BROWNE, Peter (1794-1872), of Mount Browne, co. Mayo.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1818 - 1826

Family and Education

b. 1794, 2nd s. of Hon. Denis Browne*, and bro. of James Browne*. educ. Trinity, Dublin 16 Oct. 1812, aged 18. m. 4 July 1822, Catherine Esther, da. of John Puget of Totteridge, Herts., 1s. 3da.

Offices Held

Sec. of legation, Copenhagen 1824-52; chargé d’affaires 11 times during this period.

Biography

Denis Browne told Robert Peel, the Irish secretary, 28 May 1818, that his son Peter was to come in for Honiton ‘without cost, but to us’ as a result of negotiations with James Townsend, one of the borough’s patrons; but on 3 June he heard from Townsend that his negotiations with the Treasury had led him to accept its nominee for the seat, Peregrine Francis Cust*. On 5 June Browne complained to Peel that his son ‘was to have been brought in for Honiton reserve only on appeal to the Treasury’ and that ‘the result of that appeal was taking the seat from me and giving it to a favourite’. ‘Contempt perhaps for my inability to assist in debate’, he suggested may have been the reason for his own exclusion, but he added: ‘My sons might have been tried. They were both better educated than was their father.’ After alluding to his services to successive administrations in difficult times, he commented bitterly:

Comes piping times of peace and prosperity the old hands are discharged, new assistants taken in more suited to the fashions and ways of thinking of present times. All this to a certain degree is common course of things but the treatment I have met with is beyond that.

Browne’s outburst evidently made an impact, for although he himself was not provided for, Peter was returned at the general election for Rye, presumably on a Treasury recommendation. He voted with government in the Wyndham Quin* affair, 29 Mar., against Tierney’s censure motion, 18 May, and for the foreign enlistment bill, 10 June 1819, but is not known to have spoken in the House before 1820. He died 7 Apr. 1872.

Add. 40217, ff. 184, 185, 187.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: J. M. Collinge

Notes