Richard Vernon (MP)

Richard Vernon (18 June 1726 – 16 September 1800) was a British horse breeder and trainer and a politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1754 and 1790.

Horace Walpole described him as ‘a very inoffensive, good-humoured young fellow, who lives in the strongest intimacy with all the fashionable young men’ Sometime after this he moved to Newmarket, where he entered into a racing partnership with Lord March, commonly known as ‘Old Q.’ Thomas Holcroft the dramatist, worked as a stable boy in his stables for two and a half years, and called Vernon ‘a gentleman of acute notoriety on the turf’.

Vernon's political career was controlled by the Duke of Bedford and his record is a story of profitable positions and dumb votes.

At the general election of 1754, Vernon was unsuccessful on the Bedford interest at Camelford, but was returned in a by-election on 10 December 1754 as Member of Parliament for Tavistock.

However, in 1771 the town enfranchised a large number of freemen which outnumbered the Duke's interest and in 1774 Vernon was moved to the safer Bedford family seat at Okehampton.

The English Chronicle wrote of Vernon in 1781: He is ... not distinguished either for splendour or deficiency of talents, but with a perfect mediocrity of intellectual endowments enjoys his place, breeds his horses, contrives matches, which he is said to do with more skill and success than any man on the turf, and gives a silent vote to the minister.In 1784, he moved to a seat in the Gower interest at Newcastle-under-Lyme.

At the first Craven meeting, held in 1771, he won the stakes with Pantaloon against a field of thirteen; and his three-year-old Fame by that sire ran second for the first Oaks on 14 May 1779.

The ground lease was purchased by him in 1771, and bought by the stewards on its expiration sixty years later By betting and breeding horses Vernon is stated to have converted ‘a slender patrimony of three thousand pounds into a fortune of a hundred thousand’ before quitting the turf as an owner.

Vernon's sporting traditions were carried on by his nephew, Henry Hilton, whose name appears in the first official list of the Jockey Club, published in 1835 Vernon had three daughters with his wife, the Countess of Upper Ossory, whom he married 6 February 1759: This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney, ed.