Jeremy Thorpe 1,166. After the 1966 election, Grimond confided to senior party officials that he wished soon to step down from the leadership. Thorpe was now the senior Liberal MP after Grimond, and the party's highest-profile member, although Timothy Beaumont, chairman of the party's organising committee, noted in his diary: "I am pretty certain that he has little popularity within the Parliamentary Party". When Grimond finally resigned, on 17 January 1967, an election to replace him was arranged to take place within 48 hours, leaving little time for manoeuvring. The 12 Liberal MPs formed the whole electorate; after the first ballot, Thorpe
Jeremy Thorpe House of Commons in 1453–54, notwithstanding the unlikelihood of any link between these figures, and lack of proof to corroborate a link with Jeremy Thorpe's own family. The more recent Thorpe ancestors were Irish, stemming from the elder of two brothers, according to family tradition soldiers under Cromwell during the combat in Ireland. Both were rewarded with land, the younger branch – of County Carlow – prospering in Dublin as High Sheriffs and Lord Mayors, but the elder losing its land and becoming tenant farmers and tradesmen. Jeremy Thorpe's great-grandfather, William Thorpe, was a Dublin policeman who, having been a