East Looe was a parliamentary borough represented in the House of Commons of England from 1571 to 1707, in the House of Commons of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800, and finally in the House of Commons of the United Kingdom from 1801 until its abolition in 1832. It elected two Members of Parliament (MP) by the bloc vote system of election. It was disenfranchised in the Reform Act 1832.

History The borough consisted of the town of East Looe in Cornwall, connected by bridge across the River Looe to West Looe, which was also a parliamentary borough. From the reign of Edward VI, East Looe and West Looe were jointly a borough, returning two members of Parliament; however, under Queen Elizabeth the two towns were separated, and each thereafter returned two members except between 1654 and 1658, when they were once again represented jointly as East Looe and West Looe, by one member of the First and Second Protectorate Parliaments.

The right of election was in Mayor and members of the corporation, together with a number of freemen of the borough.Page 327, Lewis Namier, The Structure of Politics at the Accession of George III (2nd edition – London: St Martin's Press, 1957) Namier and Brooke estimated that there were about fifty voters in this constituency in the second half of the eighteenth century. It is estimated that by 1800 there were still about fifty electors, and in 1831 the number of eligible voters was 38 while the population of the borough was 865.

In practice, this meant that the power to choose the MPs was in the hands of the local landowner or "proprietor", making East Looe (like West Looe) one of the most notorious of the rotten boroughs. The borough was long controlled by the Trelawny family of the nearby manor of TrelawnyHistory of Parliament: House of Commons 1715–1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970 in the parish of Pelynt. For many years at the time of the Reform Act, East Looe had been controlled by the Buller family of Morval (which also controlled West Looe and Saltash), and many members of the family sat for the borough in the House of Commons.

After the Reform Act 1832 disenfranchised the borough, it reverted to being represented as part of the county constituency covering its area. Cornwall was divided into two divisions in 1832, East Cornwall (with its place of election at Bodmin) and West Cornwall (which voted at Truro). East Looe was located in East Cornwall.

Members of Parliament 1571–1629 ParliamentFirst memberSecond memberParliament of 1571John WolleyEdward CordelParliament of 1572–1583Thomas StoneThomas WestParliament of 1584–1585Richard SpencerAnthony RousParliament of 1586–1587Abraham HartwellEdward TrelawnyParliament of 1588–1589Anthony EverardSir Robert JermynParliament of 1593William HampdenGregory DownhallParliament of 1597–1598Ambrose BellotRobert GawdyParliament of 1601John HanhamRobert YardleyParliament of 1604–1611Sir Robert PhelipsSir John ParkerAddled Parliament (1614)George ChudleighSir Reginald MohunParliament of 1621–1622Sir John WalterSir Jerome HorseyHappy Parliament (1624–1625)Bartholomew SpecotUseless Parliament (1625) Sir James BaggeSir John TrevorParliament of 1625–1626 John ChudleighParliament of 1628–1629William MurrayPaul SpecotNo Parliament summoned 1629–1640

1640–1832 YearFirst memberFirst partySecond memberSecond party April 1640 William Scawen William Code November 1640 Thomas Lower Royalist Francis Buller ParliamentarianJanuary 1644Lower disabled to sit – seat vacant1647John Moyle December 1648Buller excluded in Pride's Purge – seat vacant1653East Looe was unrepresented in the Barebones Parliament1654 Major John Blackmore In the First and Second Parliaments of the Protectorate, one MP was elected jointlyfor East Looe and West Looe 1656 John BullerIn 1659, Buller was also elected for Saltash. He chose to sit for East Looe. January 1659 John Kendall May 1659Not represented in the restored Rump 1660Henry SeymourJonathan Trelawny 1661Robert Atkyns 1673Walter Langdon 1677Charles Osborne 1679Sir Jonathan Trelawny1681John Kendall 1685Charles Trelawny TorySir William Trumbull Whig 1689Henry Trelawny 1699Sir Henry Seymour1701Francis GodolphinGodolphin was also elected for Helston, which he chose to represent, and never sat for East LooeFebruary 1702George Courtenay July 1702Sir John Pole 1705George Clarke 1708Harry Trelawny 1710Thomas Smith 1713Sir Charles Hedges ToryEdward Jennings 1715John Smith WhigSir James Bateman 1718Horatio WalpoleWalpole was re-elected in 1722 but had also been elected for Great Yarmouth, which he chose to represent, and did not sit again for East Looe 1722William Lowndes January 1724Viscount Malpas WhigFebruary 1724Sir Henry Hoghton 1727Charles LonguevilleSir John Trelawny 1734Edward TrelawnyTrelawny was a Commissioner of Customs at the time of election, which made him ineligible, and his election was void1735Samuel Holden 1740Henry Legge Whig 1741Francis Gashry Whig James Buller Tory 1747John Buller 1762The Viscount Palmerston 1768Richard Hussey 1770Richard Leigh 1772John Purling 1774Sir Charles Whitworth January 1775Thomas Graves June 1775William Graves 1783John Hamilton Tory1784William Graves May 1786Alexander IrvineTorySeptember 1786Richard Grosvenor Tory 1788Viscount BelgraveToryFebruary 1790The Earl of Carysfort Tory June 1790Robert WoodToryHon. William Wellesley-Pole Tory1795Charles Arbuthnot Tory 1796John BullerToryWilliam Graves Tory 1798Frederick William BullerTory May 1799John Smith ToryJuly 1799Sir John MitfordMitford was the Speaker of the House of Commons 1801–1802ToryFebruary 1802James Buller Tory July 1802Sir Edward BullerToryJohn Buller Tory1807David Vanderheyden Tory 1816Thomas Potter MacqueenTory1820George Watson-Taylor ToryMarch 1826Lord Perceval Tory June 1826William LascellesToryJames Drummond Buller-Elphinstone Tory 1829Henry Thomas HopeThis person was Henry Thomas Hope who is described in ODNB by Mary S. Millar, 'Hope, Henry Thomas (1808–1862)', Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 accessed 5 June 2008, not his father, of the same name.Tory1830Thomas Arthur Kemmis Tory 1832 Constituency abolished

See also

West Looe (UK Parliament constituency) MPs elected in the British general election, 1754 Unreformed House of Commons

Notes

References Robert Beatson, A Chronological Register of Both Houses of Parliament (London: Longman, Hurst, Res & Orme, 1807) D Brunton & D H Pennington, Members of the Long Parliament (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1954) William Cobbett, Cobbett's Parliamentary history of England, from the Norman Conquest in 1066 to the year 1803 (London: Thomas Hansard, 1808) Lewis Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons 1754–1790 (LOndon: HMSO, 1964) J Holladay Philbin, Parliamentary Representation 1832 – England and Wales (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1965) Henry Stooks Smith, The Parliaments of England from 1715 to 1847 (2nd edition, edited by FWS Craig – Chichester: Parliamentary Reference Publications, 1973)