NEWSHAM, James (1715-69), of Chadshunt, Warws.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1715-1754, ed. R. Sedgwick, 1970
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1741 - 1747
10 Dec. 1754 - 1761

Family and Education

b. 7 Oct. 1715, o.s. of John Newsham of Chad-shunt by his 2nd w. educ. privately under David Mallet;1 Grand Tour 1735.2 unm. suc. to Chadshunt 1724; to Kentish property of his mother and assumed name of Craggs 1756, and to property of his aunt Elizabeth Eliot 1765.3

Offices Held

Biography

Newsham hoped to add to his paternal estates the Essex properties of his step-father and his mother’s share of the Craggs fortune, but his hopes were disappointed by her marriage to Robert Nugent. He did everything in his power to prevent the match, but to no avail. ‘Le mariage s’est fait’, wrote one of his friends, ‘et mon ami se trouve assez petit gentilhomme’.4 Some consolation was provided by the £50,000 settled on him by his mother at this time.5

Returned for St. Germans in 1741 on the interest of his uncle by marriage, Richard Eliot, he voted against the Government on the chairman of the elections committee, but no other vote of his is recorded.

He died at Lille, France, November 1769.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

  • 1. Pope’s Works ed. Elwin and Courthope, ix. 438-9.
  • 2. Jas. Newsham to Thos. Robinson, 12 June 1735, Add. 23794, f. 62.
  • 3. Hasted, Kent, i. 439.
  • 4. W. Bristow to the Countess of Denbigh, 10 June 1737, HMC Denbigh, v. 216.
  • 5. HMC Carlisle, 183.