Vicary Gibbs (St Albans MP)

The Hon. Vicary Gibbs (12 May 1853 – 13 January 1932) was a British barrister, merchant and Conservative Party politician. He sat in the House of Commons from 1892 to 1904.

Gibbs came from an old Devon family. He was the third son of Hucks Gibbs, 1st Baron Aldenham (1819–1907), and his wife Louisa Anne, daughter of William Adams.

Alban Gibbs, 2nd Baron Aldenham, and Herbert Gibbs, 1st Baron Hunsdon of Hunsdon, were his brothers, while George Cokayne was his great-uncle. His great-grandfather was Antony Gibbs, brother of Sir Vicary Gibbs who became Chief Justice of the Common Pleas.

He was educated at Eton College and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he graduated in 1876 with a Bachelor of Arts degree in Classical Moderations. He was called to the bar at Lincolns Inn in 1880, and became a partner in the merchant and banking firm Anthony Gibbs and Sons.

At the 1892 general election he was returned to Parliament for St Albans division of Hertfordshire.

He was returned unopposed in 1895 and 1900, but was disqualified in February 1904. He and his brother Alban were partners in the firm Antony Gibbs & Sons, which had organised the sale to the Admiralty of two warships which had been built in England for the Chilean Navy, to avoid them being sold to a rival power when Chile did not complete the purchase. However, in so doing he was disqualified from the House of Commons, under provisions which debarred MPs from accepting contracts from the Crown. He told his constituents on 18 January that he would resign from the Commons by taking the Chiltern Hundreds, and then present himself for re-election. Both Gibbs and the Liberal Party candidate John Bamford Slack were by then campaigning in the constituency, but The Times newspaper reported on 20 January that the by-election was unlikely to be contested by the Liberals. However, since Gibbs was already disqualified, he did not need to take the usual step of disqualifying himself by taking the Chiltern Hundreds, and in a letter of 1 February 1904 he informed the Speaker of the contract that "I am advised that by so doing I have, under an Act of George III, vacated my seat in Parliament".

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