Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos

Date of start of tenure approximate but June 1818.

From 1825 onwards Chandos a leading opponent of Roman Catholic emancipation: his mother was ‘a hardline protestant’, his wife an active Scottish Presbyterian; his father on the other hand had been a supporter of RC emancipation.

Became a moderate parliamentary reformer and was the author of the Chandos clause in the 1832 Reform Act. This enfranchised £50 tenants-at-will (tenant farmers with middling and above holdings) in the counties which strengthened the political influence of landowners.

Became, with the the fifth duke of Richmond, the 'foremost uncompromising protectionists in public life, and in the eyes of much of the farming community could do no wrong'. (Thompson)

Appointed lord privy seal in Peel's 1841 cabinet, but for only 4 months: resigned January 1842, essentially over Peel’s proposal to change the sliding-scale duties fixed in the 1828 corn law. Effectively ended his political career until 1844–6 when he was vice-president of the central association of the Agricultural Protection Society, the ‘Anti-League’. But subsequently bankrupt.

Entry by F. M. L. Thompson, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.