suc. fa. 7 Jan. 1662 as 2nd Bar. CORNWALLIS
First sat 3 Feb. 1662; last sat 29 Mar. 1673
MP Eye, 1660, 1661-7 Jan. 1662
bap. 19 Apr. 1632, 1st s. of Sir Frederick Cornwallis, (later Bar. Cornwallis), and 1st w. Elizabeth, da. of Sir John Ashburnham‡, bt. of Ashburnham, Suss. educ. privately. m. 1651, Margaret (d. 6 Mar. 1669), da. of Sir Thomas Playsted, of Arlington, Suss., 8s. (3 d.v.p), 2da. KB 23 Apr. 1661. d. 13 Apr. 1673; admon. 6 May 1673-21 July 1686.
Capt. of militia horse, Suff. Apr. 1660; commr. assessment, Suff. Aug. 1660-d., Mdx. 1661-2.
Alderman, Thetford by 1669-?d.; steward, honour of Eye 1671-d.1
Associated with: Brome Hall, Suff. and Culford Hall, Suff.
A firm royalist, Cornwallis was elected to the Convention in March 1660 on the family interest at Eye. Prior to his succession to the title, Cornwallis’s career is easily confused with that of his cousin, also Charles Cornwallis‡, who succeeded him at Eye. Relatively anonymous in the Convention, Cornwallis became ‘very active’ on behalf of the court in the Cavalier Parliament as both committee-man and teller, but his career in the Commons ended abruptly when he succeeded his father in January 1662.2
Cornwallis took his seat in the Lords on 3 Feb. 1662, nine months into its first session. Over the course of his career in the Lords, he was named to numerous committees and attended seven out of ten sessions for more than 60 per cent of sittings; in other respects, his parliamentary career is less well documented. He does not appear to have registered his proxy during absences from the House and his voting behaviour was rarely recorded. He was noted as absent at three calls of the House (1 Oct. 1666, 29 Oct. 1667 and 26 Oct. 1669), but no excuse was provided.
During his first session in the Lords, Cornwallis attended nearly 16 per cent of sittings and was named to ten select committees. On 3 Mar. 1662 he was given leave to be absent for some time. This allowed him to attend the assizes at Bury St Edmunds where the Lowestoft witches were tried. The presiding judge, Sir Matthew Hale‡, asked Cornwallis and two other gentlemen, Sir Edmund Bacon and serjeant John Kelyng‡ to undertake an experiment to test the victims’ claims: though they concluded that ‘the business was a mere imposture’, the witches were nevertheless found guilty and hanged.3 Cornwallis resumed his place on 8 May after which he continued to attend until the prorogation.4
Cornwallis took his seat at the opening of the new session on 18 Feb. 1663, after which he was present for 69 per cent of sittings. Although present on the attendance list on the first day, he was not among those named to the committees for privileges or the Journal. He was named to the committee for petitions on 25 Feb. but was then present for just four days in March. Having returned to his place on 9 Apr., he was added to the committee for Coppleston’s bill, vesting the lands of the former Cromwellian sheriff of Devon in the hands of, among others, his kinsman, Charles Cornwallis. He was then regular in his attendance for the remainder of the session during which he was named to a further dozen select committees. On 19 June Cornwallis presented to the House a certificate from the sheriffs of Norfolk and Suffolk certifying the correct mileage between Yarmouth and Lowestoft and their fulfilment of a Lords’ order to set up boundary posts.
In July 1663 Cornwallis was forecast by Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, as a likely opponent of the attempted impeachment of Edward Hyde, earl of Clarendon, by George Digby, 2nd earl of Bristol.5 He was in the House on 10 July when Bristol exhibited his charges and again on 14 July when the House voted to agree with the opinion of the judges that the attempt was invalid. On 25 July he registered his protest against the resolution to amend the Act of Uniformity.
Cornwallis returned to the House on 16 Mar. 1664 for the first day of the spring 1664 session and was present in total for 87 per cent of sittings. He was named to the usual committees for petitions, privileges and for the Journal and to nine select committees. That he was active on the Journal committee is indicated by the fact that he was one of those to sign off the account of proceedings on 13 May. Cornwallis took his place once more two weeks into the winter 1664 parliamentary session and thereafter attended 76 per cent of sittings, during which he was named to 25 select committees.
On 18 Feb. 1665 Cornwallis insisted on his privilege in favour of his servant John Goldsmith, who had been arrested at the suit of Henry Shugforth, Philip Barber and Robert Clarke despite their knowledge that Goldsmith was in Cornwallis’s employ. They were taken into custody but discharged on the 28th through the intervention of Cornwallis himself. On 25 Feb. Cornwallis reported from the committee on the bill to repeal part of an act concerning prize goods, which had been presided over the previous day by John Egerton, 2nd earl of Bridgwater.6
Cornwallis failed to attend the session that assembled in Oxford in October 1665 and (like a number of his colleagues) was missing from the opening days of the session that gathered back at Westminster in the autumn of 1666. He took his place on 19 Oct., a month after the session’s opening but having missed just 17 days of business. He proceeded to attend 64 per cent of sittings, was added to the committee for privileges and named to 18 select committees. On 23 Jan. 1667 he registered his protest against the rejection of a clause (which would allow an appeal to the House) in the judicature bill on disputes concerning houses burnt down during the Fire of London, and on 25 Jan. he was one of those appointed to examine a number of merchants concerning the seizure of contraband French goods. Arriving 11 days after the start of the October 1667 session, Cornwallis proceeded to attend 80 per cent of sittings; he was named to 22 select committees, including the committee on the better execution of laws concerning the price of wines, to which he was added on 24 Oct., and the bill for taxing adventurers in the Fens, to which he was added on 13 December.
