St Mawes (UK Parliament constituency)

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

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.

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	Jeffry Gate
Parliament of 1584–1585	William Onslow	Christopher Southouse
Parliament of 1586–1587	Sampson Lennard	Thomas Chaloner
Parliament of 1588–1589	?	?
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	John Hockmere[1]
Happy Parliament (1624–1625)	John Arundell	William Hockmere
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

Year		First member	First party		Second member	Second party
April 1640		Dr George Parry	Royalist		Lord Sheffield
November 1640					Richard Erisey	Parliamentarian
January 1644	Parry disabled from sitting – seat vacant
1647		William Priestley
December 1648	Priestley and Erisey excluded in Pride's Purge – both seats vacant
1653	St Mawes was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659		William Tredenham			John Lampen[2]
May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
April 1660		Sir William Tredenham			Arthur Spry
1663		Sir Richard Vyvyan
1665		Joseph Tredenham
February 1679		Sidney Godolphin			Henry Seymour
September 1679		Sir Joseph Tredenham
1685		Sir Peter Prideaux
1689		Sir Joseph Tredenham
March 1690					Henry Seymour Portman
April 1690					John Tredenham
1695		Seymour Tredenham
1696		Henry Seymour Portman
1698		Sir Joseph Tredenham
1705					Francis Godfrey
1707		John Tredenham
1710					Sir Richard Onslow	Whig
1711		John Anstis
1713		Edward Rolt			Francis Scobell
1715		William Lowndes			John Chetwynd
1722		Sidney Godolphin			Samuel Travers
1726					Samuel Molyneux
1727		Henry Vane	Whig		John Knight[3]
1728					William East
1734					Richard Plumer
1741		Robert Nugent[4]			James Douglas
1747					The Lord Sundon
1753					Sir Thomas Clavering
April 1754					Henry Seymour Conway	Whig
December 1754		James Newsham[5]
1761		Edmund Nugent			Richard Hussey
1768					George Boscawen
1770		Michael Byrne
1772		James Edward Colleton
1774		Viscount Clare[6]			Hugh Boscawen
1784		(Sir) William Young[7]	Tory
1790					Colonel John Graves Simcoe
1792					Thomas Calvert
1795					William Drummond
May 1796					George Nugent[8]
October 1796					Jeremiah Crutchley
1802					William Windham	Tory
1806		Sir John Newport[9]	Whig		Scrope Bernard	Tory
January 1807		William Shipley
July 1807		Viscount Ebrington	Whig
1808					Earl Gower	Whig
1809		Scrope Bernard-Morland	Tory
1812					William Shipley
1813					Francis Horner	Whig
1817					Joseph Phillimore	Tory
1826					Sir Codrington Carrington	Tory
1830		George Grenville Wandisford Pigott	Tory
1831					Sir Edward Burtenshaw Sugden	Tory
1832	Constituency abolished

Notes

1. Cobbett gives this name as William Hackmore
2. “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
3. Knight was also elected for Sudbury, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Mawes
4. 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
5. Took the surname Craggs from 1756
6. Created The Earl Nugent (in the Peerage of Ireland) in 1776
7. Succeeded to his father's baronetcy in 1788
8. Nugent was also elected for Buckingham, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Mawes
9. 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)