MORETON, Hon. Matthew Ducie (bef.1700-1770), of Tortworth, Glos.

Moreton entered Parliament for the venal borough of Cricklade at a contested by-election in 1721, despite a petition alleging that he had ‘used such menaces and threats to the ... bailiff that, if he had returned ... Thomas Gore, he would have been in danger of losing his life’.CJ, xix. 423. Defeated in 1722 by one vote, he was returned for Calne at another contested by-election, perhaps on the interest of his kinsman, Walter Hungerford.The connexion was through the Lords Seymour of Trowbridge. See CP, iv. 451, sub Downe, and 474, sub Ducie. After contesting Gloucester unsuccessfully in 1727, he was brought in by the Administration for Tregony at a by-election in 1729 and for Lostwithiel at a further by-election in 1735, a month before he succeeded to the peerage. He voted consistently for the Administration in all recorded divisions. On Walpole’s fall he agreed to hold the office of surveyor of the petty customs in London in trust for H. B. Legge and Benjamin Keene, as the office was not consistent with a seat in Parliament; but in 1752 he asked to be relieved of the trust, ‘not relishing the appearance of a place without the reality’.Legge to Pelham, 22 Sept., to Newcastle, 28 Sept. 1752, Add. 32729, ff. 334, 360. He died 25 or 27 Dec. 1770.