Family and Education

b. c.1645, o.s. of John Mun of Otteridge by Elizabeth, da. of Walter Harlackenden of Woodchurch. educ. Peterhouse, Camb. adm. 10 Apr. 1661, aged. 16. m. Frances (d.1699), 6s. 2da. suc. fa. 1670.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Kent 1673-80, Kent, Suss. and Colchester 1689; j.p. Kent 1689-d.2

Biography

Mun was the grandson of the famous political economist, who, after a successful career as a London merchant, bought a small estate in Kent. His father appears to have taken no part in the Civil War, leaving at his death lands worth £500 p.a., including the manor of Snailham, four miles north of Hastings. Unfortunately Mun also inherited responsibility for the debts of his uncle, Thomas Harlackenden, for whom he stood security; his lands were extended as soon as he inherited, and even his profits as captain of a privateer in the third Dutch war could not save Snailham, which had to be sold in 1680. He may have formed two useful connexions, however; the first with Hastings, where a son was baptized in 1678, and the second with Sir Vere Fane, after whom the child was named. Mun was returned for the port in 1681, presumably as an exclusionist, though he left no trace on the records of the Oxford Parliament. He lost his seat in 1685, but was chosen to support the canopy at the coronation of James II, and again at that of William and Mary.3

Mun regained his seat in 1689, but proved an inactive Member of the Convention, serving only on the committee to inquire into the fall of rents and acting as teller for a Lords amendment to the bill prohibiting trade with France. He was not listed among the supporters of the disabling clause in the bill to restore corporations, and the real purpose of his membership is revealed by a series of petitions from Fane, Mun and a certain John Farthing demanding that they should be granted the management of the excise. When the commissioners demurred, they were accused of defrauding the new government to the profit of the Jacobites, and threats were made to lay the matter before Parliament, but though Farthing, who was clearly the real begetter of the project, devoted 18 months to an examination of their accounts, the Treasury was unimpressed with his criticisms. Mun was buried at Bearsted on 15 Feb. 1692, the only member of the family to sit in Parliament. By a will dated eight years previously, when he was living in Westminster, he left all his property in Kent and Sussex to his wife; but none can be traced in her hands or in those of their descendants, and probably all had been sold in his lifetime.4

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Basil Duke Henning

Notes

• 1. F. C. Cass, East Barnet, 218.
• 2. CSP Dom. 1689-90, p. 122.
• 3. DNB; PCC 146 Duke; C10/206/36; Cal. Treas. Bks. iii. 834, 1159, 1286; HMC Lords, iii. 26; Fines of Manors (Suss. Rec. Soc. xx), 403; Suss. N. and Q. xv. 163; Suss. Arch. Colls. xv. 193, 209.
• 4. CJ, x. 270; Cal. Treas. Pprs. i. 41, 70, 210; PCC 58 Fane, 59 Noel; Hasted, Kent, vii. 191.