According to The History of Parliament, Strutt, 'under a cloak of false humility' had vainly pestered successive Tory ministries for a British peerage for his wife, Charlotte, on the strength of his own and his father’s electoral and militia services in Essex.
[3] In a fragment of autobiography, intended as a lesson in filial obedience and civic duty for his troublesome son John James (1796-1873), he boasted that he had ‘obtained the approbation’ of Pitt, Dundas, Addington, Perceval, Lord Liverpool and George IV, among others; but in reality they considered him tiresome and importunate.
His persistence was rewarded when his wife was offered the long sought after peerage in her own right as Baroness Rayleigh in the coronation creations of 1821.
Strutt, returning thanks to Liverpool, described the honour as ‘requiting the long constitutional conduct in and out of Parliament of my ... father and of my humble constant exertions within the sphere of a country gentleman’.
[5] Strutt died at Bath in February 1845 aged 86, four weeks after being forced by a fire in his bedroom to take to the street in his nightshirt.