John Speccot (politician, 1665)

John Speccot (also Speccott ) (* before April 19, 1665 ; † June 16, 1705 in London ) was an English politician who was elected six times as a member of the House of Commons .

Origin and youth

John Speccot came from the Speccot family , a gentry family with estates in Cornwall and Devon . He was the second but eldest surviving son of John Speccot and his wife, Honor Eliot, and was baptized on April 19, 1665. In 1680 he studied at Exeter College , Oxford.

Political activity

Unsteady attitude towards Jacob II.

Speccot's father died in 1678, so he became the heir to the family estates. In the general election in 1685, the still underage Speccot was elected as a member of Parliament for Borough Newport , where the family traditionally had great political influence. Nothing is known about his work in the House of Commons, but since he was appointed Justice of the Peace for Cornwall in December 1685 , he probably initially supported the government of King James II. Unlike his father, Speccot was a staunch supporter of the Church of England , which is why he quickly became an opponent of the Catholic King's church policy. This led to the fact that in July 1688 he was not confirmed again as justice of the peace. It was not until October 1688 that he was reappointed justice of the peace. After the Glorious Revolution , Speccot was re-elected to Newport in January 1689 when he was elected to the so-called Convention Parliament . Unlike the majority in the House of Commons, he supported the House of Lords , which stated that the throne would not be vacant after the king's flight. This was in vain to prevent the accession of William of Orange to the throne .

Member of the opposition to Wilhelm III.

In the general election in 1690 Speccot was re-elected as MP for Newport after the failure of Jonathan Trelawny , Bishop of Exeter, to run him as the Tories candidate for Cornwall. Speccot served as Colonel in the Cornish Militia until 1696 . In the general election in 1695, he should first run as a rival to Whigs Hugh Boscawen as Knight of the Shire for Cornwall, but ultimately both Boscawen and Speccot were elected unchallenged. In 1696, as a supporter of the Tories, Speccot, the Association , refused to express loyalty to William III. to sign. As a result, he lost his post as justice of the peace until 1700. In the general election in 1698, he initially ran successfully for the Borough of Saltash , but after he was again elected as Knight of the Shire for Cornwall, he accepted this more prestigious election. In the years that followed, he was absent several times from the House of Commons because of illness. In the general election of January 1701 he was elected as a candidate for his uncle Daniel Eliot as MP for St Germans . When he was re-elected as the Tories candidate for Cornwall in February, he accepted the election again.

Withdrawal from politics and death

Prior to 1701, Speccot became Deputy Lieutenant of Cornwall, but due to poor health, he retired from politics and did not run again in the November 1701 elections and in subsequent elections. Instead, he put his cousin John Spark up as a candidate for Newport. In July 1704 he moved to London, where he eventually died of complications from a stroke. Either he was buried in St Anne's Church in Soho or his body was transferred to Cornwall in July 1705 and buried next to his ancestors in Egloskerry near the family home of Penheale .

Family and inheritance

On April 9, 1689, Speccot Essex Robartes , daughter of John Robartes, 1st Earl of Radnor . At his wedding he is said to have contracted smallpox and also infected his wife. While he survived the disease, his wife died three weeks later on April 30, 1689. Speccot did not remarry, and with his childless death, the Speccot family died out in the male line. With an annual income of over £ 6,000 from his estates, the opening of his will was eagerly awaited. Surprisingly, he bequeathed most of the estates to his cousin John Spark rather than his sister Elizabeth and her family. He bequeathed £ 1,000 to charity which his trustees, Bishops Jonathan Trelawny and Charles Trelawny, eventually gave to a school in East Looe that taught navigation there . The money was to be used to educate poor students.

Web links

• Gillian Hampson: SPECCOT, John II (1665-1705), of Penheale, Egloskerry, Cornw. (History of Parliament online, Ref Volumes: 1660–1690)
• Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley: SPECCOT, John (1665-1705), of Penheale, Cornw. (History of Parliament Online, Ref Volumes: 1690-1715)