Arthur Annesley (1760–1841)

Arthur Annesley (1760 - 20 January 1841) was a British land-owner and a Member of Parliament for Oxford from 1790 to 1796.

Arthur Annesley was born in 1760 and baptised on 16 August 1760, the eldest son of Arthur Annesley of Bletchington, Oxfordshire, who died in February 1773, and his wife, Elizabeth Baldwin.

He married, on 1 February 1785, Catherine Hardy, daughter of Admiral Sir Charles Hardy, and had the following children together:

Annesley served as Sheriff of Oxfordshire for a year, beginning in 1784. In 1790, the Hon. Peregrine Bertie, brother of the fourth Earl of Abingdon, died shortly after being elected MP for Oxford earlier that year. The freemen of the borough sponsored Annesley, who was connected with Lord Abingdon. The election was a relatively easy victory for Annesley, who did not spend on it, and whose only opposition, in the form of George Ogilvie, came from a minority of freemen and has been described as "feeble and opportunist". Annesley won by 618 votes, to Ogilvie's 103.

He supported the Government of William Pitt the younger, but left relatively mark on Parliament's history, being recorded voting on only a handful of occasions, including on the Test Act in Scotland. He was defeated at the 1796 election by a London merchant, Henry Peters, who is estimated to have spent £10,000 on the election. It is possible that it was Annesley who supported John Ingram Lockhart to stand (unsuccessfully) in 1802 in an effort to oust Peters.

He never returned to Parliament, although he remained active in local politics, in 1806, for instance, he opposed the Duke of Marlborough's candidate for Oxford. He died on 20 January 1841, aged 80.

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