Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 11th Baronet, FRS (25 May 1809 – 29 May 1898) was a British educational reformer and a politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1837 and 1886 initially as a Tory and later, after an eighteen-year gap, as a Liberal.
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Early life
Acland was the eldest son of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 10th Baronet and his wife Lydia Elizabeth Hoare. Among his siblings was prominent physician, Sir Henry Wentworth Acland, and politician John Acland.
His paternal grandparents were Sir Thomas Acland, 9th Baronet and his wife Henrietta Anne Hoare (daughter of Sir Richard Hoare, 1st Baronet). His maternal grandfather was Henry Hoare of Mitcham Grove of Hoare's Bank.
He was educated at Harrow and Christ Church, Oxford, where he was friends with William Ewart Gladstone and Lord Elgin among others. In 1839, he was made a Fellow of the Royal Society.
Career
In 1837, Acland entered Parliament for Somerset West as a Tory. During the tensions within the Tory party in the 1840s over the Corn Laws, Acland supported Sir Robert Peel's free trade policy. He did not stand for Parliament in the 1847 general election and was to remain out of the House of Commons for nearly twenty years.