WARTON, Sir Michael (c.1648-1725), of Beverley, Yorks.

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 Oct. 1675
Feb. 1701
Dec. 1701

Family and Education

b. c.1648, 1st s. of Michael Warton. educ. Cheam g.s. Surr.; St. John’s, Camb. matric. 17 Feb. 1665, aged 16; G. Inn 1667. unm. Kntd. 30 June 1666; suc. fa. 1688.1

Offices Held

J.p. Yorks. (E. Riding) 1670-81, 1689-d., dep. lt. 1670-Apr. 1688, Oct. 1688-d., commr. for assessment 1673-80, 1689-90.2

Ld. of Admiralty 1689-90.

Biography

Warton was knighted during his father’s lifetime while still in his ’teens. He was returned for Boroughbridge at a by-election in 1675 as a country candidate with the assistance of a local landowner. An inactive Member of the Cavalier Parliament, he was appointed to only three committees, of little importance. He was teller for two unsuccessful motions, one in his first session for adjourning the House to avoid reviving the differences with the Lords and the other in the summer of 1678 for setting up an inquiry into the corruption of Members. Shaftesbury marked him ‘thrice worthy’.3

Warton lost his seat to a court supporter, Sir Thomas Mauleverer, in 1679, but he was returned for Hull in the autumn. He played no part in the second Exclusion Parliament, but he was re-elected unopposed in 1681, and in the Oxford Parliament he was named to the committee of elections and privileges. A more determined opponent of the Court than his father, he was struck off the commission of the peace in the same year, and in 1685 he secured only 32 votes at Hull and came bottom of the poll.

Warton helped to secure Hull for William of Orange during the Revolution. He succeeded to his father’s seat at Beverley in 1689, but in the Convention he was again appointed only to the elections committee. A lord of the Admiralty under the new regime, he relinquished office with William Sacheverell, and was listed as a supporter of the disabling clause in the bill to restore corporations. He consolidated his interest at Beverley by distributing £6,000 in his lifetime to local charities, including £1,000 to the hospital founded by his father, and continued to represent the borough as a court Whig in nine more Parliaments. He died on 25 Mar. 1725, the last of his family, and was buried in Beverley Minster.

Ref Volumes: 1660-1690

Author: P. A. Bolton

Notes

  • 1. Clay, Dugdale’s Vis. Yorks. i. 138.
  • 2. Add. 29674, f. 161v.
  • 3. T.S. Lawson-Tancred, Recs. Yorks. Manor, 207-8; CJ, ix. 379, 501; English Currant, 12 Dec. 1688; HMC Downshire, i. 327; Bean, Six Northern Counties, 768.