William Holmes (politician)

William Holmes (2 April 1779 – 26 January 1851) was an Irish Tory and Conservative politician in the United Kingdom in the early nineteenth century.

Then an army officer, he was secretary to Sir Thomas Hislop, 1st Baronet with rank of captain in the West Indies, from 1803 to 1807.

[1] Holmes served as party manager, and Chief Whip in the House of Commons from about 1818 until his seat (for the rotten borough of Haslemere) was abolished by the Reform Act 1832.

In the dedication to his novel The Member: An Autobiography (1832), the Scottish author John Galt pays sardonic tribute to his skillful dispensation of political patronage.

[2] After the Reform Act Holmes was out of the Commons for five years, but returned in 1837 as MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed.