Sir Richard Rawlinson Vyvyan, 8th Baronet was an English landowner and Tory politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1825 and 1857.
Background
Vyvyan was born at Trelowarren, Cornwall, the son of Sir Vyell Vyvyan, 7th Baronet and his wife Mary Hutton Rawlinson, daughter of Thomas Hutton Rawlinson of Lancaster. In 1820, he succeeded to the baronetcy and Vyvyan family estates on the death of his father.
Education
He was educated at Harrow School and at Christ Church, Oxford but did not take a degree.
Career
He became a lieutenant-colonel commandant in the Cornwall yeomanry cavalry on 5 September 1820. On his death his estate consisted of 9,738 acres (3,941 ha) in twenty-five Cornish parishes with a rent roll of £18,147. He left no issue and his successor was Sir Vyell Donnithorne Vyvyan, 9th Baronet (1826–1917)
He held the seat until 1831.
From 1831 he represented Okehampton, but upon the passage of the Reform Acting 1832, he moved to Bristol, serving until 1837.
He later served as Member for Helston from 1841 until 1857. Vyvyan was High Sheriff of Cornwall in 1840.
In 1826, Vyvyan was made a Fellow of the Royal Society for his "considerable literary and scientific acquirements especially in the Philosophy of Natural History", previously having been a Fellow of the Geological Society. He was also the patron of Charles Thomas Pearce, who he initially employed as his secretary in about 1843, and with whom he undertook “researches on light, heat, and magnetism of the Moon’s rays” over a period of years.
Between 1846 and 1848, they shared a house built by Decimus Burton in London"s Regent’s Park, called Saint Dunstan’s Villa.
Scientific writings
An Essay on Arithmo-physiology, privately printed, 1825
Psychology, or a Review of the Arguments in proof of the Existence and Immortality of the Animal Soul, volunteer i. 1831; called in immediately after publication
The Harmony of the Comprehensible World (anon), 1842, 2 vols
The Harmony of the Comprehensible World (anon), 1845
He also published several letters and speeches. His letter ‘to the magistrates of Berkshire on their practice of ‘consigning prisoners to solitary confinement before trial, and ordering them to be disguised by masks,’ passed into a second edition in 1845.
His account of the fogou or cave at Halligey, Trelowarren, is in the Journal of the Royal Institution of Cornwall (1885, viii 256–8).
Membership
Royal Society; 8th United Kingdom Parliament. 9th United Kingdom Parliament. 10th United Kingdom Parliament.
11th United Kingdom Parliament.
12th United Kingdom Parliament. 14th United Kingdom Parliament.
15th United Kingdom Parliament. 16th United Kingdom Parliament]
In 1825, Vyvyan was elected Member of Parliament for Cornwall.