Name Henry 2nd Role Member of Parliament | Died 1919 | |
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Henry Berkeley Portman, 2nd Viscount Portman, GCVO (12 July 1829 – 16 October 1919) was a British Liberal Member of Parliament.
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Background
Portman was the son of Edward Portman, 1st Viscount Portman and Lady Emma Lascelles, daughter of Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood.
Political career
Portman was elected to Parliament for Shaftesbury in 1852, a seat he held until 1857, and then represented Dorset from 1857 to 1885. In 1888 he succeeded his father and entered the House of Lords.
Estates
At the end of the nineteenth century the 99 year leases on the family properties in London came up for renewal, generating a colossal income for Lord Portman of some £100,000 a year. With this fortune he commissioned Norman Shaw to build a new mansion for him at the family seat in Bryanston, Dorset. Within 30 years, however, it had been sold to Bryanston School, which is still based there. This was because it rapidly became anachronistic and uneconomic even for an aristocratic family to occupy a house on such a scale, and the family was also crippled by death duties when the second Viscount's heir and his heir's heir died within ten years of him.
Family
Lord Portman married Hon. Mary Selina Charlotte FitzWilliam (d. 4 January 1899), daughter of William Charles FitzWilliam, Viscount Milton (18 January 1812 - 8 November 1835), son of the 5th Earl Fitzwilliam, and Lady Selina Charlotte Jenkinson, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Liverpool, on 21 June 1855. They had six sons and two daughters:
Two of his sons predeceased him and all four of the others succeeded to his title in the course of time, namely, Henry Berkeley Portman, 3rd Viscount Portman (died 1923), Claud Berkeley Portman, 4th Viscount Portman (died 1929), Seymour Berkeley Portman, 6th Viscount Portman (died 1946) and Gerald Berkeley Portman, 7th Viscount Portman (died 1948). Lord Portman's first wife died in 1899. In 1908 he married, secondly, shortly before his 79th birthday, Frances Maxwell Buchanan Cuninghame, by whom there were no further children. Lord Portman died in October 1919, aged 90, and was succeeded in his titles by his aforesaid eldest son, Henry Berkeley Portman.