Family and Education

b. 25 Jan. 1679, 2nd but o. surv. s. of Sir Humphrey Monoux, 2nd Bt.†, of Wootton by Alice, da. of Sir Thomas Cotton, 2nd Bt.†, of Conington, Hunts.  educ. Hart Hall, Oxf. matric. 1696; travelled abroad (France) 1699.  m. 23 Apr. 1701, Dorothy (d. 1758), da. of William Harvey I*, sis. of William Harvey II*, 1s.  suc. fa. as 3rd Bt. 31 July 1685.1

Offices Held

Burgess, Bedford 1702.2

Biography

The son of an Exclusionist of a somewhat insipid kind, Monoux’s family background, marital connexions and local friendships were all solidly Whiggish. He was appointed to the county lieutenancy in 1701, admitted a burgess of Bedford in 1702 and three years later contested the general election for the borough with William Farrer* on the Whig interest. According to the petition of a defeated Tory candidate, Monoux and Farrer triumphed through the employment of ‘bribery, menaces and other indirect practices’. The petition, however, remained unheard. Monoux, like his colleague, was classed as a ‘Churchman’ in a list of the new Parliament, voted on 25 Oct. 1705 in favour of the Court candidate in the division on the Speaker, and in an analysis of the Commons in early 1708 was described as a Whig. In fact he had died not long before, on 25 Nov. 1707, without ever having made much of a mark in Parliament. His will, drawn up on 6 Nov. when he was ‘weak in body’, requested burial in Wootton church ‘with such privacy as my quality will decently permit’. Farrer and John Cater* were among the executors of the will and the trustees appointed to act for his young son, while five other local Members of Parliament received mourning rings. Monoux’s son Humphrey succeeded to an estate a little diminished by debt but consolidated around the seat at Wootton. He sat in the Commons during George II’s reign.3

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: D. W. Hayton

Notes

• 1. F. A. Blaydes, Genealogia Bedfordiensis, 330; CSP Dom. 1699–1700, p. 214; HMC Lords, n.s. ix. 413; Beds. Par. Reg. xliii. 77; Le Neve, Mon. Angl. 1700–15, p. 125; MI Wootton par. ch.
• 2. Bedford Bor. Council, Bedford bor. recs. B2/3, corp. act bk. 1688–1718, f. 66.
• 3. CSP Dom. 1700–2, p. 226; 1702–3, p. 395; PCC 15 Barrett; VCH Beds. ii. 66.