SMITH, Thomas I (1686-1728), of South Tidworth, Hants.

Son of the prominent Whig politician, Smith’s appointment to office in March 1706 was no doubt due to his father’s influence. In July that year he was sent with the Earl of Scarbrough’s son to give their respective fathers’ compliments to the Elector of Hanover. He was returned for Milborne Port at a by-election in 1709, probably with the support of the other Member for the borough, Sir Thomas Travell, to whom he may have been related through Travell’s mother. Smith voted for the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell in 1710 but, being in Parliament at the same time as his father and Thomas Smith II, his other parliamentary activities are almost impossible to distinguish. For the 1710 election he transferred to East Looe, and in the ‘Hanover list’ of the 1710 Parliament he was erroneously classed as a Tory. He was removed from office, along with his father, in 1712. In the 1713 session he voted on 18 June against the French commerce bill. Like his father, Smith did not stand in 1713 but returned to Parliament after the accession of George I, when he was classed as a Whig on the Worsley list and another list comparing the 1713 and 1715 Parliaments. He died on 3 Aug. 1728.3 Luttrell, vi. 27; Orig. Pprs. ed. Macpherson, ii. 57, 63; London Vis. (Harl. Soc. xvii), 243; Hist. Reg. Chron. 1728, p. 42; PCC 250 Brook.