Richard Du Cane (13 October 1681 – 3 October 1744) was a British businessman and politician who sat in the

House of Commons The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...

from 1715 to 1722. Du Cane was the son of Peter Du Cane, the elder and his wife Jane Booth, daughter of Richard Booth, a London merchant. The Du Cane family was of distinguished

Huguenot The Huguenots ( , also , ) were a religious group of French Protestants who held to the Reformed, or Calvinist, tradition of Protestantism. The term, which may be derived from the name of a Swiss political leader, the Genevan burgomaster Bez ...

descent and was a leading

Essex Essex () is a county in the East of England. One of the home counties, it borders Suffolk and Cambridgeshire to the north, the North Sea to the east, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent across the estuary of the River Thames to the south, and G ...

family of merchants and politicians. He married Anne Lyde, daughter of Nehemiah Lyde of Coggeshall and his wife Priscilla Reade on 17 August 1710. By his marriage, he acquired a substantial property near Colchester. Du Cane was a prominent businessman in the

City of London The City of London is a city, ceremonial county and local government district that contains the historic centre and constitutes, alongside Canary Wharf, the primary central business district (CBD) of London. It constituted most of London f ...

, and served as a director of the Bank of England between 1710 and 1730. He was elected as a Whig

Member of Parliament A member of parliament (MP) is the representative in parliament of the people who live in their electoral district. In many countries with Bicameralism, bicameral parliaments, this term refers only to members of the lower house since upper house ...

for

Colchester Colchester ( ) is a city in Essex, in the East of England. It had a population of 122,000 in 2011. The demonym is Colcestrian. Colchester occupies the site of Camulodunum, the first major city in Roman Britain and its first capital. Colc ...

(Essex) at the

1715 general election Events For dates within Great Britain and the British Empire, as well as in the Russian Empire, the "old style" Julian calendar was used in 1715, and can be converted to the "new style" Gregorian calendar (adopted in the British Empire i ...

. In 1716, he voted for the septennial bill and for the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts. He voted against the

Peerage Bill {{short description, Proposed British law of 1719 The Peerage Bill was a 1719 measure proposed by the British Whig government led by James Stanhope, 1st Earl Stanhope and Charles Spencer, 3rd Earl of Sunderland which would have largely halted the ...

in 1719. He did not stand for parliament again. He was sometime Governor of Christ's Hospital and

Guy's Hospital Guy's Hospital is an NHS hospital in the borough of Southwark in central London. It is part of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS Foundation Trust and one of the institutions that comprise the King's Health Partners, an academic health science cent ...

. Du Cane's portrait is one of the well known paintings of

Ignaz Stern Ignazio Stern (or Ignaz Stern) (January 17, 1679 – May 28, 1748), born in Mauerkirchen in Austria, was a Baroque painter who worked in Rome, dying there in 1748. Biography He was a pupil of Carlo Cignani in Bologna, and worked in Lombardy, th ...

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Du Cane, Richard 1681 births 1744 deaths Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for English constituencies British MPs 1715–1722