Major Henry Edwards, MP
(1812 -1886)
[1860]

Volume 1, page 171, sitting number 889.

Born on 20 July 1812 at Pye Nest in Halifax, Henry Edwards was the third son of Henry Lees Edwards of Pye Nest and his wife Lea née Priestly, daughter of Joseph Priestly of Sowerby, Yorkshire.

He ‘succeeded to the business which his father and grandfather had so successfully and honourably carried on, namely, that of woollen manufacturers and merchants. […] The mill premises are very extensive, and a large foreign trade has been developed (especially with South America), as well as the manufacture of goods for home use. Pye Nest is situated on the hillside overlooking the mills, in the midst of a well-wooded and beautiful park’ (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 24 April 1886).

On 19 April 1838 he married Maria Churchill Coster, daughter of Thomas Coster of Marchwood and of Regent’s Park, London. Their marriage produced four sons and three daughters.

He twice sat in the House of Commons. Between 1847 and 1852 he was the Member of Parliament (Conservative) for Halifax. In 1857 he was elected MP for Beverley and was re-elected in subsequent elections, until the election of 1869 was declared void and the constituency was disenfranchised by Royal assent the following year. ‘He was a Tory of the old school. […] Two things he insisted upon, loyalty to the throne and the maintenance of Protestantism as the national religion of England’ (Yorkshire Post and Leeds Intelligencer, 24 April 1886).

He was JP and Deputy Lieutenant for the West Riding of Yorkshire. ‘He took great interest in the 2nd West York Yeomanry (Prince of Wales’s Own), which he joined in 1843, and commanded from 1863 to 1884, when he was gazetted honorary colonel’ (St James’s Gazette, 24 April 1886). He was created a baronet on 3 August 1866. He was High Sheriff of Yorkshire 1871-72. ‘In 1874 he was appointed by the Prince of Wales to succeed the Marquis of Ripon as Provincial Grand Master of Freemasons, West Yorkshire, and in 1878 made Grand Superintendent of the Royal Arch Masons of his province’ (Illustrated London News, 1 May 1886).

Sir Henry Edwards died, aged 73, on 23 April 1886 at Pye Nest, Halifax, West Yorkshire. He left an estate valued at £135,920. He was succeeded in his baronetcy by his eldest son.