St Germans (UK Parliament constituency)
St Germans 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.
| St Germans | |
|---|---|
| Former Borough constituency for the House of Commons | |
| 1562–1832 | |
| Seats | Two |
| Replaced by | East Cornwall |
History
The borough consisted of part of St Germans parish in South-East Cornwall, a coastal town too small to have a mayor and corporation, where the chief economic activity was fishing. 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 in theory with all (adult male) householders, but in practice only a handful (who called themselves freemen) exercised the right; there were only seven voters in 1831. The Eliot family had exercised complete control over the choice of MPs for many years, as was also true at nearby Liskeard.[1]
In 1831, the borough had a population of 672, and 99 houses. The boundaries excluded part of the town, which consisted of 124 houses in total, but this was still far too small to justify its retaining its representation, and St Germans was disfranchised by the Reform Act in 1832. The decision, however, was controversial: the whole parish (of which the town made up only a fraction) had a population in the 1821 census of 2,404, and the initial proposal was that St Germans should lose only one of its two MPs. But the borough covered only 40 acres (160,000 m2), and the town 50, in a parish of more than 9,000 acres (36 km2). The Whig government decided that the availability in a surrounding parish of sufficient population should not save a borough from disfranchisement, unless a substantial part of that population was already within the borough boundaries. The bill's schedules were amended so as to extinguish both of the St Germans MPs, saving instead the second MP at Penryn (where the boundaries had been extended to take in the neighbouring town of Falmouth). The Tory opposition attacked the decision as politically motivated (St Germans was a Tory borough), and the vote in the Commons was one of the narrowest in the entire reform bill debates.
Members of Parliament
MPs 1563–1629
| Parliament | First member | Second member | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Parliament of 1563–1567 | William Mohun | William Hyde | |
| Parliament of 1571 | Charles Glemham | Thomas Cosgrave | |
| Parliament of 1572–1581 | Thomas Ayshe | Richard Eliot | |
| Parliament of 1584–1585 | George Carew | Henry Denny | |
| Parliament of 1586–1587 | Thomas Bodley | Edward Barker | |
| Parliament of 1588–1589 | William Barrington | William Langham | |
| Parliament of 1593 | Sampson Lennard | John Glanville | |
| Parliament of 1597–1598 | Robert Hatchman | John Chamberlain[2] | |
| Parliament of 1601 | (Sir) George Carew | John Osborne | |
| Parliament of 1604–1611 | John Trott | ||
| Addled Parliament (1614) | Sir John Eliot | ||
| Parliament of 1621–1622 | Richard Tisdale | Sir Richard Buller | |
| Happy Parliament (1624–1625) | (Sir) John Coke | Sir John Stradling | |
| Useless Parliament (1625) | Sir Henry Marten | ||
| Parliament of 1625–1626 | Sir John Eliot | ||
| Parliament of 1628–1629 | Thomas Cotton | Benjamin Valentine | |
| No Parliament summoned 1629–1640 | |||
MPs 1640–1832
Notes
- Page 147, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1957)
- This may possibly be John Chamberlain the letter writer and man-about-town of the same period, but the Dictionary of National Biography notes that it has not been possible to establish or disprove the identity of the one with the other
- A writ was issued for a by-election in November 1646, apparently in the mistaken belief that Moyle had died. William Scawen was elected, but does not appear to have attempted to take his seat
- Bacon was also elected for Norwich, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Germans
- Eliot was re-elected in 1768 but had also been elected for Liskeard, which he chose to represent, and did not for St Germans in that Parliament
- Salt was also elected for Liskeard, which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Germans
- Eliot was also elected for Liskeard, which he chose to represent, and did not sit for St Germans in this Parliament
- Hardinge was also elected for Newport (Cornwall), which he chose to represent, and never sat for St Germans
References
- Michael Brock, The Great Reform Act (London: Hutchinson, 1973)
- 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)
- 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 (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig – Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)
- 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)