William Ramsay (MP)

William Ramsay Ramsay (29 May 1809 – 15 March 1850)[1][2] was a British Conservative Party and Tory politician.[3][4]

The eldest son of George Ramsay and Jean née Hamilton, he was educated at Christ Church, Oxford and, in 1828, married Mary Sandilands—daughter of James Sandilands, 10th Lord Torpichen—with whom he had 1 son, Charles William Ramsay (1844–1865). He inherited the estates of his father when "still an infant", an event which saw him conferred the distinction of "the richest commoner in Scotland".[4]

Ramsay was elected Tory MP for Stirlingshire at the 1831 general election, when invited to do so by Thomas Stirling, and campaigned on a platform of a determination to "uphold unimpaired the institutions of the country". He said, however, he was "free and unfettered from any pledges whatever" but claimed to be "friendly to a fair, liberal safe and equitably reform" but "decidedly opposed" to "altogether too sweeping and irrevocable reforms". In the House of Commons, he voted against the second and third readings of the English reform bill and voted to reject the second reading of the Scottish version of the bill. He stood down at the next election a year later. He was later, in 1841, elected Conservative MP for Midlothian, but resigned four years later by accepting the office of Steward of the Chiltern Hundreds.[5][3][1][2][4]