Andrew Newport JP (baptised 30 November 1622 – 11 September 1699),[1] styled The Honourable from 1642, was an English Tory politician, courtier and royalist.

Andrew Newport
Esquire of the Body
In office
1660–1667
Comptroller of the Great Wardrobe
In office
1667–1681
Commissioner of Customs
In office
1681–1685
Member of the English Parliament
for Montgomeryshire
In office
1661–1679
Preceded byEdward Vaughan
Succeeded byHon. Price Devereux
Member of Parliament
for Preston
In office
1685–1689
Preceded bySir Thomas Chicheley
Succeeded byJames Stanley
Member of Parliament
for Shrewsbury
In office
1685–1689
Preceded byThomas Harris
Succeeded byRobert Wright
Personal details
Born
Andrew Newport

(1622-11-30)30 November 1622
Died11 September 1699(1699-09-11) (aged 76)
Political partyTory

Background

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He was the second son of Richard Newport, 1st Baron Newport, and his wife Rachel, daughter of Sir John Leveson,[2] and baptised at High Ercall, Shropshire.[3] His older brother was Francis Newport, 1st Earl of Bradford.[2] He was educated at a school in Wroxeter, and Christ Church, Oxford.[4] Like his father and brother, Newport was an active supporter of King Charles II of England during the English Civil War.[4] After the Penruddock uprising in 1655 and the failed pro-Royalist military activities of Sir George Booth, 2nd Baronet, in 1659, he was arrested each time and imprisoned.[4] Following the English Restoration, he was nominated for a proposed Order of the Royal Oak and an estate worth £800 a year was settled on him,[5] with his principal lands being at Deythur, near Llandrinio, Montgomeryshire.[6]

Career

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In 1660, following the English Restoration, Newport was called to the court as Esquire of the Body.[7] From 1667 to 1681 he served as comptroller of the Great Wardrobe[7] and was subsequently nominated a Commissioner of Customs in 1681, an office he held until 1685.[8] Newport entered the English House of Commons in a by-election in 1661, sitting for Montgomeryshire until 1679.[1] He was returned for Preston from 1685 until 1689[9] and then for Shrewsbury until 1698.[10] Militarily, Newport held commission as Captain of a company of foot on the Portsmouth garrison from 1662 to 1673.[5][6] Newport was a Custos Rotulorum of Montgomeryshire between January and December 1679.[11] He was again appointed in 1685, until 1687 and exercised this post a third time from 1691 until his death eight years later.[11] Newport represented the county also as Justice of the Peace and was Commissioner for Assessment of Salop and Montgomeryshire several times.[4] Newport was one of a number of men unsuccessfully implicated by Jacobite conspirator Sir John Fenwick when prosecuted in 1695 prior to the latter's eventual execution in 1697, the allegation being that while Newport was absent from London he allowed his home in Berkeley Street to be used for meetings by two Jacobite noblemen.[6]

Death

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Newport died unmarried and childless,[2] at Eyton-on-Severn, Shropshire, the home of his nephew, Lord Newport,[6] in 1699 aged 76, and was buried in the chancel at nearby Wroxeter church.[5] He left his estates and a £40,000 fortune to his younger nephew Thomas Newport.[6]

Literary reference

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Andrew Newport has been speculatively identified with the Andrew Newport who nominally wrote Memoirs of a Cavalier (published 1720), a supposedly factual but possibly fictional account of experiences in the Thirty Years' War and Royalist campaigns in England by a Shropshire-born soldier. It was published by Daniel Defoe, strongly suspected to be the real author,[12] over 20 years after the death of this Andrew Newport, who was only ten years old in the year the account begins (1632). Although of age (twenty in 1642) to have served in the English Civil War, there is doubt in absence of record that Newport did and he appears in no list of royalists fined by parliament for delinquency, unlike his father and elder brother.[5]

References

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  1. ^ a b "Leigh Rayment - British House of Commons, Montgomeryshire". Archived from the original on 10 August 2009. Retrieved 23 July 2009.
  2. ^ a b c Burke, John (1831). A General and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerages of England, Ireland, and Scotland. London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley. p. 396.
  3. ^ Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 40. Oxford University Press. 2004. pp. 669–70. ISBN 0-19-861390-3.Article by C.H. Firth, revised by Sean Kelsey
  4. ^ a b c d Henning, Basil Duke (1983). The House of Commons, 1660-1690. Vol. I. London: Secker & Warburg. pp. 136–137. ISBN 0-436-19274-8.
  5. ^ a b c d Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Volume 40. p. 670.
  6. ^ a b c d e "NEWPORT, Hon. Andrew (1622-99), of Deythur, Llandrinio, Mont".
  7. ^ a b "Loyola University Chicago - The Database of Court Officers 1660-1837" (PDF). Retrieved 24 July 2009.
  8. ^ Haydn, Joseph (1851). The Book of Dignities: Containing Rolls of the Official Personages of the British Empire. London: Longman, Brown, Green and Longman's. pp. 497.
  9. ^ "Leigh Rayment - Baronetage, Preston". Archived from the original on 10 August 2009. Retrieved 23 July 2009.
  10. ^ "Leigh Rayment - British House of Commons, Shrewsbury". Archived from the original on 8 October 2018. Retrieved 24 July 2009.
  11. ^ a b "Institute of Historical Research - Custodes Rotulorum 1660-1828". Archived from the original on 23 December 2012. Retrieved 23 July 2009.
  12. ^ Dickins, Gordon (1987). An Illustrated Literary Guide to Shropshire. Shropshire Libraries. p. 22. ISBN 0-903802-37-6.
Parliament of England
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Montgomeryshire
1661–1679
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Preston
1685–1689
With: Edward Fleetwood
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Shrewsbury
1689–1698
With: Sir Francis Edwardes, 2nd Bt 1689–1690
Richard Mytton 1690–1694
John Kynaston 1694–1698
Succeeded by
Honorary titles
Preceded by Custos Rotulorum of Montgomeryshire
January–December 1679
Succeeded by
Preceded by Custos Rotulorum of Montgomeryshire
1685–1687
Succeeded by
Custos Rotulorum of Montgomeryshire
1691–1699
Succeeded by