KYNASTON, Corbet (1690-1740), of Hordley, Salop.

Corbet Kynaston was one of the six M.P.s whose arrest was ordered in September 1715 on a charge of being ‘engaged in a design to support the intended invasion of the kingdom’.Pol. State, x. 416. He made his escape, leaving 12 pictures of the Duke of Ormonde at his seat in the county, having already dispersed a large number of them ‘to spirit up the mob to revenge their idol’.A Full and Authentick Narrative of the intended Horrid Conspiracy (1715), p. 75. He surrendered himself on 9 Jan. 1716 but was soon released, voting against the Government in all extant divisions of that Parliament. His name was sent to the Pretender in 1721 as a probable supporter in the event of a rising.Hist. Reg. 1716, p. 111; Stuart mss 65/16. Re-elected in 1722 but unseated on petition, he stood for Shrewsbury again in 1727. He was defeated by a fellow Tory, Sir John Astley, who had been awarded £24,000 damages against him in a lawsuit over transactions in South Sea stock.Salop Arch. Soc. Trans. (ser. 2), vi. 217. To avoid paying, he went abroad to France, where he remained till his father’s death, when he came to terms with Astley, with whom he was returned for the county in 1734, again voting against the Government. On his death, 17 June 1740, his friend, Thomas Carte, the Jacobite historian, wrote to the Pretender’s secretary:

The King hath had a great loss in the death of Corbet Kynaston, who was a man of the honestest principles in nature and would have ventured his life and fortune for him in any circumstances whatever. No man in England could have carried his county with him more entirely than he could on any occasion for his Majesty’s service; and I do not know how the loss can be supplied.7 Aug. 1740, Stuart mss 224/117.