DAWKINS, James (?1696-1766), of Over Norton, Oxon.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1734 - 1747

Family and Education

b.?1696, 2nd s. of Col. Richard Dawkins of Clarendon, Jamaica by his 2nd w. Elizabeth Masters. educ. Magdalen, Oxf. 28 Mar. 1713, aged 16. unm.

Offices Held

Biography

Dawkins’s father was one of the first settlers in the island of Jamaica and a member of the house of assembly there. Buying Over Norton in 1726, he contested Oxford in 1734, spending ‘not less ... than a thousand pounds’ on the election, but desisting before the poll. He was then returned unopposed as a Tory for New Woodstock ‘by the interest of the Duchess of Marlborough’,1 voting against the Administration in every recorded division till 1747, when he was turned out by her successor, the 3rd Duke of Marlborough, a government supporter. In 1753 he was reported by Lord Albemarle, the British ambassador in Paris, to be ‘warmly attached to the Pretender’s interest’.2 He died 10 May 1766, leaving Over Norton to his nephew, Henry Dawkins, M.P.3

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Hearne, Colls. (Oxf. Hist. Soc.), xi. 331.
  • 2. Andrew Lang, Pickle the Spy, 225.
  • 3. PCC 175 Tyndall.