ST. PAUL, Henry Heneage (1777-1820), of Ewart Park, Belford, Northumb.

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. 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. 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. 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. 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. Edinburgh Advertiser, 11, 18 July 1820. 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. Newcastle Chron. 4 Nov. 1820; PROB 11/1638/42. 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’. Gent. Mag. (1820), ii. 469.