… or Pizarro (1799). He moved from the stage to the political arena and was a Whig MP for thirty-two years in the British House of Commons for Stafford (1780–1806), Westminster (1806–1807), and Ilchester (1807–1812). He was a member of Samuel … an outstanding orator and a politician and remained a Whig member of Parliament for thirty-two years in the British House of Commons. 6 In September 1780, he had become a young MP for Stafford, a prosperous manufacturing borough. In the … of the fire rushing from Parliament, he is said to have watched his Drury Lane Theatre burn to the ground at the Piazza Coffee-House , drinking and wittingly remarking ‘A man may surely be able to take a glass of wine by his own fireside’ …