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HUME, Sir Abraham, 2nd Bt. (1749-1838), of Wormleybury, Herts.
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b. 20 Feb. 1749, 1st s. of Sir Abraham Hume, 1st Bt. educ. Eton 1758-65; Trinity, Camb. 1766. m. 25 Apr. 1771, Amelia, da. of Rt. Rev. John Egerton, bp. of Durham, 2da. suc. fa. 10 Oct. 1772.
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Biography
Hume stood for Southwark at the general election of 1774. In order to make sure of a seat in the House, he arranged through Lord North to be returned at Petersfield for a seat which William Jolliffe had placed at the disposal of Administration. In Southwark he was badly beaten. North wrote to the King on 11 Oct.: ‘Sir Abraham Hume’s poll has been much prejudiced by its being known that he has secured to himself a seat at Petersfield.’1
The Public Ledger described him in 1779 as ‘a very honest, conscientious man, and votes as he thinks right’. He seems at first to have supported Administration and to have turned against them after Saratoga. ‘I am no friend in general to the connexions of the present Administration’, he wrote to Lord Macartney on 3 Nov. 1780.2 In 1780 he stood no chance of being returned again at Petersfield, and tried to obtain a seat through the Opposition. Portland recommended him to Rockingham for one of Edward Eliot’s boroughs, but Rockingham ‘appeared not to relish the idea of his coming in, upon a doubt of his patriotic principles’.3
He is known as a great collector of paintings and of precious stones; also of minerals—he was one of the founders of the Geological Society, and a director of the British Institution. He died 24 Mar. 1838.
