Family and Education

b. after 1674, 1st s. of William Heath of Stepney, Mdx., E.I. capt., by Jane, da. of Edmund Pike of London, grocer; bro. of Edmund Pike Heath. m. Catherine, da. and coh. of Arthur Bayley of Mile End Green, Virginia merchant, 2s. 1da.

Offices Held

Director, E.I. Co. 1713-15, 1719-21.

Biography

After representing Haslemere for a few months, Heath, an East India merchant, stood in 1713 as a Whig for Harwich, where he tied with a Tory, who on a double return was awarded the seat. Next year he was again returned for Harwich at a by-election, with the same result as before. Successful at last in 1715, he voted against the Government on the septennial bill in 1716 and on Lord Cadogan in 1717, with them on the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, and against them on the peerage bill in 1719. In Feb. 1721 he spoke in favour of Walpole’s scheme to in-graft part of the capital stock of the South Sea Company into the Bank of England and part into the East India Company. Put down in Sunderland’s plans for the 1722 Parliament to oppose Humphry Parsons at Harwich, he stood in 1722 but was defeated. He ‘made interest’ at Harwich in 1727, but did not stand. In 1733 he applied unsuccessfully to Walpole for the government interest at Harwich, claiming to have been invited by the corporation to stand at the next general election. He then went down to Harwich ‘to offer his service’, gaining some support by telling the corporation that Walpole had encouraged him to stand. He had hopes of being adopted by a faction of the corporation, who were said to be prepared to accept anybody, even ‘Heath, a lousy fellow’, in preference to Lord Perceval, but they invited another candidate, with Heath only as a second string.1 In the end he did not stand.

He died 7 Sept. 1741.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Romney R. Sedgwick

Notes

Morant, Essex, ii, 579.

• 1. HMC Egmont Diary, i. 328, 397; ii. 86, 99-100; iii. 323.