Cornewall’s paternal grandfather, the naval captain Frederick Cornewall (1706-88), and uncle Frederick Cornewall (1752-83) had both been brought into Parliament by the Herbert family, earls of Powis, to whom they were related by marriage. They were also, through Amarantha, the sister of Charles Wolfran Cornwall, Speaker of the Commons, 1780-9, close connections of the Jenkinsons, earls of Liverpool.
Wellington had recently supported Cornewall’s brother’s advancement in the colonial service, and he was naturally listed with Powis’s Members among the government’s ‘friends’; he divided with them when they were brought down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830.
the right of suffrage enjoyed by the resident burgesses by birthright as sacred ... So long as I shall have the honour to hold a seat in this House, I will, to the extent of my humble means, protect both my own constituents, and those similarly situated, against all measures which shall tend to destroy those rights; unjust and impolitic as I hold such measures to be.
The Clives chose to replace him with the barrister James Lewis Knight, a proven anti-reformer, at the general election that month.
Cornewall monitored ‘reaction’, ‘reform’ and the establishment of the Carlton Club, 1831-2, from the Travellers’ Club and Delbury, which he inherited under strict entail by the death of his father, 5 Sept. 1831.
I am inclined to give more belief to the approximation of the Whigs, in wishes at least, to our friends than you do and I will tell you one reason for my doing so. There has been as you will have seen a county meeting for reform at Worcester, got up chiefly by the Catholics and I know much against the wishes of the ministerialists. Now a friend of mine, a staunch Tory, was shown by a worthy Whig baronet and MP a letter to him from Captain Spencer, the Member for the county, regretting much that the meeting was to be held, as likely to do more harm than good ... It is clear that the government are frightened. At the meeting it was agreed by the Whigs that the speeches should be as general in their bearings as possible, and deprecatory of all hostility to political opponents; and so they were, except those from some of the wilder radicals. This is all very well, but it is too late. The mob have their influence and will, I fear, be too strong at all events for the nerves of government, who can hardly, if they would, shake off their troublesome and dangerous allies. At any other moment the Bristol and other riots would shake a government to the centre, but those who manage them cannot spare them just yet. Their appointed mischief done, they will be turned off to make way for the out and outers, and all this is the work of men who have most of them witnessed the French revolution of 1789 and who have property and titles to lose! Meanwhile they are likely to be backed in their efforts to promote confusion by the cholera, which today’s papers tell us is rapidly spreading. In a country so crowded with large towns and dense masses and with such constant and rapid communications as England, I have always thought it would prove unusually fatal ... As for Ireland, I suppose we may consider the Union as repealed according to O’Connell’s speech. Pray tell me what you hear as to the meeting of Parliament and the new bill. I think it will be full as bad as the old one. Ministers do not dare to alter it in its bad parts. I shall be obliged to you not to quote me as the author of the story of Capt. Spencer’s letter. I was told it by one who would not wish it to be generally known.
Ormathwaite mss FG3/1.
Cornewall did not stand for Parliament again. He died at Delbury in December 1845 and was buried in the family vault at Diddlebury.