Go To Section
EAMES, John (c.1716-95).
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Biography Detail
Related Resources
Family and Education
b. c.1716, s. of John Eames of Stoke, Northants. educ. Oriel, Oxf. 1733; I. Temple 1734, called 1739. m. (his o. da. and h. m. 25 Aug. 1782, Hon William Fitzwilliam, s. of Richard, 6th Visct. Fitzwilliam [I].)
Offices Held
Recorder, Newport 1741- d.; steward to dean and chapter of Winchester from 1761; master in Chancery 1764- d.; commr. for sale of prizes 1756-64; commr. of taxes 1773- d.
Biography
Harcourt Powell wrote to the Duke of Newcastle, 29 Jan. 1761, asking him to recommend Eames to the dean and chapter of Winchester: ‘He is recorder and one of the corporation of Newport, and a most particular and serviceable friend ... This letter from your Grace will secure the place about £150 p.a.; which though of little consideration by its connexions will be serviceable to Mr. Eames in his profession.’1
Lord Holmes died on 21 July 1764, and after a brief period of uncertainty, the Grenville Administration agreed to continue working with the Rev. Leonard Holmes, his nephew and heir.2 A candidate had now to be picked for Holmes’s seat, and on 14 Oct. Lord Northington wrote to Grenville:3
Mr. Eames whom I made the last master in Chancery ... informs me that Holmes and Lee [Leigh] have made up their Yarmouth dispute, and that they are for the future to take one and one. The present vacancy to be Mr. Holmes’s and that Mr. Holmes intends to bring in Mr. Eames which latter hopes for your approbation ... You may be sure I have a good opinion of this gentleman’s sense and principles, as I gave him unsolicited so considerable a mark, and as he now hath professed this attachment to the King’s government, I should think no man more proper to succeed there.
Grenville, already informed by Powell of Holmes’s recommendation, replied that he had always ‘heard a very good character of Mr. Eames’, and accepted the choice. Eames was returned unopposed. Although in Rockingham’s list of July 1765 he was classed as ‘pro’, on 22 Feb. he voted against the repeal of the Stamp Act, and in Rockingham’s list of November 1766, and in Townshend’s and Newcastle’s lists of 1767, is marked as a supporter of Administration, with whom he voted over the land tax, 27 Feb. 1767. In 1768 he had to fight an election against the Worsley-Oglander interest. In the new Parliament he was absent from the divisions 1768-1773, but in Robinson’s surveys on the royal marriage bill appears as ‘pro, present’. In November 1772 he was placed by the Government on its list of the secret committee to inquire into the affairs of the East India Company, and was returned in the ballot of 28 Nov. In May 1773 he was appointed commissioner of taxes. His only recorded speeches were delivered 21 and 29 Mar. and 24 Apr. 1765, when a bill concerning the masters in Chancery was before the House.
He died a rich man, 13 May 1795.
