NEWPORT, Hon. Henry (1683-1734).

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1690-1715, ed. D. Hayton, E. Cruickshanks, S. Handley, 2002
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

5 Mar. 1706 - 1708
1708 - 1710
1713 - 1722

Family and Education

b. 8 Aug. 1683, 1st s. of Richard Newport*, 2nd Earl of Bradford.  educ. Westminster; Christ Church, Oxf. 1699.  unm. 1s. illegit. by Anne Smyth.  Styled Lord Newport 19 Sept. 1708. suc. fa. as 3rd Earl 14 June 1723.1

Offices Held

Freeman, Ludlow 1707, Much Wenlock 1710.2

Ld. lt. and custos rot. Staffs. 1715–25; ld. lt. Salop and Mont. 1724–d.

Biography

A Whig like his father, Newport was returned at a by-election for Bishop’s Castle in 1706. It was not a borough in which the Newports had any substantial interest, and before the next election it was reported that Henry intended to stand either at Shrewsbury, where his father owned some property and for which his great-uncle Hon. Andrew Newport* had sat, or for the county, which his father had represented. He eventually decided to stand for knight of the shire, the Tory interest at Shrewsbury being especially formidable, and he was returned unopposed. Thereafter he contested every election for the county until inheriting his father’s earldom.3

Newport was included by mistake in a published list of those who had supported the Court over the regency bill on 18 Feb. 1706, and was classed as a Whig in a parliamentary list of early 1708. He acted as a teller on 1 Feb. 1709 in favour of John Lawton* in a disputed election for Newcastle-under-Lyme, and again on 3 Mar. in the Coventry election case, in favour of Sir Orlando Bridgeman, 2nd Bt.*, to whom he was related through his uncle, Hon. Thomas Newport*. Listed again as a Whig in an analysis of the 1708 Parliament, he supported the naturalization of the Palatines in 1709, and subsequently voted for the impeachment of Dr Sacheverell. At the 1710 general election, he and Richard Corbet* were defeated by two Tories in a contest in which the impeachment was an important issue. In 1713 Newport stood on his own against two Tories, having failed to persuade any Shropshire Whig, or even the ‘whimsical’ Tory Robert Lloyd II*, to join him, but was returned at the top of the poll. Before the election he was obliged publicly to deny Tory allegations that in 1710 he had declared that he would donate money for the building of a bawdy-house but not for a church. He voted on 18 Mar. against the expulsion of Richard Steele, and was classed as a Whig in the Worsley list and in two analyses of the 1713 and 1715 Parliaments. He died at his house in St. James’s Place on 23 Dec. 1734 and was buried in Westminster Abbey.4

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

  • 1. PCC 4 Ducie.
  • 2. Salop RO, Ludlow bor. recs. min. bk. 1690–1712; Salop RO, Forester mss, copy of Much Wenlock corp. bk.
  • 3. HMC Portland, iv. 454–5.
  • 4. Staffs. RO, Bradford mss, Newport to Sir John Bridgeman, 3, 7 Dec. 1712; Bradford mss at Weston Park, Sir John Bridgeman to Newport, 3 Dec. 1712, same to Thomas Jones, 27 Dec. 1712, same to Sir Orlando Bridgeman, 3 Jan. 1713; VCH. Salop, iii. 259; G. T. O. Bridgeman, Newport Fam. 34.