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BIDDULPH, Michael II (c.1654-1718), of Elmhurst, Staffs. and Westcombe, Kent.
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Biography Detail
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Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
b. c.1654, 1st s. of Sir Theophilus Biddulph 1st Bt., educ. St. Paul’s; Christ’s, Camb. adm. 2 Dec. 1670, aged 16. m. (1) 31 Dec. 1678 (with £8,000), Henrietta Maria (d. Oct. 1689), da. of Roger Whitley of Peele Hall, Cheshire, 1s. 2da.; (2) 7 Mar. 1698, Elizabeth, da. of William Doyley, milliner, of Westminster, 3da. suc. fa. as 2nd Bt. 25 Mar. 1683.1
Offices Held
Commr. for assessment, Staffs. and Lichfield 1679-80, 1689-90; j.p. Staffs. 1689-?d., Kent 1716-d.; dep. lt. Staffs. 1689-?d.2
Biography
Biddulph first stood for Lichfield at the by-election of 1678, when he was defeated by Sir Henry Lyttelton after a hard-fought and expensive contest. His petition was referred to the elections committee, but no report is recorded. He represented the city in the Exclusion Parliaments, but he was totally inactive. Shaftesbury confused him with his father, and marked him ‘vile’, but on Huntingdon’s list he is shown as a country Member. He was absent from the division on the exclusion bill. He did not stand in 1685, but gave his interest to Thomas Orme. It was presumably Biddulph whom Danby intended to include in his list of the Opposition, and not his father, who had died in 1683. He regained his seat in 1689. His only committee in the Convention was on the bill for restoring corporations in December, in which he supported the disabling clause. He lost his seat at the general election but continued to act as a court Whig under William III and Anne. He died on 20 Apr. 1718 and was buried at Greenwich, the last of this family to serve in Parliament.3
