Family and Education

b. 16 Mar. 1777, 2nd s. of Horace St. Paul (d. 1812) of Ewart Park, Count St. Paul of the Austrian Empire, and Anne, da. of Henry Weston of Chertsey and West Horsley Place, Surr.; bro. of Sir Horace David Cholwell St. Paul, 1st bt.* educ. Eton 1793. unm. d. 1 Nov. 1820.

Offices Held

Ensign 60 Ft. 1802; lt. 96 Ft. 1803, half-pay 1803; lt. 78 Ft. 1804, capt. 1805, half-pay 1806; capt. 3 Drag. Gds. 1807, half-pay 1807-d.

Maj. Cheviot Legion 1799, lt.-col. 1801, 1803; lt.-col. commdt. Northumb. militia 1808-d.

Biography

In 1820 St. Paul, a former personal private secretary to his father’s friend Sylvester Douglas† as Irish secretary, who preferred managing his family’s Northumberland and Staffordshire estates to his intended military career, fought his third consecutive contest for the venal and open borough of Berwick-upon-Tweed, where he could rely on the 3rd duke of Northumberland’s interest.1 Defeated by a surge of out-voter support for Sir David Milne*, a fellow anti-Catholic ministerialist opposed to parliamentary reform, St. Paul was disliked by the Whig leader Lord Grey, but was locally popular and had Milne’s election voided on petition, 3 July 1820.2 His unopposed return at the ensuing by-election was facilitated by his supporters’ prompt execution of the writ and his own poor health, which encouraged his declared opponents to bide their time.3 He died intestate at his Northumberland home in November 1820 without taking his seat and eighteen years before his mother, by whose death he had been due to inherit a quarter share of the Ewart estate.4 His obituarist commended his personal qualities and eulogized him as a Member who ‘attended to his duty with undeviating regularity, conscientiously supporting those measures which to him appeared most conducive to the prosperity of his country’.5

Ref Volumes: 1820-1832

Author: Margaret Escott

Notes

• 1. HP Commons, 1790-1820, v. 92; G.G. Butler, Col. St. Paul, vol. i. p. clxxi; Berwick in Parliament ed. Sir L. Airey, A. Beith, D. Brenchley, J. Marlow and T. Skelly, 24, 93-94; NAS GD51/1/200/43.
• 2. Grey mss, Grey to Sir R. Wilson, 13 Mar.; Edinburgh Advertiser, 14 Mar. 1820; D.L. Stoker, ‘Elections and Voting Behaviour: A Study of Elections in Northumb., co. Dur., Cumb. and Westmld. 1760-1832’ (Manchester Univ. Ph.D. thesis, 1980), 153, 194, 328; The Times, 4 July 1820.
• 3. Edinburgh Advertiser, 11, 18 July 1820.
• 4. Newcastle Chron. 4 Nov. 1820; PROB 11/1638/42.
• 5. Gent. Mag. (1820), ii. 469.