East Looe (UK Parliament constituency)

East Looe
Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons
County	Cornwall
Major settlements	East Looe
1571–1832
Number of members	Two
Replaced by	East Cornwall

East Looe was a parliamentary borough represented in the House of Commons of England from 1571 to 1707, in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1797 to 1800, and finally in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 until its abolition in 1832. It elected two Members of Parliament (MP) by the bloc vote system of election. It was disenfranchised in the Reform Act 1832.

History

The borough consisted of the town of East Looe in Cornwall, connected by bridge across the River Looe to West Looe, which was also a parliamentary borough. From the reign of Edward VI, East Looe and West Looe were jointly a borough, returning two members of Parliament; however, under Queen Elizabeth the two towns were separated, and each thereafter returned two members except between 1654 and 1658, when they were once again represented jointly, by one member of the First and Second Protectorate Parliaments.

The right of election was in Mayor and members of the Corporation, together with a number of freemen of the borough. Namier and Brooke estimated that there were about fifty voters in this constituency in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is estimated that by 1800 there were still about fifty electors, and in 1831 the number of eligible voters was 38 while the population of the borough was 865.

In practice, this meant that the power to choose the MPs was in the hands of the local landowner or "proprietor", making East Looe (like West Looe) one of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs. For many years at the time of the Reform Act, East Looe had been controlled by the Buller family (which also controlled West Looe and Saltash), and many members of the family sat for the borough in the House of Commons.

After the Reform Act 1832 disenfranchised the borough, it reverted to being represented as part of the county constituency covering its area. Cornwall was divided into two divisions in 1832, East Cornwall (with its place of election at Bodmin) and West Cornwall (which voted at Truro). East Looe was located in East Cornwall.

Members of Parliament

1571-1629

Parliament	First member	Second member
Parliament of 1571	John Wolley	Edward Cordel
Parliament of 1572-1583	Thomas Stone	Thomas West
Parliament of 1584-1585	Richard Spencer	Anthony Rous
Parliament of 1586-1587	Abraham Hartwell	Edward Trelawny
Parliament of 1588-1589	Anthony Everard	Sir Robert Jermyn
Parliament of 1593	William Hampden	Gregory Downhall
Parliament of 1597-1598	Ambrose Bellot	Robert Gawdy
Parliament of 1601	John Hanham	Robert Yardley
Parliament of 1604-1611	Sir Robert Phelips	Sir John Parker
Addled Parliament (1614)	George Chudleigh	Sir Reginald Mohun
Parliament of 1621-1622	Sir John Walter	Sir Jerome Horsey
Happy Parliament (1624-1625)		Bartholomew Specot
Useless Parliament (1625)	Sir James Bagge	Sir Thomas Trevor
Parliament of 1625-1626		Sir John Trevor
Parliament of 1628-1629	William Murray	Paul Specot
No Parliament summoned 1629-1640

1640-1832

Year			First member	First party	Second member	Second party
		April 1640	William Scawen		William Code
		November 1640	Thomas Lower	Royalist	Francis Buller	Parliamentarian
		January 1644	Lower disabled to sit - seat vacant
		1647	John Moyle
		December 1648			Buller excluded in Pride's Purge - seat vacant
		1653	East Looe was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament
		1654	Major John Blackmore		In the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate, one MP was elected jointly for East Looe and West Looe
		1656	John Buller[1]
		January 1659			John Kendall
		May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
		1660	Henry Seymour		Jonathan Trelawny
		1661			Robert Atkyns
		1673			Walter Langdon
		1677			Charles Osborne
		1679			Sir Jonathan Trelawny
		1681	John Kendall
		1685	Charles Trelawny	Tory	Sir William Trumbull	Whig
		1689			Henry Trelawny
		1699	Sir Henry Seymour
		1701			Francis Godolphin[2]
		February 1702			George Courtenay
		July 1702			Sir John Pole
		1705			George Clarke
		1708			Harry Trelawny
		1710			Thomas Smith
		1713	Sir Charles Hedges	Tory	Edward Jennings
		1715	John Smith	Whig	Sir James Bateman
		1718			Horatio Walpole [3]
		1722			William Lowndes
		January 1724	Viscount Malpas	Whig
		February 1724			Sir Henry Hoghton
		1727	Charles Longueville		Sir John Trelawny
		1734			Edward Trelawny[4]
		1735			Samuel Holden
		1740			Henry Legge	Whig
		1741	Francis Gashry		James Buller	Tory
		1747			John Buller
		1762	The Viscount Palmerston
		1768	Richard Hussey
		1770	Richard Leigh
		1772	John Purling
		1774	Sir Charles Whitworth
		January 1775	Thomas Graves
		June 1775	William Graves
		1783	John James Hamilton	Tory
		1784	William Graves
		May 1786	Alexander Irvine	Tory
		September 1786			Richard Grosvenor	Tory
		1788			Viscount Belgrave	Tory
		February 1790	The Earl of Carysfort	Tory
		June 1790	Robert Wood	Tory	Hon. William Wellesley-Pole	Tory
		1795			Charles Arbuthnot	Tory
		1796	John Buller	Tory	William Graves	Tory
		1798			Frederick William Buller	Tory
		May 1799	John Smith	Tory
		July 1799	Sir John Mitford[5]	Tory
		February 1802	James Buller	Tory
		July 1802	Sir Edward Buller	Tory	John Buller	Tory
		1807			David Vanderheyden	Tory
		1816			Thomas Potter Macqueen	Tory
		1820	George Watson-Taylor	Tory
		March 1826	Lord Perceval	Tory
		June 1826	William Saunders Sebright Lascelles	Tory	James Drummond Buller-Elphinstone	Tory
		1829			Henry Thomas Hope[6]	Tory
		1830	Thomas Arthur Kemmis	Tory
		1832	Constituency abolished

Notes

1. In 1659, Buller was also elected for Saltash. He chose to sit for East Looe.
2. Godolphin was also elected for Helston, which he chose to represent, and never sat for East Looe
3. Walpole was re-elected in 1722 but had also been elected for Great Yarmouth, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for East Looe
4. Trelawny was a Commissioner of Customs at the time of election, which made him ineligible, and his election was void
5. Mitford was the Speaker of the House of Commons 1801-1802
6. This person was Henry Thomas Hope who is described in ODNB by Mary S. Millar, ‘Hope, Henry Thomas (1808–1862)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 5 June 2008, not his father, of the same name.

See also

• West Looe (UK Parliament constituency)
• MPs elected in the British general election, 1754
• Unreformed House of Commons

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)
• William Cobbett, Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808)
• Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons 1754-1790 (LOndon: HMSO, 1964)
• 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 (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig - Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
• 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 "E" (part 1)