Thanks for that information Caroline, I thought I was probably drawing rather a long bow.
I'm certain I've read the information about poor dependants but I'm not certain what era it applied it, and it wasn't in a JA context. The purpose was to avoid the awkwardness of the son having to acknowledge the hanger-on.

My two theories do rather contradict each other though: one would presumably want one's hangers-on to follow one's own political alleigeance.

I'm not convinced by the Lord Fitzwilliam theory. JA may incorporate traits from people she knew into her characters, eg Gen Matthews but I can't see her blatantly using a name in taht way.