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St Germans
St Germans
Former borough constituency; for the House of Commons
1562–1832
Seats	Two
Replaced by	East Cornwall

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.

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
Parliament of 1601	(Sir) George Carew	John Osborne
Parliament of 1604–1611	(Sir) George Carew	John Trott
Addled Parliament (1614)	Sir John Eliot	John Trott
Parliament of 1621–1622	Richard Tisdale	Sir Richard Buller
Happy Parliament (1624–1625)	(Sir) John Coke	Sir John Stradling
Useless Parliament (1625)	(Sir) John Coke	Sir Henry Marten
Parliament of 1625–1626	Sir John Eliot	Sir Henry Marten
Parliament of 1628–1629	Thomas Cotton	Benjamin Valentine
No Parliament summoned 1629–1640

MPs 1640–1832

Year		First member	First party		Second member	Second party
April 1640		William Scawen			John Eliot
November 1640		Benjamin Valentine	Parliamentarian		John Moyle^[2]	Parliamentarian
December 1648		Benjamin Valentine	Parliamentarian	Moyle excluded in Pride's Purge – seat vacant
1652	Valentine died 1652 – seat vacant			Moyle excluded in Pride's Purge – seat vacant
1653	St Germans was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659		John Glanville			John St Aubyn
May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
1660		John Eliot			Richard Knightley
1661		John Eliot			Edward Eliot
1679		Daniel Eliot			Richard Eliot
1685					Sir Thomas Higgons
1689					Sir Walter Moyle
1690					Henry Fleming
1698					John Tanner
1700					Henry Fleming
January 1701		John Speccot
April 1701		Daniel Eliot
December 1701		Richard Edgcumbe	Whig
1702		John Anstis
May 1705		Samuel Rolle
December 1705		Edward Eliot
1708					Francis Scobell
1710					John Knight	Whig
January 1715		Waller Bacon^[3]
May 1715		Lord Stanhope	Whig
1722		Lord Binning			Philip Cavendish
1727		Sir Gilbert Heathcote	Whig		Sidney Godolphin
January 1733		Sir Gilbert Heathcote	Whig		Richard Eliot
March 1733		Dudley Ryder			Richard Eliot
1734		The Lord Baltimore			Charles Montagu
1741		John Hynde Cotton			James Newsham
1747		Richard Eliot			Thomas Potter
1748		Edward Eliot^[4]	Whig		Thomas Potter
1754					Anthony Champion
1761					Philip Stanhope
1765					William Hussey
March 1768					Samuel Salt^[5]
December 1768		George Jennings			Benjamin Langlois
1774		Edward Eliot	Whig
1775		John Pownall
1776		John Peachey
1780		Edward James Eliot			Dudley Long	Whig
1784		John Hamilton	Tory		Abel Smith
1788		John Hamilton	Tory		Samuel Smith
February 1790		Sir Charles Hamilton			Samuel Smith
June 1790		The Marquess of Lorne	Whig		Hon. Edward James Eliot^[6]
1791		The Marquess of Lorne	Whig		Hon. William Eliot	Tory
1796		Lord Grey	Whig		Hon. William Eliot	Tory
1802		Lord Binning	Tory		James Langham
1806		Sir Joseph Yorke	Tory		Matthew Montagu	Tory
1810		Charles Philip Yorke	Tory		Matthew Montagu	Tory
1812		William Henry Pringle	Tory		Henry Goulburn	Tory
1818		Hon. Seymour Thomas Bathurst	Tory		Charles Arbuthnot	Tory
1826		Charles Ross	Tory		Charles Arbuthnot	Tory
1827					James Loch	Whig
July 1830					Sir Henry Hardinge^[7]	Tory
December 1830					Winthrop Mackworth Praed	Tory
1832	Constituency abolished

Notes

^ Page 147, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1957)
^ 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) [1]
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)