East Looe (UK Parliament constituency)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| East Looe Borough constituency |
|
|---|---|
| Created: | 1571 |
| Abolished: | 1832 |
| Type: | House of Commons |
| Members: | Two |
East Looe was a parliamentary borough represented in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. It elected two Members of Parliament (MP) by the bloc vote system of election. It was disenfranchised in the Reform Act 1832.
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[edit] 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.
[edit] Members of Parliament
[edit] 1571-1640
- 1588: Sir Robert Jermyn
- 1604-1611: Sir Robert Phillips
- 1604-1611: Sir John Parker
- 1614: George Chudleigh, Sir Reginald Mohun
- 1621-1622: Sir John Walter
- 1621-1622: Sir Jeremy Horsey
- 1624: Sir John Walter
[edit] 1640-1832
| Year | First member | First party | Second member | Second party | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 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 |
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| 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 | Sir William Trumbull | |||||
| 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 | Edward Jennings | |||||
| 1715 | John Smith | Whig | Sir James Bateman | ||||
| 1718 | Horatio Walpole [3] | ||||||
| 1722 | William Lowndes | ||||||
| January 1724 | Viscount Malpas | ||||||
| February 1724 | Sir Henry Hoghton | ||||||
| 1727 | Charles Longueville | Sir John Trelawny | |||||
| 1734 | Edward Trelawny[4] | ||||||
| 1735 | Samuel Holden | ||||||
| 1740 | Henry Legge | ||||||
| 1741 | Francis Gashry | James Buller | |||||
| 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 | Tory | |||||
| 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
- ^ In 1659, Buller was also elected for Saltash. He chose to sit for East Looe.
- ^ Godolphin was also elected for Helston, which he chose to represent, and never sat for East Looe
- ^ 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
- ^ Trelawny was a Commissioner of Customs at the time of election, which made him ineligible, and his election was void
- ^ Mitford was the Speaker of the House of Commons 1801-1802
- ^ 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.
[edit] See also
- West Looe (UK Parliament constituency)
- MPs elected in the British general election, 1754
- Unreformed House of Commons
[edit] References
- Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) [1]
- 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) [2]
- 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)
- Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page
