Chase Price - MP for Leominster and Radnorshire
Biography
Birth: 1731
Death: 1777
Son of John Price and Elizabeth Chase. Married (1766) to Sarah Glanville (1735-1826), daughter of William E. Glanville. He was educated at Westminster School and at Oxford. He was called to the bar in 1757. MP for Leominster (1759-1767). MP for Radnorshire (1768-1777).
At Westminster School, Price became a friend of William Cowper, and Ryskamp suggests that he may even have been a member of the Nonsence Club with Lloyd, Thornton, Cowper and others, and that he was among the Geniuses of the town when Boswell was in London in 1763.1 "One of the most celebrated and ribald wits of his time", he was referred to by William Combe as "the Falstaff of the ... age".2 Price also functioned as a contact between Wilkes and the Rockinghamites, who were sending Wilkes money.3 Price is known to have been in severe financial difficulties in his final years.
He suffered much from gout in 1775/6, and had at the time a generally poor health according to two of many letters from Price to the 3rd Duke of Portland (this website (Link) catalogues the letters, and describes the content of them all - the letters from Price covers the period from 1762 to 1776, and starts about 3/5 down the page).
Price's daughter, Sarah Bridget Frances Price (1766-1820), married sometime MP for Liverpool, Bamber Gascoyne (1758-1824), who was himself son of the MP for Truro of the same name. Sarah and Bamber Gascoyne were grandparents of Robert Arthur Talbot Gascoyne-Cecil (1830-1903), the 3rd Marquess of Salisbury, who served as Prime Minister from 1895 to 1902.
Also known as
Life with James Boswell
Boswell dined with Price at Lord Eglinton's on May 29, 1763, shortly after he had met the London geniusses at Thornton's on May 24, 1763. In that context it is surprising that he merely referred to him as Mr. Price, a Welsh member, but he may not have been aware of Price's connection with the other geniuses, as Price wasn't an author or poet as the rest of them. Boswell still described the occasion as "truly English and genteel" [being] "very comfortable" speaking "a little with a manly confidence". One might guess, that Boswell would have taken a great liking to Price, had they met just a few months earlier (before Johnson entered and Temple re-entered Boswell's life).
Notes
Some info from Barker, G. F. Russell and Alan H. Stenning, comp. The Record of Old Westminsters. Volumes I-II. London: Chiswick Press, 1928.
Note 1: Ryskamp, Charles (1959). William Cowper of the Inner Temple, Esq: A Study of His Life and Works to the Year 1768. p. 83, 84, 147, 179, etc.. (Read it now!)
Note 2: ibid.
Note 3: Thomas, Peter D. G. (1996). John Wilkes, a Friend to Liberty. OUP. p. 201. (Read it now!)
Recommended literature
Mentioned in
Chase Price is mentioned in:
