Paul Speccott

Paul Speccott (* around 1600; † before October 26, 1644 ) was an English politician who was elected at least four times as a member of the House of Commons .

Origin and youth

Paul Speccott came from the Speccott family , a Gentry family from Devon . He was the second son of Sir John Speccot of Thornbury and his first wife Elizabeth Edgcumbe. As a younger son, Paul received a thorough education. From 1614 he studied together with his older brother Peter at Oxford University and from 1616 at the Inner Temple in London. In contrast to his brother, he received permission to travel abroad for three years in 1619.

Political activity

In 1622, Speccott was serving as under-sheriff when his father was serving as sheriff of Cornwall . He extorted £ 150 from John Perryman , but because of the general amnesty on the occasion of the coronation of Charles I , he was not prosecuted for it. Through the influence of his father and through other family ties, he was elected in the general election in 1624 as a member of Parliament for East Looe , 1625 for Newport , 1626 for Bossiney and 1628 again for East Looe. In the House of Commons he did not seem to have been active. After the king had not called parliament for twelve years, Speccott was possibly re-elected as a member of Newport in the elections for the so-called Short Parliament in May 1640, but this has not been proven with certainty. In the elections to the Long Parliament in the same year, he did not stand as a candidate. In the English Civil War , which began a little later , Speccott supported the king as a royalist, while his father and brother Peter stood on the side of Parliament. Speccott took part in a roster for the king, but to what extent he was involved in the fighting is unknown. Since he named his father in his will of May 8, 1643 as one of his executors, the rift within the family cannot have been too great.

Establishing your own property

After he had already been elected as MP, Speccott received together with Sir Robert Killigrew smaller holdings of the Duchy of Cornwall before 1627 , which he rose to a small landowner. In 1629 his father left him Penheale Manor near Egloskerry in Cornwall, which he had probably bought in 1620 with the intention of leaving it to his younger son. Around the time of Paul Speccott's first marriage, around 1635, his father gave him additional land ownership. Paul Speccott had various alterations made in Penheale and the gatehouse was built around 1636. He was buried on October 26, 1644. In the St Keri's Church in Egloskerry a grave monument commemorates him.

Family and offspring

Speccott had married Grace Halswell , daughter of Robert Halswell of Halswell , Somerset , around 1635 . She died in childbed in November 1636 . In his second marriage, Speccott married Dorothy Wise († 1691), a daughter of Christopher Wise from Totnes and his wife Emeline . After the death of her first husband in 1628, Emeline Wise married Speccot's father and was therefore not only his step- mother-in-law, but also his mother-in-law. With his second wife Dorothy Speccott had a son and a daughter, including John Speccot (around 1641–1678), who became his heir. His widow remarried in April 1647.

Web links

• Paul Hunneyball: SPECCOTT, Paul (by 1600-1644), of Penheale, no. Egloskerry, Cornw. (History of Parliament Online, Ref Volumes: 1604–1629)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Historic England: PENHEALE MANOR. Retrieved August 30, 2017 .