gerrit P. Judd IV, Members of Parliament 1734-1832 (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1955).