Thomas Spring Rice

Background

Thomas Spring Rice was born on February 8, 1790, at Limerick, Ireland.

Education

Spring Rice was sent to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1811. He afterwards studied law, but was never called to the bar.

Career

In 1820, he was elected to the House of Commons, where he was closely associated with the Whigs who were led by Lord Lansdowne. In 1827-1828 he was Parliamentary Under-Secretary at the Home Office in the ministry led by George Canning. When the Whigs returned to power in 1830, Spring Rice was appointed Secretary to the Treasury. In 1834-1835 he was briefly Secretary of State for the Colonies. He then became Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord Melbourne’s second ministry. In this position he was widely regarded as a failure. He resigned in 1839, was raised to the peerage, but did not hold public office again.

Thomas Spring Rice died on February 17, 1866.

Achievements

• Thomas Spring Rice was a remarkable politician, who served as Chancellor of the Exchequer from 1835 to 1839.
  
  Spring Rice was a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom and a Fellow of the Royal Society.
  
  Mount Monteagle in Antarctica and Monteagle County in New South Wales were named in honour of Spring Rice.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Church Rates: Substance of a Speech Delivered in the House of Commons, on the 3d of March, 1837 (Classic Reprint)

    (Excerpt from Church Rates: Substance of a Speech Delivere...)

  • Foreign policy of the government.
  • Distress of the Manufacturing Districts Causes and Remedies.
  • The Irish Land Question.
  • Ministerial plan of education-church and Tory misrepresentations.

Membership

Thomas Spring Rice was a member of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom.

In addition, he was a Fellow of the Royal Society and a Fellow of the Geological Society. In May 1832, he became a member of James Mill's Political Economy Club.

Connections

In 1811, Thomas Spring Rice married Lady Theodosia Pery, daughter of Edmund Pery, 1st Earl of Limerick, and they

had eight children. She died in 1839, and in 1841 he married Mary Anne Marshall, the daughter of a Yorkshire industrialist.

Father:

Stephen Edward Rice

Mother:

Catherine Spring

Sister:

Mary Spring Rice

Sister:

Catherine Ann Spring Rice

Wife:

Marianne Marshall

Wife:

Theodosia Pery

Daughter:

Mary Alicia Pery Spring Rice

Daughter:

Theodosia Alicia Ellen Frances Charlotte Spring Rice

Daughter:

Catherine Anne Lucy Spring Rice

Son:

William Cecil Spring Rice

Son:

Aubrey Richard Spring Rice

Son:

Stephen Edmund Spring Rice

Stephen Edmund Spring Rice was an Anglo-Irish civil servant and philanthropist.

Son:

Charles William Thomas Spring Rice

Son:

Edmund Henry Francis Louis Spring Rice