A Liverpool-born slave-owner, he sat in the House of Commons as a Member of Parliament (MP) for constituencies in Cumberland for twenty years over the three decades from 1820.
[1] His father William Evans James was from Liverpool, and his mother Elizabeth was a daughter of Nicholas Ashton, of Woolton Hall, Lancashire.
[3] When his grandfather died in 1798, the Clifton Hill Plantation at Saint Thomas-in-the-East, Jamaica was placed in a trust which passed to young William in 1817.
[7] James's expenses totalled £17,000 (equivalent to £1.99 million in 2023[6]), including £8,000 on bribes and treating; the defeated Musgrave had spent £23,000.
He focused on political reform, repeatedly calling for universal suffrage, and he supported protesters imprisoned after the 1819 Peterloo massacre in Manchester.
The following year with falling returns from his Jamaican estates,[3] James decided not to defend his seat at the 1826 general election.
[12] He was succeeded in Barrock Lodge by his eldest son, William Edward James, also High Sheriff of Cumberland.