Leigh's Biography
Leigh Rayment lives in Sydney, Australia, where he practices as a Chartered Secretary. Since he was a teenager (many years ago), he has been interested in British political history, especially the memberships of both the House of Lords and the House of Commons. For over forty years, he has collected books relating to these subjects and now has a large personal library devoted to British political history. This has resulted in an extremely large database covering these areas, which is now made available to interested readers.
This is a work in progress and is therefore not yet complete, nor, indeed, will it ever be capable of being completed, since experience suggests that the various pages are often required to be updated on a daily basis, as new information comes to hand - e.g. the death of a peer, the appointment of a new Privy Counsellor, or information which corrects previous errors that I have made etc. As a result, all pages are subject to constant correction, amendment and updating. It is therefore my aim to have these pages as up-to-date and correct as far as is possible. The pages will be expanded as time permits, but in the meantime, records of all members of the House of Commons since 1660 are included as part of this site. These records will be extended back to 1265 in due course.
Many of the names which appear in these pages were extraordinary characters whose life stories deserve to be more widely known. This may be because they were criminals (ranging from white-collar crimes to murder) or eccentrics (ranging from mildly eccentric right through to total insanity) or because of some interesting feature of their lives which is not as widely known as it deserves to be. Notes which expand on the lives of various people included in these pages are being progressively added at the foot of the relevant pages. I would welcome any suggestions or contributions which may increase the value of these pages to readers.