He was born at
Bordeaux. The
Swinburne family of
Capheaton Hall was traditionally
Roman Catholic and
Jacobite, but at age 25 Swinburne inherited the baronetcy and went into politics as a Protestant Whig. He became Member of Parliament for
Launceston in 1788.[1] There was a vacancy there, because the sitting MP
George Rose had accepted an office under the Crown, and had to step down;[2] Swinburne from 1786 had intended to stand for
Northumberland, but
Hugh Percy, 2nd Duke of Northumberland managed his selection for the Cornwall constituency.[3] He went no further in Parliament, but remained a political leader in Northumberland, and an associate of
Charles Grey who was elected for the constituency in 1786.[4]
Swinburne completed the work on the north front of Capheaton Hall envisaged by his father. It was carried out by William Newton.[5][6]
He was a patron to
William Mulready: they shared an enthusiasm for boxing. Mulready taught
the Swinburne family and painted their portraits.[9] He also supported
John Hodgson, who referred in his History of Northumberland to Swinburne as a "munificent contributor to the embellishments and materials of this work".[10]
Family
He married Emma, daughter of Richard Henry Alexander Bennet of
Babraham,
Cambridgeshire, on 13 July 1787; she was a niece of Frances Julia (née Burrell, daughter of
Peter Burrell), second wife of the 2nd Duke of Northumberland. Their children were:
Edward (1788–1819), who married Anne Nassau Sutton;
^"First Annual Report of the Antiquarian Society of Newcastle upont Tyne (being for the year 1813)". Archaeologia Aeliana. 1st Series (1): 800–806. 1822.
^William James Gordon-Gorman, Converts to Rome: a biographical list of the more notable converts to the Catholic Church in the United Kingdom during the last sixty years (1910), p. 28;
archive.org.
^Debrett's peerage, baronetage, knightage, and companionage. 1893.