Abel Smith, MP

See family tree: https://archive.org/details/wilberforceshenr0000unse/page/24

? Birthplace = Snelsdon East Stoke, Nottinghamshire?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abel_Smith_(1717%E2%80%931788)

Abel Smith (14 March 1717 – 12 July 1788) was a British Member of Parliament and one of the leading bankers of his time.

Abel Smith was the grandson of Thomas Smith, the founder of the Nottingham Smith's Bank and the outstanding figure in its history. Abel Smith had been apprenticed at the age of 15 to the Hull merchant adventurer William Wilberforce (the campaigner’s grandfather), becoming a partner in Wilberforce and Smith and eventually running it, while at the same time continuing an involvement with the Nottingham Bank. On the death of his father, Abel senior, he succeeded to the Nottingham partnership with his brother George before assuming sole control the following year. In 1758, Abel founded a bank in London, Smith & Payne, and two other provincial banks – at Lincoln in 1775 and Hull in 1784, both separately constituted.

He entered Parliament as member for Aldborough in 1774, and later also represented St Ives and St Germans. These were all pocket boroughs, and Smith may well have had to pay considerable sums to the proprietors to secure his seats; later a proportion of the family wealth was devoted to buying the Smiths a couple of pocket boroughs of their own, and by the early 19th century his son, Lord Carrington, could nominate the MPs at both Midhurst and Wendover.

Smith seems to have become an MP as much with the business advantages in mind as with any high political ambitions. Brooke quotes him as writing, shortly before he was first elected in 1774, "I see many solid advantages accruing to my family from a seat in Parliament, the best of which, the article of franking [the right to free postage, valuable in those days of heavy postal rates], will save a very considerable expense in so extensive a business as that I am engaged in." Although he supported the government, his first two speeches in the House of Commons were both attacks on the government for the way in which they had allotted subscriptions for government loans, in each case referring to occasions when his own firm had been excluded.

He married, in 1745, Mary Bird (1724–1780), and they had eight children, all five of his sons following their father into Parliament:

Thomas Smith (1746–1769)

Abel Smith (1748–1779), MP for Nottingham

Robert Smith (1752–1838), MP for Nottingham, created Baron Carrington in 1796

Samuel Smith (1754–1834), MP for Leicester, Malmesbury, Midhurst, St Germans and Wendover

George Smith (1765–1836), MP for Lostwithiel, Midhurst and Wendover

John Smith (1767–1842), MP for Nottingham, Wendover, Midhurst and Buckinghamshire

Elizabeth Smith (1759–1789) m. William Manning

Lucy Smith d.1835

Abel Smith died on 12 July 1788 at Wilford House, the family home in Nottinghamshire, aged 71 and is buried in St Peter's Church, Nottingham.

Other References

• "SMITH, Abel (1717-88), of Nottingham", The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790, ed. L. Namier, J. Brooke., 1964