Sir Jonathan Cope, 1st Baronet

Sir Jonathan Cope, 1st Baronet (c. 1691 – 28 March 1765), was a British politician.

He was the son of Jonathan Cope, of Ranton Abbey, Staffordshire, who was Member of Parliament in the Parliament of England for Stafford from 1690 to 1694. His mother, Susan, was the daughter of Sir Thomas Fowler, a London goldsmith. The elder Jonathan Cope (who died aged 30 in 1694) was the son and heir of another Jonathan Cope (died 1670, aged 43), who was the fourth son of Sir William Cope, 2nd Baronet, of Hanwell, Oxfordshire.^[1]

He was educated at Eton College and matriculated at Christ Church, Oxford, on 18 February 1708 aged 16.^[2]

He was Member of Parliament for Banbury in the Parliament of Great Britain for two terms from 1713 to 1722. He voted against the government in all recorded divisions, and his name was sent to James Francis Edward Stuart, the Jacobite pretender to the British throne, as a potential supporter.^[2] He was created a baronet in the Baronetage of Great Britain on 1 March 1714.^[1] In 1721, he received the Hanwell estates of the senior Cope line, which had been disinherited in a family dispute by an earlier baronet.^[3]

He married in or before 1717, Mary Jenkinson, the third daughter of Sir Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Baronet, by his wife Sarah, the daughter of Thomas Tomlins of Bromley. She was baptised at Charlbury, Oxfordshire, on 10 June 1690, and died at Bath, Somerset, in February 1755. She was buried on 27 February 1755 at Hanwell.^[1]

He died at Orton Longueville, Huntingdonshire, on 28 March 1765, and was buried at Hanwell on 4 April 1765. His extensive estate included the ground rent of the London Custom House, for which the Government paid £1,600 a year, on a lease of 99 years. He was succeeded by his grandson, Charles.^[1]

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