St Germans

Thomas Tonkin* wrote of St. Germans:

as to the choice of Members of Parliament, all the inhabitant householders have votes, that have lived a year within the borough, the bounds of which do not extend very far, and only comprehend about 50 or 60 houses lying near the church, and not the whole vill of St. Germans, great part of which is without the borough, as is the rest of the parish.

The chief interest throughout the period was, as John Trevanion* put it in 1712, ‘entirely in Port Eliot’, the Eliots as lords of the manor appointing the portreeve or returning officer.1Polsue, Complete Paroch. Hist. Cornw. ii. 39; Add. 70314–15, Trevanion’s list, June 1712.

In the first two Parliaments of King William’s reign Daniel Eliot was returned with his nephew Henry Fleming, both of them Tories. In 1698 John Tanner, a Cornish Tory, replaced Fleming, who came in again on Tanner’s death in a by-election, eventually held in January 1700 after the Commons had received a complaint on the last day before the Christmas adjournment (22 Dec. 1699) that the writ issued on 16 Nov. had not been presented to the proper officer in the borough. Fleming retained his seat at the first election of 1701, being returned with John Speccot, Daniel Eliot’s brother-in-law. Eliot replaced Speccot in April when he chose to sit for the county. However, Eliot did not contest the election of December 1701, possibly owing to ill-health, as he died the following year. Fleming was returned with Richard Edgcumbe, whose later Whiggery may not have been apparent at that date.

In 1702 Fleming was partnered by John Anstis, a Cornish Tory, who in May 1705 was reported to have declined to stand again. He was replaced by Samuel Rolle I, who then chose to sit for Callington. A newsletter of November predicted that John Eliot would succeed him, but in fact it was Edward Eliot, nephew and heir of Daniel Eliot, who was returned at the by-election in December. He retained his seat until the end of the period, sitting in 1708 with Francis Scobell and in 1710 and 1713 with John Knight II. Knight, an outsider and a Whig, may have purchased his seat, perhaps because Eliot was piqued at having been denied an office by Robert Harley*.2Bodl. Ballard 21, f. 222; Folger Shakespeare Lib. newsletter 17 Nov. 1705.