Robert Tennant
Robert Tennant (1828 – 5 March 1900) of Chapel House in the parish of Conistone (now Conistone with Kilnsey, Burnsall), Yorkshire, England, was the Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Leeds, Yorkshire, from 1874 to 1880. He served as a Captain in the Yorkshire Hussars and as a Justice of the Peace for Yorkshire and for Ross and Cromarty and Sutherland in Scotland. Origins. He was born in 1828, the youngest son of John Tennant Tennant (born 1790 as "John Tennant Stansfield"), JP, Capt. 3rd West Yorkshire Militia, a son of Jonathan Stansfield of Idle, Yorks, by his wife  Miss Barcroft, a daughter of John Barcroft of Foulridge, Lancashire, by his wife Jane Tennant (born 1718), a daughter of John Tennant (born 1686) of Chapel House, Yorkshire. John Tennant Stansfield inherited the Chapel House estate from his childless great-uncle Robert Tennant (born 1725), and adopted the surname and arms of Tennant in compliance with the bequest. Chapel House, on the site of an ancient chapel belonging to Kilnsey Grange, a possession of Fountains Abbey, was purchased by the Tennant family in 1572. The Tennant Arms public house in Kilnsey commemorates the family. His mother (his father's second  wife) was Anne Catherine Shaw, a daughter of James Shaw of Otley. Inheritance. In 1894 he inherited Chapel House from his childless elder half-brother John Robert Tennant (1817–1894), JP, DL, Capt. 3rd West Yorkshire Militia, also of Kildwick Hall, whose diaries 1847–73 survive in the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society. Career. He was educated at the Leeds Grammar School for the legal profession, but chose a career in business, and became a junior partner in a firm of flax spinners in Leeds. For many years he was closely identified with the commercial and industrial life of West Riding of  Yorkshire, and he owned extensive estates. He was chairman of several coal and iron companies, and Director of the Great Northern Railway. In politics, he was elected as a Member of Parliament for Leeds in the 1874 general election, but served only one term as the constituency adopted the former (and future) Prime Minister William Ewart Gladstone as their candidate in 1880. Tennant was unsuccessful when he tried to contest Peterborough that year. Marriage and children. In 1850 he married Harriete Garnett (d.1899), a daughter of the newspaper proprietor Jeremiah Garnett (1793–1870), of Mount Broughton, Manchester, by whom he had  7 sons and 4 daughters, to all of whom a mural monument (post 1936) survives in St Mary's Church, Conistone, as follows: Death and burial. He died at Roffey in Sussex in his 72nd year, on 5 March 1900. His white marble inscribed memorial tablet survives in St Mary's Church, Conistone.