ELIOT, Richard (1652-85), of Port Eliot, St. Germans, Cornw.

As a younger son Eliot was intended for a military career and in 1676 entered the service at Plymouth garrison under the Earl of Bath. In 1678, however, the justices for the Western circuit received a warrant to suspend the execution of any sentence passed on him should he be found guilty of the death of one John Grimes of Plymouth. Possibly this incident caused him to leave the army, for there is no further evidence of his military career, though he must have been either acquitted or pardoned, since he was returned to the Exclusion Parliaments for his father’s borough of St. Germans. Classed as ‘honest’ by Shaftesbury, he duly voted for the first exclusion bill. Otherwise he was totally inactive. He was buried at St. Germans on 22 Dec. 1685.2CSP Dom. 1676-7, p. 466; 1678, p. 14.