Browsing: Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 6

18. William Smith, the son of a merchant of Clapham Common, entered the House of Commons for Sudbury in 1784, and sat almost continuously, for various districts, until 1830. He was a supporter of Pitt's parliamentary reform effort of April 1785, and was later a dissenter and an opponent of all religious tests for office, as well as of the slave trade. Smith married Frances Coape in 1781. Namier and Brooke, House of Commons , 3:452–453.