Up for auction "British Conservative" James Milnes Gaskell Clipped Signature affixed to a 3X5 Card. 

ES-2050C

James Milnes Gaskell (19 October 1810

– 5 February 1873) was a British Conservative politician.

James Milnes-Gaskell was the only child of Benjamin Gaskell (1781–1856) of

Thornes House, Wakefield, West Yorkshire and Clifton

Hall, Lancashire. He was born on 19 October 1810 and was educated

at Eton College and Christ Church, Oxford. His

political interest may have been influenced by meeting lifelong friend William Ewart Gladstone as

a school contemporary, and receiving visits during term from George Canning.[1] An uncle, Daniel Gaskell, also entered Parliament as first M.P. for Wakefield in

1832, at same general election as James. It was at Gaskell's

then home in Tilney Street, London, in 1834, that Gladstone met his future

wife, Catherine Glynne.

He

was M.P. for Wenlock in Shropshire from 1832 until retiring in 1868. He served as

a Lord of the Treasury from

1841 to 11 March 1846 under Sir Robert Peel's administration. In 1832 he married Mary

Wynn, daughter of the Rt Hon. Charles Williams-Wynn,

(also a Member of Parliament) and they had two sons and two daughters. One

son, Charles Milnes

Gaskell, also became a Member of Parliament, as a Liberal. It was from his

wife's cousin, Sir Watkin

Williams-Wynn, that Gaskell bought in 1857 the site of Wenlock

Priory, whose ruins he restored and whose Prior's Lodge he made into a family

home.

He

died at 28 Norfolk Street, Park Lane, London on 5 February 1873, aged

sixty-two, and was buried in the parish churchyard at Much Wenlock.