St Mawes (UK Parliament constituency)

UK former constituency infobox
Name = St Mawes
Type = Borough
Year = 1562
Abolition = 1832
members = two

St Mawes was a rotten borough in Cornwall which returned two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons in the English and later British Parliament from 1562 to 1832, when it was abolished by the Great Reform Act.

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

1562-1660

* 1562: Sampson Lennard
* 1601: Sir Robert Killigrew
* 1626: Lord Carey

Long Parliament
* 1640-1648: Richard Erisey (Parliamentarian) - "excluded in Pride's Purge, December 1648"
* 1640-1644: George Parry (Royalist) - "disabled to sit, January 1644"
* 1645(?)-1648: William Priestley - "excluded in Pride's Purge, December 1648"

"St Mawes was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate

Third Protectorate Parliament
* 1659: ?

"'Long Parliament (restored)
* 1659-1660: ?

1660-1832

Notes

References

*D Brunton & D H Pennington, “Members of the Long Parliament” (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
*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)
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