Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes, 1st Baronet

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Sir Manasseh Masseh Lopes, 1st Baronet (27 January 1755 – 26 March 1831), of Maristow in Devon, was a British Member of Parliament and borough-monger.

Lopes was a member of a wealthy family of Sephardic-Jewish Portuguese origin, and was born in Jamaica. In 1798 he had acquired Maristow House near Roborough in Devon, which became his family seat. He had also for many years been investing part of his fortune in acquiring influence in a number of parliamentary boroughs.

By the law as it stood at that period, no member of the Jewish religion could be elected to Parliament. (Many Christian denominations were similarly prohibited.) In 1802, Lopes converted to Christianity, and later the same year he entered Parliament as Tory member for New Romney. He subsequently also represented Evesham from 1807 and Barnstaple from 1812.

Meanwhile, Lopes was exerting his influence in various boroughs on behalf of the government, and in 1805 he was created a baronet, with a special remainder to his nephew Ralph Franco, son of his sister Esther. (Ralph, who inherited the baronetcy on his death, later changed his surname to Lopes.)

In 1819, Sir Manasseh was discovered to have bribed the voters in two separate constituencies at the previous year's general election. Such corruption was common, but reformers were looking for a cause celebre to give prominence to their campaign, and it seems likely that, as a foreign Jew, Lopes was seen as an ideal villain for the purpose. In his own Barnstaple constituency, he was alleged to have spent £3000 on bribing the voters, and after investigation his election was declared void. Meanwhile at Grampound in Cornwall, although no official protest had been entered against the election result, proceedings had been taken under the criminal law and Lopes was convicted, fined £1000 and jailed for two years. As a result of the scandal, the already notoriously corrupt borough of Grampound was permanently deprived of its right to return MPs.

However, around ten years previously Lopes had purchased from the Earl of Abingdon the pocket borough of Westbury in Wiltshire. Westbury was a burgage borough where the right to vote was attached to the ownership of certain properties; Lopes had bought all but two of these "burgage tenements", giving him the absolute power to name both of Westbury's MPs. (Unlike bribery, transactions of this sort were perfectly legal.) Between 1814 to 1819, he gave one of those seats to his nephew and heir, Ralph Franco; from 1820 he returned himself as one of the MPs.

In 1829, the Duke of Wellington's Tory government decided to legislate for Catholic Emancipation, a policy which was heretical to their own Ultra-Tory supporters. The Home Secretary, Robert Peel, whose own Oxford University constituency was one of the greatest strongholds of opponents of Catholic Emancipation, felt compelled to resign and fight a by-election to receive a mandate for his change of policy, and was defeated. To allow Peel to return to the Commons in time to move the bill, Lopes vacated his own seat at Westbury and elected Peel in his place. This provoked considerable hostile comment, not least because the government had responded to the Anglican establishment voting against them by acquiring a seat from a Jewish-born borough owner. Lopes reportedly expected to be rewarded for providing his seat at so vital a moment with a peerage, but he was disappointed.

Although Peel had no need of the seat after the general election which came the following year, Lopes did not stand again. He died in 1831.

[edit] References

• Concise Dictionary of National Biography
• Michael Brock, "The Great Reform Act" (London: Hutchinson, 1973)
• John Cannon, "Parliamentary Reform 1640-1832" (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973)
• T H B Oldfield, The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
• Leigh Rayment's Peerage Page

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by John Willett Willett John Fordyce	Member of Parliament for New Romney with John Willett Willett 1802–1806	Succeeded by William Windham John Perring
Preceded by William Manning Humphrey Howorth	Member of Parliament for Evesham with William Manning 1807–1808	Succeeded by William Manning Humphrey Howorth
Preceded by William Taylor William Busk	Member of Parliament for Barnstaple with Sir Eyre Coote 1812-1818 Francis Molyneux Ommanney 1818-1819 1812–1819	Succeeded by Michael Nolan Francis Molyneux Ommanney
Preceded by Jonathan Elford Nathaniel Barton	Member of Parliament for Westbury with Philip John Miles 1820-1826 Sir George Warrender 1826-1829 1820–1829	Succeeded by Sir George Warrender Robert Peel
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by New creation	Baronet (of Maristow) 1805-1831	Succeeded by Ralph Lopes