Samuel Whitbread was born in 1830, and educated at Rugby, where he was a contemporary of Lord Goschen, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where one of his closest friends was James Payn, the novelist.  He married Lady Isabella Pelham, daughter of the third Earl of Chichester.  In those days Bedford returned two members, and at the General Election of 1852, which scotched Lord Derby’s attempt to revive Protection, “Young Sam Whitbread” was returned as junior Member for the Borough, and at the elections of 1857, 1859, 1865, 1868, 1874, 1880, 1885, 1886, and 1892 he was again elected, each time after a contest and each time at the top of the poll.  Had he stood again in 1895, and been again successful, he would have been “Father of the House.”

It may be said, without doubt or exaggeration, that Samuel Whitbread was the ideal Member of Parliament.  To begin with physical attributes, he was unusually tall, carried himself nobly, and had a beautiful and benignant countenance.  His speaking was calm, deliberate, dignified; his reasoning close and strong; and his style, though unadorned, was perfectly correct.  His truly noble nature shone through his utterance, and his gentle humour conciliated the goodwill even of political opponents.  His ample fortune and large leisure enabled him to devote himself to Parliamentary work, though the interests of his brewery and of his landed estate were never neglected.  He was active in all local business, and had a singularly exact knowledge of all that concerned his constituents, their personalities and desires.  A man thus endowed was clearly predestined for high office, and, in 1859 Lord Palmerston, who believed in political apprenticeship, made Samuel Whitbread a Lord of the Admiralty.  But this appointment disclosed the one weak joint in the young politician’s armour.  His circulation was not strong enough for his vast height, and sedulous attention to the work of an office, superadded to the normally unwholesome atmosphere of the House of Commons, was more than he could stand.  “I cannot,” he said, “get a living out of the London air;” and so in 1863, just on the threshold of high preferment, he bade farewell to official ambition and devoted himself thence-forward to the work of a private Member.  But the leaders of the Liberal party did not resign such a recruit without repeated efforts to retain him.  Three times he refused the Cabinet and twice the Speakership; while every suggestion of personal distinctions or hereditary honours he waved aside with a smile.

The knowledge that these things were so gave Whit bread a peculiar authority in the House of Commons.  His independence was absolute and assured.  He was, if any politician ever was, unbuyable; and though he was a sound Party man, on whom at a pinch his leaders could rely, he yet seemed to rise superior to the lower air of partisanship, and to lift debate into the atmosphere of conviction.  The St. James’s Gazette once confessed that his peculiar position in the House