Henry Warburton - Early Life

Early Life

The son of John Warburton of Eltham, Kent, a timber merchant, he was educated at Eton College, and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was admitted 24 June 1802, aged 18. He was in the first class of the college examinations as freshman in 1803, and as junior soph in 1804. He was admitted scholar on 13 April 1804, graduated B.A. (being twelfth wrangler and placed next to Ralph Bernal) in 1806, and proceeded M.A. in 1812. George Pryme knew him in his undergraduate days, and both Bernal and Pryme were later his colleagues in politics.

For some years after leaving the university Warburton was engaged in the timber trade at Lambeth, but his taste for science and politics ultimately led to his abandoning commercial life. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 16 February 1809. William Hyde Wollaston was his closest friend, and in the autumn of 1818 they made a tour together on the continent. When Michael Faraday desired to become F.R.S., Warburton felt objections to his election, thinking that he had in one matter treated Wollaston unfairly. Correspondence ensued, and these objections were dispelled.

Warburton was also a member of the Political Economy Club from its foundation in 1821 to his death, bringing before it on 13 January 1823 the question ‘how far rents and profits are affected by tithes’. David Ricardo was one of his friends, and often mentions Warburton in his Letters to Malthus. ‘Philosopher Warburton,’ as he was known, was one of the leading supporters of Henry Brougham in founding London University, and was a member of its first council in 1827.