John Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden

John Jeffreys Pratt, 1st Marquess Camden (11 February 17598 October 1840), styled Viscount Bayham from 1786 to 1794 and known as the 2nd Earl Camden from 1794 to 1812, was a British politician. He served as Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the revolutionary years 1795 to 1798 and as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between 1804 and 1805.

Background and education John Jeffreys Pratt was born at Lincoln's Inn Fields, London, the only son of the barrister Charles Pratt, KC (a son of Sir John Pratt, a former Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench), and Elizabeth, daughter of Nicholas Jeffreys, of The Priory, Brecknockshire. He was baptised on the day Halley's Comet appeared. In 1765, his father (by then Sir Charles Pratt, having been appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in 1762) was created Baron Camden, at which point he became The Hon. John Pratt. He was educated at the University of Cambridge (Trinity College).

Political career

In 1780, Pratt was elected Member of Parliament for Bath and obtained the position of Teller of the Exchequer the same year, } He served under Lord Shelburne as Lord of the Admiralty between 1782 and 1783 and in the same post under William Pitt the Younger between 1783 and 1789, as well as a Lord of the Treasury between 1789 and 1792.

As an opponent of parliamentary reform and of Catholic emancipation, Camden's term of office was one of turbulence, culminating in the rebellion of 1798. aroused great public indignation. To break the United Irish conspiracy, he suspended habeas corpus and unleashed a ruthless martial-law campaign to disarm and break up the republican organization.

He resigned from office in June 1798, and in 1805 Lord President of the Council, an office he retained until 1806. He was again Lord President from 1807 to 1812,

The enforced resignation from the Cabinet of Lord Castlereagh, the stepson of his sister Frances (Lady Londonderry), to whom he had always been personally close, in September 1809, led to a series of bitter family quarrels, when it became clear that Camden had known for months of the plan to dismiss Castlereagh, but had given him no warning. Castlereagh himself regarded Camden as "a weak friend", not an enemy, and they were eventually reconciled. Other members of the Stewart family, however, never forgave Camden for what they regarded as his disloyalty.

Camden was also Lord Lieutenant of Kent between 1808 and 1840 He was Chancellor of Cambridge University between 1834 and 1840. and elected a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London in 1802. which is adjoining the Ritz Hotel. In the year of his death, he sold the house to The 7th Duke of Beaufort.