Family and Education

bap. 28 Oct. 1694, 2nd s. of William Eliot, R.N., and bro. of Edward Eliot. educ. Balliol, Oxf. 1712. m. 10 Mar. 1726, Harriot, illegit. da. of James Craggs, 3s. 6da. suc. nephew James Eliot at Port Eliot 1742.

Offices Held

Sec. to Lord Carteret in Sweden Mar. 1719-20; commr. of excise 1722-May 1729; surveyor gen. of duchy of Cornwall Jan. 1730-8; receiver gen. of duchy Mar. 1738-d.; mayor, Liskeard 1741-2, 1746-7.

Biography

Eliot was appointed secretary of embassy to Carteret in Sweden in 1719, receiving £200 p.a. with no extraordinaries as he was to live with the ambassador.1 After his brother’s death in 1722 he managed the estates and parliamentary interest of his young nephew, whom he eventually succeeded. From 1733 he represented his family’s boroughs, voting with the Administration on the excise bill in 1733 and the repeal of the Septennial Act in 1734. In 1738 he went into opposition with the Prince of Wales, under whom he held a duchy of Cornwall office, voting against the Spanish convention in 1739, for the place bill in 1740, but withdrawing on the motion to dismiss Walpole in February 1741. At the general election of 1741, he returned for St. Germans the son of Sir John Hynde Cotton, the Tory leader, who wrote on 19 May thanking him ‘for the great pains you and some others of your countrymen have taken to save a sinking constitution’. In the new Parliament he continued to act with the Prince of Wales’s party, voting against the Administration on the chairman of the elections committee in December 1741, but going over to them after Walpole’s fall till 1747, when he reverted to opposition with the Prince. He died 19 Nov. 1748 in financial difficulties caused, as his wife wrote on 29 Nov., by his duchy office, which had cost him ‘£7,000 since he has lived in the family [i.e. the Prince of Wales’s household], the source of all our present woes, yea even of his death I do believe.’2

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

PCC 261 Price.

• 1. SP Dom. 36/5, ff. 214-15.
• 2. Eliot mss at Port Eliot.