MORETON, Hon. Matthew Ducie (bef.1700-1770), of Tortworth, Glos.

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

Constituency

Dates

1 Feb. 1721 - 1722
28 Feb. 1723 - 1727
6 Feb. 1729 - 1734
31 Mar. - 2 May 1735

Family and Education

b. bef. 1700, 1st s. of Matthew Ducie Moreton, 1st Lord Ducie, Baron of Moreton. educ. poss. Harrow 1709. unm. suc. fa. as 2nd Lord Ducie 2 May 1735; cr. Baron Ducie of Tortworth, with a sp. rem. 27 Apr. 1763.

Offices Held

Constable of St. Briavels, warden, forest of Dean and ld. lt. Glos. 1755-8; high steward, Gloucester 1755-66.

Biography

Moreton entered Parliament for the venal borough of Cricklade at a contested by-election in 1721, despite a petition alleging that he had ‘used such menaces and threats to the ... bailiff that, if he had returned ... Thomas Gore, he would have been in danger of losing his life’.1 Defeated in 1722 by one vote, he was returned for Calne at another contested by-election, perhaps on the interest of his kinsman, Walter Hungerford.2 After contesting Gloucester unsuccessfully in 1727, he was brought in by the Administration for Tregony at a by-election in 1729 and for Lostwithiel at a further by-election in 1735, a month before he succeeded to the peerage. He voted consistently for the Administration in all recorded divisions. On Walpole’s fall he agreed to hold the office of surveyor of the petty customs in London in trust for H. B. Legge and Benjamin Keene, as the office was not consistent with a seat in Parliament; but in 1752 he asked to be relieved of the trust, ‘not relishing the appearance of a place without the reality’.3 He died 25 or 27 Dec. 1770.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: R. S. Lea

Notes

  • 1. CJ, xix. 423.
  • 2. The connexion was through the Lords Seymour of Trowbridge. See CP, iv. 451, sub Downe, and 474, sub Ducie.
  • 3. Legge to Pelham, 22 Sept., to Newcastle, 28 Sept. 1752, Add. 32729, ff. 334, 360.