SOUTHBY, John (c.1650-1741), of Carswell, Buckland, Berks.

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

Constituency

Dates

22 May 1689 - 8 Jan. 1690

Family and Education

b. c.1650, 1st s. of Richard Southby. educ. Wadham, Oxf. matric. 19 Dec. 1668, aged 18; M. Temple 1671. m. 23 Jan. 1677, Mary, da. of Thomas Trenchard of Wolveton, Dorset, 1s. 2da. suc. fa. 1704.1

Offices Held

Commr. for assessment, Berks. 1677-80, 1689-90; freeman, Abingdon Sept. 1688; j.p. Berks. by 1701-d.2

Biography

A strong Whig like his father and his brother-in-law John Trenchard, Southby came under suspicion at the time of the Rye House Plot. He was apparently a Whig collaborator, the King’s electoral agents reporting in 1688 that he was proposed by the Presbyterian party as candidate for Abingdon, ten miles from his home. He was returned at a by-election in May 1689, but left no trace on the records of the Convention. He was unseated in favour of Sir John Stonhouse on 8 Jan. 1690, and did not contest the constituency again, though he had hopes of election for Oxford University in 1695. He was buried at Buckland on 1 Apr. 1741, the last of his family to sit in Parliament.3

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Authors: Leonard Naylor / Geoffrey Jaggar

Notes

  • 1. Vis. Berks. (Harl. Soc. lvi), 283; Reading Univ. mss, H. C. Cherry, Bercherienses Prosapiae, 2, p. 47; Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 326-7.
  • 2. Abingdon bor. mins. 2, p. 54.
  • 3. CSP Dom. July-Sept. 1683, p. 227; CJ, x. 126, 162; 277-8, 327; HMC Downshire, i. 563; Cherry, 2, p. 47.