COTES, John (1749-1821), of Woodcote, Salop.

Cotes, a Whig moderate who had represented Wigan on the Bridgeman interest, had been brought in for Shropshire, where he was ‘too lukewarm and inactive to count as a party man’, in 1806, with the acquiescence of his kinsmen the Hills of Hawkstone. HP Commons, 1790-1820, ii. 238-40, 332; iii. 506-7; VCH Salop, iii. 263. He clung to his county seat in 1820, when their candidate and his sons were underage, but gout and the afflictions of old age prevented him from canvassing or attending the election, at which his seconder and fellow Wolverhampton Pitt Club member Thomas Leeke of Longford deputised. Bradford mss (History of Parliament Aspinall transcripts), Cotes to Lady Bradford, 4 Mar.; Salopian Jnl. 15 Mar.; Shrewsbury Chron. 17 Mar. 1820. He took periods of sick leave, 1, 21 June 1820, and two months starting 15 Mar. 1821, and left no record of his attendance. He died in August 1821 at Woodcote, recalled for his generosity, good humour and ‘mania for farming’. He had founded the Shifnal Farmers’ Club in 1800, patronized the Shropshire Agricultural Society, and, according to Lady Granville, delighted in entrapping unwary passers-by into tours of inspection of his crops. Shrewsbury Chron. 11 Feb. 1820; Gent. Mag. (1822), ii. 471; VCH Salop, iv. 178, 188, 218; Countess Granville Letters, i. 13. His will, dated 21 May 1811, provided for his large family, especially his widow and his second son the Rev. Charles Cotes (b. 1801), and was proved under £60,000 by his trustees Thomas Eyton and William Lacon Childe*. His eldest son John Cotes (1799-1874), his successor at Woodcote, had to give way to Richard Hill of Hawkestone in the county in 1821 and John Cressett Pelham in 1822, but represented Shropshire North as a Liberal, 1832-4. In 1839 he married Lady Louisa Harriet Jenkinson of Pitchford Hall, daughter of the 3rd earl of Liverpool. PROB 11/1650/650; 1651/651; IR26/858/1100; NLW, Aston Hall mss C.1015; Salop Archives, Eyton family mss 665/3/30; Shrewsbury Chron. 14, 21 Dec. 1832.