English Naval Officer. He later became well-known as a prominent campaigner for parliamentary reform and who was subsequently known as the Father of Reform. He was educated at Newark-on-Trent grammar school and Heath Academy in Yorkshire. At the age of eighteen he entered the Royal Navy and served as an officer during the Seven Years’ War (1756–63) but in 1771 ill health necessitated his retirement from active service. When the disputes with the American colonies began, he believed that the colonists had right on their side, warmly supported their cause and in 1774 he published his first plea on behalf of the colonists, entitled "American Independence the Glory and Interest of Great Britain”. He refused a lieutenancy at the outbreak of the American War of Independence (1776-83) due to his political beliefs and instead spent the war serving as a major of the Nottinghamshire militia, a position he held for seventeen years, until illegally being superseded because of his political opinions. Following his dismissal from the militia he moved to London and fully associated himself with the Radical movement that was gaining support in Britain. Radicals sought a more equal parliamentary system in the country. They supported the abolition of 'Rotten Boroughs' and aimed for the enfranchisement of millions of voters by extending suffrage and creating new constituencies in the rapidly growing towns across the country. In 1776 he published his first work on reform in Parliament, entitled, “Take Your Choice” with a second edition appearing in 1777 under the new title of “The Legislative Rights of the Commonalty Vindicated”. The task of his life was then on chiefly the attainment of universal suffrage and annual Parliaments. In 1778, he conceived the project of a political association, which took shape in 1780 as the Society for Constitutional Information, including among its members some of the most distinguished men of the day. From this society sprang the more famous London Corresponding Society. In 1812, he initiated the Hampden Clubs, named after John Hampden, an English Civil War Parliamentary leader, aiming to bring together middle class moderates and lower class radicals in the reform cause. To promote the idea, he toured northwest England later in 1812, in 1813 (getting arrested in Huddersfield) and in 1815. In 1819 he was invited to speak at a meeting of reformers at St Peter's Field, Manchester but was unable to attend. A cavalry charge which killed fifteen people ensured that this meeting became known as the Peterloo massacre, and its aftermath shaped the reformist agenda for years to come. Later that year he was arrested for speaking at a parliamentary reform meeting in Birmingham, indicted for conspiracy and was ordered to pay a fine of £100. He then wrote The English Constitution, which outlined his ideas including government by the people and legal equality which he considered could only be achieved by universal suffrage, the secret ballot and equal electoral districts. He became the main patron of the Radical publisher Thomas Jonathan Wooler, best known for his satirical journal The Black Dwarf, who actively supported the campaigning. Following his death it was eight years before some measure of reform were approved by Parliament and another century until universal suffrage was finally attained in Britain. Burton Crescent, the original name of a street in Bloomsbury, where he was a local resident was renamed Cartwright Gardens in his honour and a bronze statue by George Clarke was added to the garden in 1831 which is set on a granite plinth and has details of his works as a reformer. Additionally, Captain George Vancouver named Cartwright Sound, on the west coast of Graham Island in the Queen Charlotte Islands of British Columbia, Canada, in his honour, in relation to his Royal Navy service under Admiral Howe.