East Looe (UK Parliament constituency) explained

East Looe
Parliament:	uk
Year:	1571
Abolished:	1832
Type:	Borough
Elects Howmany:	Two
Region:	England
Towns:	East Looe

East Looe was a parliamentary borough represented in the House of Commons of England from 1571 to 1707, in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800, and finally in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 until its abolition in 1832. It elected two Members of Parliament (MP) by the bloc vote system of election. It was disenfranchised in the Reform Act 1832.

History

The borough consisted of the town of East Looe in Cornwall, connected by bridge across the River Looe to West Looe, which was also a parliamentary borough. From the reign of Edward VI, East Looe and West Looe were jointly a borough, returning two members of Parliament; however, under Queen Elizabeth the two towns were separated, and each thereafter returned two members except between 1654 and 1658, when they were once again represented jointly as East Looe and West Looe, by one member of the First and Second Protectorate Parliaments.

The right of election was in Mayor and members of the corporation, together with a number of freemen of the borough.^[1] Namier and Brooke estimated that there were about fifty voters in this constituency in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is estimated that by 1800 there were still about fifty electors, and in 1831 the number of eligible voters was 38 while the population of the borough was 865.

In practice, this meant that the power to choose the MPs was in the hands of the local landowner or "proprietor", making East Looe (like West Looe) one of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs. The borough was long controlled by the Trelawny family of the nearby manor of Trelawny^[2] in the parish of Pelynt. For many years at the time of the Reform Act, East Looe had been controlled by the Buller family of Morval (which also controlled West Looe and Saltash), and many members of the family sat for the borough in the House of Commons.

After the Reform Act 1832 disenfranchised the borough, it reverted to being represented as part of the county constituency covering its area. Cornwall was divided into two divisions in 1832, East Cornwall (with its place of election at Bodmin) and West Cornwall (which voted at Truro). East Looe was located in East Cornwall.

Members of Parliament

1571-1629

Parliament	First member	Second member
Parliament of 1571	John Wolley	Edward Cordel
Parliament of 1572-1583	Thomas Stone	Thomas West
Parliament of 1584-1585	Richard Spencer	Anthony Rous
Parliament of 1586-1587	Abraham Hartwell	Edward Trelawny
Parliament of 1588-1589	Anthony Everard	Sir Robert Jermyn
Parliament of 1593	William Hampden	Gregory Downhall
Parliament of 1597-1598	Ambrose Bellot	Robert Gawdy
Parliament of 1601	John Hanham	Robert Yardley
Parliament of 1604-1611	Sir Robert Phelips	Sir John Parker
Addled Parliament (1614)	George Chudleigh	Sir Reginald Mohun
Parliament of 1621-1622	Sir John Walter	Sir Jerome Horsey
Happy Parliament (1624-1625)		Bartholomew Specot
	Sir James Bagge	Sir John Trevor
Parliament of 1625-1626		John Chudleigh
Parliament of 1628-1629	William Murray	Paul Specot
No Parliament summoned 1629-1640

1640-1832

Year			First member	First party	Second member	Second party
		April 1640
		November 1640				Parliamentarian
		January 1644	Lower disabled to sit - seat vacant
		1647		<			-- party -->
		December 1648			Buller excluded in Pride's Purge - seat vacant
		1653	East Looe was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament
					In the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate, one MP was elected jointly for East Looe and West Looe
			John Buller^[3]	<			-- party -->
		May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
		1660	Henry Seymour
		1661
		1673
		1677
		1679			Sir Jonathan Trelawny
		1681
		1685	Charles Trelawny	Tory		Whig
		1689			Henry Trelawny
		1699	Sir Henry Seymour
		1701			Francis Godolphin^[4]
		February 1702
		July 1702
		1705
		1708
		1710
		1713	Sir Charles Hedges	Tory
		1715	John Smith	Whig
		1718			Horatio Walpole^[5]
		1722			William Lowndes
		January 1724	Viscount Malpas	Whig
		February 1724
		1727	Charles Longueville
		1734			Edward Trelawny^[6]
		1735
		1740				Whig
		1741	Francis Gashry	Whig		Tory
		1747			John Buller^[7]
		1762
		1768
		1770
		1772
		1774
		January 1775
		June 1775
		1783		Tory
		1784
		May 1786	Alexander Irvine	Tory
		September 1786				Tory
		1788			Viscount Belgrave	Tory
		February 1790		Tory
		June 1790	Robert Wood	Tory		Tory
		1795				Tory
		1796	John Buller	Tory		Tory
		1798			Frederick William Buller	Tory
		May 1799		Tory
		July 1799	Sir John Mitford^[8]	Tory
		February 1802		Tory
		July 1802	Sir Edward Buller	Tory		Tory
		1807				Tory
		1816			Thomas Potter Macqueen	Tory
		1820		Tory
		March 1826		Tory
		June 1826	William Lascelles	Tory		Tory
		1829			Henry Thomas Hope^[9]	Tory
		1830		Tory
		1832	Constituency abolished

See also

• West Looe (UK Parliament constituency)
• MPs elected in the British general election, 1754
• Unreformed House of Commons

References

• Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807)
• D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954)
• William Cobbett, Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808)
• Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons 1754-1790 (LOndon: HMSO, 1964)
• 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)
• 1. 2. 1.

Notes and References

1. Page 327, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition – London: St Martin's Press, 1957)
2. [History of Parliament]
3. In 1659, Buller was also elected for Saltash. He chose to sit for East Looe.
4. Godolphin was also elected for Helston, which he chose to represent, and never sat for East Looe
5. Walpole was re-elected in 1722 but had also been elected for Great Yarmouth, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for East Looe
6. Trelawny was a Commissioner of Customs at the time of election, which made him ineligible, and his election was void
7. Web site: Buller, John (1721-86), of East Looe and Bake, Cornw. . historyofparliamentonline.org . 7 July 2016.
8. Mitford was the Speaker of the House of Commons 1801-1802
9. This person was Henry Thomas Hope who is described in ODNB by Mary S. Millar, ‘Hope, Henry Thomas (1808–1862)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 5 June 2008, not his father, of the same name.