ELIOT, Daniel (c.1646-1702), of Port Eliot, St. Germans, Cornw.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1660-1690, ed. B.D. Henning, 1983
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

Mar. 1679
Oct. 1679
2 Apr. 1701

Family and Education

b. c.1646, 3rd but 1st surv. s. of John Eliot, and bro. of Richard Eliot. educ. Christ’s, Camb. adm. 17 July 1663, aged 17; travelled abroad 1664-7; L. Inn 1668. m. lic. 13 July 1685, Katherine, da. of Thomas Fleming of North Stoneham, Hants, 1da. suc. fa. 1685.

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Cornw. 1679-80, 1689-90, j.p. June 1688-d., dep. lt. by 1701-d.

Biography

Eliot was returned for the family borough of St. Germans at the first election after he came of age, and continued to sit in the next eight Parliaments. Classed as ‘honest’ by Shaftesbury, he voted for the exclusion bill, but he was otherwise totally inactive throughout the period. He remained unmarried during his father’s lifetime, during which he may also have been less intransigent as an opponent of the Court. He joined the syndicate of ‘the knights and burgesses of the present Parliament for Cornwall’ which applied for the Tangier victualling contract in 1681. At the general election of 1685, within a month of succeeding to the estate, he agreed to share the representation of St. Germans with (Sir) Thomas Higgons, the Earl of Bath’s brother-in-law, and Bath suggested that he might be ‘treated with’ again for his interest in 1688. Alternatively the Presbyterian (Sir) Walter Moyle might be persuaded to stand against him, ‘which he always desires’. At the same time the King’s agents listed him among the dissenters formerly out of the commission of the peace. He probably sat as a Tory in the Convention, though he did not vote to agree with the Lords that the throne was not vacant, and in subsequent Parliaments he usually voted with the Tories, refusing to sign the Association in 1696. He died on 11 Oct. 1702 and was buried at St. Germans. His only daughter married the antiquary Browne Willis, but the estate was inherited by a cousin, Edward Eliot, who was returned for St. Germans as a Tory in 1705.

Vis. England and Wales Notes ed. Crisp, xiii. 122-5; PC2/57/332. Cal. Treas. Bks. vii. 148-9.

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: Paula Watson

Notes