Edward Cayley

Edward Stillingfleet Cayley (13 August 1802 – 25 February 1862)[1] was a British Liberal Party politician.

He advocated free trade in Parliament and went to Rugby School and Brasenose College, Oxford, thus breaking the Cayley tradition of going to Cambridge.

He also undertook studies in history, economics, and philosophy to supplement his "dead language" formal education.

At the 1832 general election he stood for election in the two-member county constituency of North Riding of Yorkshire as an independent of Liberal sympathies and a friend of the interests of small agriculturalists, 'unassisted by the aristocracy on either side'[8] and was elected a member of parliament, [4][9] behind William Duncombe a Tory with major landholdings in the Riding, but ahead of John Charles Ramsden a former Whig MP for Yorkshire who had the support of the Whigs but was a West Riding industrialist.

He served on the Agricultural distress and Hand-loom weavers committees[10] Cayley died of heart disease while making the arduous trip to London.