STEWART, John II (?1755-1826), of 3D, The Albany, Piccadilly, Mdx.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

17 Apr. 1819 - 16 June 1819

Family and Education

b. ?1755 of Scots family. unm. 2s. (John Stewart (1789-1860) MP for Lymington 1832-47, was his s. by Mary Duncan), several da.

Offices Held

Biography

This Member has elsewhere been identified with John Stewart, also of The Albany, who was Member for Lymington from 1832 to 1847, but it was most probably his father who briefly represented Camelford. Little has been found out about him except that he had sugar plantations in the provinces of Berbice and Demerara and also on Grenada, Trinidad and ‘elsewhere in the West Indies’, some 560 acres of Grenada property having been apparently purchased by him about 1790.1

By 1818 he had taken up residence in The Albany; he voted in the Westminster election of that year for Sir Murray Maxwell. In 1818 also he tried to use his wealth to procure his return for Camelford as a friend of government; he and Lewis Allsopp* were afterwards alleged to have offered £6,000 to 15 electors to ensure their return, against the interest of Lord Darlington.2 He was defeated, but the election being declared void, he was successful in the ensuing election. He had scarcely been two months in the House when he in turn was unseated and disqualified from sitting in that Parliament for bribery and corruption. He did not attempt to return there. While in the House, he voted with administration against Tierney’s censure motion 18 May 1819, though no speech is known.

In his will he provided handsomely for his natural children and for numerous Scots friends and dependants, directing that his Caribbean estates should be sold for this purpose: his heir was however still in possession of the sugar plantations of Annandale and Stewartville in British Guiana at his death in 1860.3 Stewart senior died 21 July 1826, aged 71.4

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes

  • 1. His will, PCC 110 Heber; Caribbeana, iii. 21.
  • 2. Evidence reported in U. Corbett and E. R. Daniell, Controverted Elections (1821); cf. CJ, lxxiv. 20.
  • 3. PCC 1860, f. 275. They were still in the family in 1882.
  • 4. Gent. Mag. (1826), ii. 93.