St Mawes (UK Parliament constituency)
St Mawes was a rotten borough in Cornwall, England. It returned two Members of Parliament (MPs) to the House of Commons of England from 1562 to 1707, to the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800, and to the House of Commons of the United Kingdom until it was abolished by the Great Reform Act in 1832.
| St Mawes | |
|---|---|
| Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons | |
| County | Cornwall |
| Major settlements | St Mawes |
| 1562–1832 | |
| Number of members | Two |
| Replaced by | West Cornwall |
History
The borough consisted of the manor of St Mawes, a decayed fishing port and market town in the west of Cornwall. Like most of the Cornish boroughs enfranchised or re-enfranchised during the Tudor period, it was a rotten borough from the start.
The right to vote rested with the portreeve and "resident burgesses or free tenants", making it essentially a scot and lot borough (there were 87 voters in 1831), but the control of the "patron" was entirely secure. In practice the patron always worked in close collusion with the Crown, and the members returned were generally court nominees throughout the borough's existence. In the 1760s the Boscawen family (the Viscounts Falmouth) were considered to have the main influence over the choice of one member and Robert Nugent over the other; by the time of the Great Reform Act, the patronage had passed to the Marquess of Buckingham.
In 1831, the borough had a population of 459, and 95 houses.
Members of Parliament
1562–1629
| Parliament | First member | Second member | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parliament of 1563–1567 | Oliver Carminow | Edmund Sexton | |
| Parliament of 1571 | William Fleetwood | Israel Amice | |
| Parliament of 1572–1581 | Rowland Hind | Geoffrey Gates | |
| Parliament of 1584–1585 | William Onslow | Christopher Southouse | |
| Parliament of 1586–1587 | Sampson Lennard | Thomas Chaloner | |
| Parliament of 1588–1589 | John Potts | Walter Cope | |
| Parliament of 1593 | Nicholas Fuller | Henry Vincent | |
| Parliament of 1597–1598 | Michael Vyvyan | Richard Orver | |
| Parliament of 1601 | Robert Killigrew | Ralph Hare | |
| Parliament of 1604–1611 | Dudley Carleton | Sir John Speccot | |
| Addled Parliament (1614) | Francis Vyvyan | Sir Nicholas Smith | |
| Parliament of 1621–1622 | Edward Wrightington | William Hockmore | |
| Happy Parliament (1624–1625) | John Arundell | William Hockmore | |
| Useless Parliament (1625) | Sir James Fullerton | Nathaniel Tomkins | |
| Parliament of 1625–1626 | Sir Henry Carey | William Carr | |
| Parliament of 1628–1629 | Thomas Carey | Hannibal Vyvyan | |
| No Parliament summoned 1629–1640 | |||
1640–1832
Notes
- “Lampen,John, 1s John, of Petherdey, Cornwall, arm. Magdalen Hall, matric. 14 March 1633-3, aged 18; of Padreda, sheriff of Cornwall 1650 ; M.P. St Mawes 1659; his will dated 35 April 1660, proved 35 May 1661. See Foster's Parliamentary Dictionary” Source: Alumni oxonienses; the members of the University of Oxford, 1500-1714; their parentage, birthplace, and year of birth, with a record of their degrees (1891) Online at : and John Lampen has his poll tax listed as £10
- Knight was also elected for Sudbury, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Mawes
- Nugent was re-elected in 1715, but had also been elected for Bristol, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for St Mawes
- Took the surname Craggs from 1756
- Created The Earl Nugent (in the Peerage of Ireland) in 1776
- Succeeded to his father's baronetcy in 1788
- Nugent was also elected for Buckingham, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Mawes
- Newport was also elected for Waterford, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Mawes
References
- Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807)
- D. Brunton & D. H. Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
- Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808)
- Maija Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988)
- Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition – London: St Martin's Press, 1961)
- J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949)
- J. Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 – England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965)
- Henry Stooks Smith, The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847, Volume 3 (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co, 1850)
- Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. p. 1.
- Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "S" (part 1)