Family and Education

b. 17 Sept. 1685, 2nd but 1st surv. s. of Robert Price*, and bro. of Thomas Price*.  educ. Charterhouse; St. Paul’s by 1703; St. John’s, Camb. 1704; L. Inn 1706; travelled abroad (France, Italy) 1709–12.  m. 1714 (with £7,000), Anne, da. and coh. of Ld. Arthur Somerset (2nd s. of Henry†, 1st Duke of Beaufort) of Poston Lodge, 1s. 3da. (2 d.v.p.).  suc. fa. 1733.1

Offices Held

Steward of the courts, Denbigh to 1740.2

Biography

Although there is no record of Price having visited Hanover on his grand tour, as his deceased elder brother had done before him, he must have made the acquaintance of the Electress Sophia by some means or other, for he received a letter from her in 1713 giving him the liberty to continue a correspondence. In June of that year he replied, with a lengthy account of developments in Parliament, in which he deplored the Scots peers’ motion for leave for a bill to dissolve the Union. This, he thought, would inevitably imperil the Hanoverian succession, and was merely the effect of ‘discontented parties laying hold of all opportunities for revenge’. Not surprisingly, given his father’s close association with Lord Treasurer Oxford (Robert Harley*), he vigorously defended the ministry over both the peace and the succession:

The poverty of the nation has made us wish for peace, and now we have it, we do not know what to make of it. Tho’ I am no courtier, yet I will do them this justice, that I believe the Queen and ministry hearty for the succession as settled by law. The poor disbanded soldiers are ready to starve, nor are the silkweavers in a much better condition.

Returned unopposed on his father’s interest at Weobley in 1713, he probably acted in this Parliament as a loyal supporter of Oxford’s administration. He was classed as a Tory in the Worsley list.3

By the time Price stood again at Weobley, in 1727, his father had shed his old Tory affiliations and become a pillar of the Hanoverian establishment. Price himself, once returned to Parliament, supported the Whig ministry. However, he remained unenthusiastic about a parliamentary career and left the Commons for good at the 1734 election. In the previous year a satire was published, on the manners of young ladies of fashion, which had been written by Price. In his later years he retired to Bath and handed the management of his estates at Foxley over to his son, who put up for knight of the shire unsuccessfully in 1754. Price died on 17 Mar. 1764 and was buried in Bath Abbey. The family eventually reclaimed a parliamentary seat, for the county, in 1818.4

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

• 1. Williams, Parlty. Hist. Herefs. 163; Add. 41843, f. 74; C. J. Robinson, Mansions of Herefs. 242; E. Curll, Life of Robert Price (1734), 4, 9–11; Reg. St. Paul’s Sch. 354; HMC Hodgkin, 90.
• 2. Cal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1739–41, p. 423.
• 3. Stowe 225, ff. 142–3; HMC Portland, v. 326–7.
• 4. Curll, 45; [U. Price], A New Catechism for the Fine Ladies (1733); Cooke, Herefs. iv. 191; Bath Abbey Reg. (Harl. Soc. xxviii), 451.