George Warren

Sir George Warren KB (7 February 1735 – 31 August 1801), of Poynton Lodge in Cheshire, was a British politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1758 and 1796. Early life Warren was the only son of Edward Warren of Poynton and his wife Elizabeth Cholmondeley, daughter of George Cholmondeley, 2nd Earl of Cholmondeley and was born on 7 February 1735. His father died two years later in 1737 and he inherited Poynton Lodge which he rebuilt in the 1750s. He joined the army and was ensign in the 3rd Foot Guards in 1755 and was promoted to captain in 1756. In May 1758 he eloped to Edinburgh with a rich heiress, Jane Revell daughter of Thomas Revell, MP of Fetcham Park, Surrey. She was a ward of Samuel Egerton of Tatton. Warren married Jane and the marriage settlement resolved the encumbrances on his estates. He then retired from the army. Political career In December 1758 Warren was returned as Member of Parliament for Lancaster at a by-election on 22 December. His election was unopposed in return for a promise that at the next election he would contribute up to £2,000 towards finding a seat for the son of Lancaster's other MP, Francis Reynolds. He immediately began a campaign to have himself made a Knight of the Bath, an honour to which he believed his new wealth now entitled him, but the King angrily rejected the proposal when it was put to him by The Prime Minister, Thomas Pelham-Holles. However, once George III succeeded in 1760, Warren attached himself to Bute's party and secured his KB on 26 March 1761. Warren was returned unopposed again as MP for Lancaster at the 1761 general election a few days later. His wife Jane died in 1761 and he remarried to Frances Bisshopp, daughter of Sir Cecil Bisshopp, 6th Baronet on 4 February 1764. In 1766, with Charles Roe, an industrialist from Macclesfield, he promoted a scheme to run a canal from the River Weaver near Northwich to the Mersey at Stockport, which would have opened a market for the coalfield on his Poynton estate. However a rival scheme of the Duke of Bridgewater, which linked Stockport to the Grand Trunk Canal, was submitted to Parliament on the same day and was chosen in preference by Parliament. Warren's estates included the manor of Stockport, and he tried to enforce feudal rights as the town grew with industrialisation, seeking to establish manorial monopolies on some goods and levy tolls on the importation of others.