TUNNO, Edward Rose (1794-1863), of Llangennech, nr. Llanelli, Carm.; Boverton Castle, Llantwit Major, Glam., and 19 Upper Brook Street, Mdx.

Tunno’s origins are obscure. His father, who may have been a Scot, was in business in London as a merchant and underwriter by the late 1780s, and from about 1810 seems to have had premises in New Broad Street Court; he had acquired a town house at 18 Devonshire Place by 1803. Two of his father’s brothers, Adam and William, were in partnership in a business based at Charleston, South Carolina, and another, Robert, was ‘for many years a respectable member of the Stock Exchange’. Ibid. (1803), ii. 1084; (1840), i. 216; The Times, 28 Dec. 1803, 3 Aug. 1811, 2 Nov. 1814; Add. 38255, f. 21; PROB 11/1616/247; 1922/64. Tunno received a conventional gentleman’s education and on his father’s death in 1819 was the residuary legatee of his estate, which was sworn under £500,000. It is not clear whether this included the Boverton Castle estate in Glamorgan, or whether Tunno himself bought it. He certainly purchased the Llangennech estate, near Llanelli, which contained coal deposits. PROB 11/1616/247; IR26/800/549; Gent. Mag. (1819), i. 493; H.M. Thomas, Glam. Estate Maps, 39. He stood as the ‘independent’ champion of the resident freeholders at a by-election at Bossiney in June 1823, but his attempt to open the borough was thwarted by the returning officer and his petition against the result was eventually rejected. West Briton, 30 May, 6 June 1823. However, he subsequently established himself as joint-patron of Bossiney, and by the time of the general election in 1826 was strong enough to ensure his return after a token contest. He retained the seat unopposed until Bossiney was disfranchised by the Reform Act of 1832. Ibid. 2, 16 June 1826, 30 July, 6 Aug. 1830, 30 Apr., 7 May 1831.

He was a poor attender, who is not known to have spoken in debate or to have presented a single petition. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827. He voted against repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., but was absent from the division on the Catholic question, 12 May 1828. He voted with the duke of Wellington’s ministry against reduction of the ordnance estimates, 4 July 1828. He divided for Catholic emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., and in favour of Daniel O’Connell being allowed to take his seat unimpeded, 18 May 1829. He was named as a defaulter, 1 Mar. 1830, and, after failing to attend an election committee ballot the following day, was taken into custody. He voted for the grant for South American missions and against abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830. After the general election that summer ministers reckoned him as one of the ‘doubtful doubtfuls’, but this assessment was subsequently annotated with the comment that he was ‘a friend’. He was at first listed as an absentee from the crucial division on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830, but a week later he ‘authorized’ a newspaper to state that he had in fact voted in the ministerial minority. The Times, 19, 22 Nov. 1830. He was granted three weeks’ leave to attend to urgent private business, 9 Feb. 1831. He divided against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar., and for Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. In the new Parliament he divided against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July, and against the bill’s passage, 23 Sept. He voted to censure the Irish administration’s conduct during the Dublin election, 23 Aug. He was absent from the division on the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831, but was present to vote against going into committee, 20 Jan., the enfranchisement of Tower Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the third reading, 22 Mar. 1832. His only other recorded vote was against government on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July 1832.

Soon after retiring from Parliament Tunno bought the Hampshire estate of Warnford Park. At the general election of 1835 he offered for Andover (where he also had a residence at Red Rice House) as the ‘advocate of that great cause in which was concentrated liberty without licentiousness, and freedom in its only perfect sense’; he finished a distant fourth in the poll. VCH Hants, iii. 270-1; Hants Chron. 12 Jan. 1835. He made no further attempt to re-enter the House. He died in March 1863 and left the bulk of his real estate, including Warnford and Llangennech, to his nephew Edward John Sartoris (1814-88), Liberal Member for Carmarthenshire, 1868-74, the son of his sister Matilda with Urban Sartoris of Paris. In the Sartoris pedigrees in Burke LG, Matilda is incorrectly identified as Edward Rose Tunno’s da.