Introduction
Charles Wolfran Cornwall (15 June 1735 – 2 January 1789) was a British politician who became Speaker of the House of Commons.
Origins and early life
Charles Wolfran Cornwall was born on 15 June 1735, the only son of Jacobs Cornwall and Elizabeth Forder, and baptised at St Thomas's church in Winchester ten days later. His parents were third cousins, both being great-great-grandchildren of Humphrey Cornewall, and he was given the names of two other family members: his paternal grandfather Admiral Charles Cornewall and his maternal great-grandfather Captain Wolfran Cornewall. Jacobs Cornwall died the following year, on 8 August 1736.
Despite the naval associations of his namesakes, young Charles Wolfran was raised for a career in the law. He began his education at Winchester in 1748, going on to New College, Oxford. before started a legal training at Lincoln's Inn in 1755. In 1756, his uncle Sir Robert de Cornwall died childless, leaving him a considerable estate. Perhaps because of this inheritance, he does not appear to have had any considerable amount of legal practice, though he was called to the bar at Gray's Inn in 1757 and would become a bencher there in 1770. Instead, he dedicated himself to politics.
Political career
Cornwall's entry into political life was aided by his connection with his cousin, Charles Jenkinson, an association to be much strengthened when he married Jenkinson's sister Elizabeth on 17 August 1764. In 1763 he wrote to his future brother-in-law: "A seat in Parliament is my first object, without that I would not choose to engage in any department of public business." However, he was persuaded instead to become a Commissioner for examining the German Accounts. Occupying this post from 1763 to 1765, he gained a good knowledge of Treasury procedures.
After leaving this post, he began to drift away from Jenkinson politically and move into the circles of the Marquess of Rockingham and of the Earl of Shelburne. The latter was able to satify Cornwall's parliamentary ambitions by securing him the seat of Grampound in the election of 1768. He became a frequent speaker in opposition to the government on a variety of subjects, but specialising in issues concerning the East Indies. In 1773, he declined an offer from Lord North of a post in Bengal to supervise and regulate the activies of the East India Company.
Unlike many of his Opposition colleagues, he supported the government response to the American Revolution, stating in the House on 19 April 1774: "We ill hold the title of mother country if we are to do what America says we must do, or desist from doing what America says we must not do." Encouraged by this difference in view, an annual pension of £500 (equivalent to £57,000 in 2015), and a seat on the Treasury Board, he crossed the floor to become part of the Government in 1774. In the election of that year, he was elected to represent Winchelsea, a rotten borough in the gift of the Treasury. He would represent the seat for ten years before transferring to the neighbouring Treasury seat of Rye.
On 22 September 1780 he was appointed Justice in Eyre north of the Trent, a sinecure with a salary of £100 (equivalent to £12,000 in 2015).
Speaker of the House
Speaker Fletcher Norton had offended George III when giving an address to the King in 1777. Consequently, when the new parliament sat in 1780 the government was determined to replace him, citing grounds of his ill health over the vocal objections of the man himself. Cornwall was proposed by George Germain and seconded by Welbore Ellis, and elected to the chair on 31 October 1780. The King wrote that he was "a very respectable person for the office of Speaker." Shortly afterwards Cornwall was made a member of the Privy Council.
When in the chair, Cornwall would alleviate the tedium of long debates by drinking draughts of porter that were brought to him from Bellamy's - a refreshment house in Old Palace Yard. This unusual habit was noted in the Rolliad:
There Cornewall sits, and, oh unhappy fate!
Like sad Prometheus, fasten'd to his rock,
Must sit for ever through the long debate
Save, when compelled by Nature's sovereign will,
Sometimes to empty, and sometimes to fill.
Painful pre-eminence! he hears, 'tis true,
Fox, North, and Burke, but hears Sir Joseph too.
In vain he looks for pity to the clock;
In vain the effects of stength'ning porter tries,
And nods to Bellamy for fresh supplies;
While vulture-like, the dire Mahon appears,
And, far more savage, rends his suff'ring ears.
He is buried in the chapel of the Hospital of St Cross, Winchester with a monument by John Francis Moore.