MAYNARD, Hon. Banastre (c.1642-1718), of Little Easton, Essex.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

17 Mar. 1663

Family and Education

b. c.1642, 1st s. of William, 2nd Baron Maynard of Estaines by 1st w. Dorothy, da. of Sir Robert Banastre of Passenham, Northants. educ. travelled abroad (France, Italy, Germany, Low Countries) 1660-2. m. 9 Nov. 1655, Lady Elizabeth Grey (d. 24 Sept. 1714), da. of Henry Grey, 10th Earl of Kent, 8s. (2 d.v.p.) 3da. suc. fa. as 3rd Baron Maynard 3 Feb. 1699.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Essex 1663-80, 1689-90, recusants 1675; j.p. Apr. 1688-?d.

Biography

Maynard was descended from a lawyer of Devonshire origin who sat for St. Albans in the Marian Parliaments of 1553 and 1554. A pedigree was entered at the herald’s visitation of Essex four years later, and in 1590 Maynard’s grandfather was granted the crown manor of Little Easton. His father sat at Westminster during the Civil War, but in 1647 he was impeached by the army. He was one of the few peers who rejected the ordinance for the trial of Charles I and was arrested as a Cavalier plotter before Penruddock’s rising in 1655. A courtier after the Restoration, he officiated as chief larderer at Charles II’s coronation.2

Maynard was returned for Essex at a by-election to the Cavalier Parliament probably without a contest, and listed as a court dependant in 1664. But it was over a year before he was appointed to any committee, and he was probably an inactive Member, though he is seldom distinguished in the Journals from Joseph Maynard, who took his seat in October 1666. He was definitely appointed to seven committees, including the committee of elections and privileges in two sessions, and probably to ten more, mostly on private bills. In 1669 Sir Thomas Osborne included him among the Members who usually voted for supply. He was named to the committees for the preservation of naval stores (14 Apr. 1671), for the recovery of tithes (3 Nov. 1673), and for the estate bill of Sir Richard Wiseman (27 Mar. 1674). On the working lists Maynard was included among those ‘to be fixed’, and Wiseman proposed that his father, who had become comptroller of the Household in 1672, should be ‘charged with the care of him’. Perhaps the grant in reversion of the ballast office to Lord Maynard increased his son’s reliability, for in 1677 Shaftesbury marked him ‘thrice vile’, and he was on the government list of court supporters in 1678. He is not known to have spoken in the House, but on 5 Dec. he carried to the Lords the impeachment of Lord Powis. Though not named as one of the ‘unanimous club’, he apparently did not stand for the Exclusion Parliaments.3

Maynard’s father was dismissed from Court in 1687, and his younger brother was expected to contest Essex as a nominee of the church party in the following year. But Maynard must have supported James II’s religious policy, for he was made a j.p. and named as one of three possible candidates on whom the dissenters relied. After succeeding to the peerage he was a country Tory under Anne. He died on 3 Mar. 1718 in his 76th year and was buried at Little Easton, the last of the family to sit in the Commons.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Gillian Hampson / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

  • 1. Morant, Essex, ii. 432; CSP Dom. 1659-60, p. 570; J. W. Stoye, English Travellers Abroad, 183, 254-5.
  • 2. Vis. Essex (Harl. Soc. xiii), 76; Morant, ii. 431; R. B. Colvin, Lts. and Keepers of the Rolls of Essex, 99-100; CSP Dom. 1641-3, p. 508; Thurloe, iii. 574, 593; D. Underdown, Royalist Conspiracy, 189-90.
  • 3. CSP Dom. 1673-5, p. 578; Grey, vi. 325; CJ, ix. 553.
  • 4. G. Holmes, Br. Politics in the Age of Anne, 252.