Mitchell (UK Parliament constituency)

For other electoral districts, see Electoral district of Mitchell.

Mitchell, or St Michael (sometimes also called St Michael's Borough or Michaelborough), was a rotten borough consisting of the town (or village) of Mitchell, Cornwall. From the first Parliament of Edward VI, in 1547, it elected two members to the Unreformed House of Commons.

Mitchell
Former borough constituency for the House of Commons
County	Cornwall
Major settlements	St Newlyn East and St Enoder
1547–1832
Seats	Two

History

The borough encompassed parts of two parishes, Newlyn East and St Enoder. Like most of the Cornish boroughs enfranchised or re-enfranchised during the Tudor period, it was a rotten borough from the start.

The franchise in Mitchell was a matter of controversy in the 17th century, but was settled by a House of Commons resolution on 20 March 1700 which stated "That the right of election of members to serve in Parliament for the Borough of St Michael's, in the County of Cornwall, is in the portreeves, and lords of the manor, who are capable of being portreeves, and the inhabitants of the said borough paying scot and lot": this gave the vote to most of the male householders.

The borough was often not in the complete control of a single proprietor, the voters being swayed between those of the lords of the manor from whom they expected to receive most benefit in return. Namier quotes a memorandum on the state of the Cornish boroughs from Lord Edgcumbe to Prime Minister Newcastle in 1760, describing the Mitchell voters as "in general low, indigent people, [who] will join such of the Under Lords from whom they have reason to expect most money and favours. Admiral Boscawen..., by supplying some of the voters with money and conferring favours on others, seems to be adding very considerably to the strength of his interest."^[1]

The landowners, however, had other expedients for gaining control. The number of voters, which in 1784 had been at least 39, was reduced by 1831 to just seven, achieved by pulling down a number of houses in the borough and letting those houses that still stood on conditions which prevented the occupiers appearing on the parish rates. The proprietors by the 1820s were the Earl of Falmouth (a Boscawen) and Sir Christopher Hawkins, Hawkins having purchased his interest some years previously from Sir Francis Basset; but Mitchell having thus been reduced to one of the smallest of all the rotten boroughs (in 1831, the borough had a population of approximately 90, and 23 houses), it was naturally disfranchised by the Great Reform Act of 1832.

Mitchell's early MPs included the explorer and statesman Walter Raleigh, who sat briefly for the borough in the 1590s while out of favour at court and so unable to secure a more prestigious seat. A later MP was the future Duke of Wellington, who as Sir Arthur Wellesley represented the borough from January to May 1807, for part of which time he was a junior minister (Chief Secretary for Ireland) in the Duke of Portland's second government.

Members of Parliament

1547–1629

Parliament	First member	Second member
Parliament of 1547–1552	Ralph Cholmley	Hugh Cartwright
First Parliament of 1553	Robert Beverley	Humphrey Moseley
Second Parliament of 1553	Francis Goldsmith	Edward Chamberlain
Parliament of 1554	Clement Tussard	Andrew Tussard
Parliament of 1554–1555	Paul Stamford
Parliament of 1555	John Arundell	John Thomas
Parliament of 1558		Thomas Gardiner
Parliament of 1559	Drue Drury	Robert Colshill
Parliament of 1562	Robert Hopton	Thomas Wilson
Parliament of 1571	Edward Stafford	Francis Alford
Parliament of 1572–1581	Charles Lister	Thomas West
Parliament of 1584–1585	Edward Barker	James Erisey
Parliament of 1586–1587	Thomas Cosworth	Henry Sumaster
Parliament of 1588–1589	Edward Cosworth	James Clarke
Parliament of 1593	Sir Walter Raleigh	Richard Reynell
Parliament of 1597–1598	John Arundell (of Trerice)	John Carew
Parliament of 1601	George Chudleigh	William Cholmley
Parliament of 1604–1611	William Cary[2]	William Hakewill
Addled Parliament (1614)	Christopher Hodson	Walter Hickman
Parliament of 1621–1622	Richard Carew	John St Aubyn
Happy Parliament (1624–1625)	John Holles[3] Denzil Holles	John Sawle
Useless Parliament (1625)	Henry Sandys	Sir John Smith
Parliament of 1625–1626	Francis Crossing
Parliament of 1628–1629	Francis Buller	John Sparke
No Parliament summoned 1629–1640

