Family and Education

b. 19 May 1710, 3rd s. of Sir John Tynte, 2nd Bt., M.P., by Jane, da. of Sir Charles Kemys, 3rd Bt., M.P.  m. 9 Mar. 1738, Anne, da. of Rev. Thomas Busby, s.p.  suc. uncle Sir Charles Kemys, 4th Bt., M.P., 1735 and took name of Kemys before Tynte; suc. bro. as 5th Bt. 15 Aug. 1740.

Offices Held

Biography

Tynte was a Tory; and in 1754 and 1761 was returned unopposed for Somerset. On 1 Dec. 1762 he voted against the Opposition motion to postpone consideration of the peace preliminaries, and was listed by Fox as favouring them. On 24 Jan. and 10 Feb. 1764 Tynte seconded motions by Dowdeswell against the Cider Act, and on 15 Feb. voted with the Opposition on general warrants; after this, according to Horace Walpole (to Lord Hertford, 19 Feb.), his vote was bought by the promise of a peerage: the promised reward was probably an invention, but he did not vote with the minority on 18 Feb. He voted against the repeal of the Stamp Act, 22 Feb. 1766, and against Chatham’s Administration on the land tax, 27 Feb. 1767.

At the general election of 1768 an opposition to him was threatened by Sir John Trevelyan, and he was charged with having supported the Cider Act—‘about Yeovil and in these parts’, wrote Lord Westmorland to him, 5 Oct. 1767, ‘your interest is not so good as I would wish, they having got the old stale cry of cider and general warrants’.1 On 4 Jan. 1768 Tynte inserted an advertisement in the Sherborne Mercury, explaining his attitude to the cider tax:

I spoke in the House of Commons against it. I voted against it. The only day I was absent from the House was when I was afflicted with so severe a fit of the gout, that I could not turn in my bed without assistance. I attended every meeting in the country, and in London, to concert proper measures against it, and I was carried to the House wrapped in flannels to vote for the repeal of that odious and detestable tax.

On a canvass Tynte and Richard Hippisley Coxe had so decided a majority that Trevelyan declined the poll. In the Parliament of 1768 Tynte voted with Administration over Wilkes and the Middlesex election, but his attendance in this Parliament was irregular.

He did not stand again in 1774 because of ill-health, and died 25 Aug. 1785.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: Sir Lewis Namier

Notes

• 1. Tynte mss, Som. RO.