On 10 Dec. 1667 Lady Cornwallis exercised her privilege when it was claimed on oath that one of her servants (Mary Horton) had been arrested by a bailiff despite his knowledge that it was contrary to parliamentary privilege. The bailiff, Peter Bolingham, was arrested and summoned to appear at the bar of the House. On 26 Mar. 1668 Cornwallis was given leave to be absent from the House for four to five days (he returned on 6 April) but this did not prevent him from being named to the committee for the bill for indemnifying the late sheriffs of the City of London and warden of the Fleet prison over a breakout staged by prisoners at the time of the Great Fire. On 9 May he attended the House for the last time that session, missing the last ten months of business.
Cornwallis’s early departure was presumably related to the anticipated visit of the king to his seat at Culford.7 In July he was involved in an unsavoury affair during his attendance on the king at Newmarket. According to Samuel Pepys‡, he tried to procure for the king the daughter of a local parson; she fled and was said to have committed suicide.8 The episode seems not to have harmed Cornwallis’ standing at court. He was again in attendance on 8 Oct. when the king undertook an inspection at Harwich accompanied by several of the nobility including James, duke of York, and James Scott, duke of Monmouth.9
Cornwallis missed the first three weeks of the autumn 1669 session but having taken his seat proceeded to attend three-quarters of all sitting days. He was, though, named to only three select committees. His petition for the office of the high steward of Eye (formerly granted by the late queen mother) was referred to the treasury commissioners the same month.10 It was eventually granted in 1671.
Cornwallis returned to the chamber on 17 Feb. 1670 for the third day of the new parliamentary session and was added to the committees for privileges and petitions. Thereafter he attended 64 per cent of sittings during which he was named to approximately 39 select committees. On 28 Mar. he registered his protest against the passage of the divorce bill for John Manners, styled Lord Roos (later duke of Rutland). The following day he was named to a subcommittee detailed with the task of overseeing the razing from the House’s records of the proceedings relating to the attainder of Thomas Wentworth†, earl of Strafford.11 On 9 Apr., after the House received a report on the various procedures in trials of inheritances, it was ordered that Cornwallis should be one of those lords to consult with the barons of the court of exchequer. The committee was to determine how to settle matters of difference in court proceedings and report back to the House after the recess. Cornwallis took part in the funeral procession for George Monck, duke of Albemarle, on 30 April.12 On 12 May he was one of those to subscribe an order requiring the attendance of several of the House’s officers at the next meeting of the committee on bills of Middlesex.13 His apparently greater concentration on business may have been related to the loss of his wife the previous year. Sir Ralph Verney‡ observed to Lady Anne Hobart that October, that now he was a widower Cornwallis tended to be ‘much at London’.14 During the following spring, on 9 Mar. 1671, Cornwallis registered his dissent from the resolution not to commit the bill concerning privilege of Parliament; he then subscribed the protest in response to the resolution not to engross the bill on the grounds that there was ‘no colour of law to claim a privilege of freedom from suits’.
Cornwallis was missing from the last four weeks of business of March and April 1671. In September of the following year, Cornwallis visited Yarmouth in company with several other ‘persons of quality’.15 He was back in London in time to take his seat in the House at the opening of the new session on 4 Feb. 1673 when he was named to the sessional committees. Attending regularly throughout February and March, he was named to 12 select committees.
Cornwallis attended the House for the final time on 29 Mar. 1673. Falling ill with stomach ailments, he died suddenly on 13 April. His death came as a considerable surprise and rumours began to spread that he had inadvertently killed himself with medicine obtained from a ‘mountebank’, Mr. Easton. Easton subsequently published an account of the episode entering into great detail about Cornwallis’s symptoms and treatment for his own justification.16 Cornwallis was buried at Culford and succeeded in the peerage by his heir, and namesake, Charles Cornwallis, 3rd Baron Cornwallis.
B.A./R.D.E.E.- 1 CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 559, CSP Dom. 1668-9, pp. 353, 598.
- 2 HP Commons 1660-90, ii. 134.
- 3 G. Geis and I. Bunn, Trial of Witches (1997), 86-87, 224.
- 4 Tryal of Witches, at the Assizes held at Bury St Edmonds (1682).
- 5 Bodl. Carte 81, f. 224.
- 6 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 67.
- 7 Verney ms mic. M636/22, R. to E. Verney, 21 May 1668.
- 8 Pepys Diary, ix. 264.
- 9 CSP Dom. 1668-9, p. 9.
- 10 Ibid. 579.
- 11 PA, HL/PO/DC/CP/1/2, p. 69.
- 12 HMC Portland, iii. 315.
- 13 PA, HL/PO/CO/1/2, p. 332.
- 14 Verney ms mic. M636/24, Sir R. Verney to A. Hobart, 31 Oct. 1670.
- 15 CSP Dom. 1672, p. 599.
- 16 Verney ms mic. M636/25, J. Stewkeley to Sir R. Verney, 17 Apr. 1673, M636/25, Lady A. Hobart to R. Verney, 17 Apr. 1673; True Narrative of the Death of the Right Honourable the Lord Cornwallis. (1673).