1640–1832

Year		First member	First party		Second member	Second party
April 1640	Double return [4]
November 1640		William Chadwell	Royalist		John Arundell[5]	Royalist
1640					Robert Holborne	Royalist
August 1642				Holborne disabled from sitting – seat vacant [6]
January 1644	Chadwell disabled from sitting – seat vacant
1647		Lord Kerr
December 1648	Kerr excluded in Pride's Purge – seat vacant
1653	Mitchell was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament and the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate
January 1659		James Launce			Richard Lobb
May 1659	Not represented in the restored Rump
April 1660		Thomas Carew			Heneage Finch[7]
May 1660					John Alleyn
1661		Matthew Wren			Sir Edward Mosley
1665					The Lord Hawley
1673		Humphrey Borlase
1679		Sir John St Aubyn			Walter Vincent
1681		Sir William Russell			Henry Vincent
1685		Thomas Price			John Vivian
January 1689		The Viscount Fanshawe[8]	Tory		Francis Vyvyan (MP for Mitchell)
September 1689		William Coryton
December 1689		Humphrey Courtney
March 1690		Anthony Rowe			Francis Scobell
November 1690		Humphrey Courtney
1695					Thomas Vyvyan
1697		John Tregagle			John Povey
1698		Sir John Hawles	Whig
January 1701		William Beaw			Anthony Rowe
March 1701					Sir Richard Vyvyan
December 1701		William Courtney
1702		Renatus Bellott			Francis Basset
1705		Sir William Hodges			Hugh Fortescue
1710		Abraham Blackmore			Richard Belasyse
1713		Sir Henry Belasyse			John Statham
1715		Nathaniel Blakiston			Robert Molesworth[9]	Whig
1722		Charles Selwyn			John Hedges
1727		Henry Kelsall			Thomas Farrington
1734		Thomas Watts			Robert Ord
1741		Edward Clive			John Ord
May 1745		Richard Lloyd
November 1745					Sir Edward Pickering
1747		Thomas Clarke			Albert Nesbitt
1753					Arnold Nesbitt
1754		John Stephenson			Robert Clive
1755[10]		Simon Luttrell			Richard Hussey
1761		John Stephenson			James Scawen[11]
1774					Hon. Thomas Howard
1779					Francis Hale
1780		Hon. William Hanger
1784		David Howell			Sir Christopher Hawkins[12]	Tory
1796		Sir Stephen Lushington	Whig
1799					John Simpson
1802		Robert Dallas	Tory		Robert Sharpe Ainslie
1805		Earl of Dalkeith
1806		Sir Christopher Hawkins[13]	Tory		Frederick Trench	Tory
January 1807		Hon. Sir Arthur Wellesley	Tory		Henry Conyngham Montgomery
May 1807		Edward Leveson-Gower	Tory		George Galway Mills
July 1807		Sir James Hall, Bt
1808					Charles Trelawny-Brereton
1809					John Bruce
1812		George Hobart
1813		Hon. Edward Law	Tory
August 1814					Charles Trelawny-Brereton
December 1814					Lord Binning	Tory
1818		Sir George Staunton, Bt			William Leake
1820					William Taylor Money
April 1826					Henry Labouchere	Whig
June 1826		William Leake	Whig
1830		Hon. Lloyd Kenyon	Tory		John Heywood Hawkins	Whig
1831					Hon. William Best	Tory
1832	Constituency abolished

Notes

1. Page 304, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition - London: St Martin's Press, 1957)
2. Cobbett spells the name as "Carpe"
3. Holles was also elected for East Retford, which he chose to represent, and never sat for Mitchell
4. Peter Courtney, William Chadwell, Francis Basset and Samuel Cosworth were all named in the return, though Cosworth's name was later taken off. The Parliament was dissolved before the dispute could be resolved or any of the four could take their seat
5. Arundell was also elected for Bodmin, which he chose to represent, and never sat for Mitchell
6. Thomas Temple was apparently elected after the Civil War to fill the vacancy, but there is no evidence that he ever took his seat
7. Finch was also elected for Canterbury, which he chose to represent, and did not sit for Mitchell
8. Expelled from the House for refusing to take the oath of loyalty to William and Mary
9. Created Viscount Molesworth (in the Peerage of Ireland), July 1716
10. At the election of 1754, Clive and Stephenson were initially declared to have defeated their opponents Luttrell and Hussey, but the result was reversed on petition
11. Scawen was re-elected in 1774 but had also been elected for Surrey, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for Mitchell
12. At the election of 1784 there was double return, one naming Howell and Hawkins as elected, the other naming Howell and Roger Wilbraham, they having tied with 21 votes each. (Howell had 27 votes and the fourth candidate, William Augustus Spencer Boscawen, 15.) On scrutiny of the votes the Committee struck off four votes that had been credited to Wilbraham, and added one to Hawkins that had been disallowed by the Returning Officer, and declared Hawkins duly elected.
13. Hawkins was also elected for Grampound and Penryn; he chose to represent Grampound, and did not sit for Mitchell in this Parliament

References

• Cornwall portal

• 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)
• Maija Jansson (ed.), Proceedings in Parliament, 1614 (House of Commons) (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1988)
• J. E. Neale, The Elizabethan House of Commons (London: Jonathan Cape, 1949)
• T. H. B. Oldfield, The Representative History of Great Britain and Ireland (London: Baldwin, Cradock & Joy, 1816)
• 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 "M" (part 3)