Edward Southwell

Edward Southwell Sr. PC (Ire) (4 September 1671 – 4 December 1730) was an Anglo-Irish lawyer and Tory politician.

Early life He was the second but only surviving son of Sir Robert Southwell of Kings Weston, near Bristol.

He was educated at Kensington School, Lincoln's Inn (1686) and Merton College, Oxford (1687).

Career

He served in a number of high public offices including Chief Prothonotary of the Common Pleas in Ireland (1692–1700), clerk of the Privy Council (1693 to death), judge of the Admiralty court and vice-admiral of Munster (1699 to death). He was several times joint commissioner of the Privy Seal (1701–1702, 1715 and 1716). He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1692 and twice served on their council.

He sat in the Irish House of Commons for Kinsale from 1692 to 1699, for Dublin University from 1703 to 1713 and then again for Kinsale from 1713 to his death.

In 1702 Southwell succeeded his father as Principal Secretary of State (Ireland) and was appointed to the Privy Council of Ireland the same year. Both appointments were for life.

He sat in the House of Commons of England and the House of Commons of Great Britain between 1702 and 1715 as MP for Rye, Tregony and Preston.

Personal life

He had married Elizabeth Cromwell, 8th Baroness Cromwell, the daughter and heiress of Vere Essex Cromwell, 4th Earl of Ardglass and Catherine Hamilton. Before her death in 1709, they were the parents of:

Edward Southwell (1705–1755), who married Lady Katherine Watson, a daughter of Edward Watson, Viscount Sondes and Lady Katherine ( Tufton), in 1729.

In 1712 he commissioned Sir John Vanbrugh to build Kings Weston House in Kingsweston, Bristol. After the death of his first wife, he married Anne Blathwayt (1691–1717), daughter of William Blathwayt of Dyrham Park, Gloucestershire, in 1716. Sadly, she died the following year.

He died in 1730 and was buried at Kingsweston. His son Edward from his first marriage, succeeded in turn to the Secretaryship and to the Kings Weston estate.

Descendants Through his son Edward, he was a grandfather of Edward Southwell, who later became the 20th Baron de Clifford.

Works Before entering political office, Southwell translated Henry More's ethical treatise Enchiridion Ethicum from Latin into English, published by Benjamin Tooke as An Account of Virtue in 1690 and regarded as an exemplary literary exercise. Tooke published a second edition in 1701, and Tooke's son Samuel added a third in 1723, excising the names of both More and Southwell and changing the title to An Epitome of Ethics or A Short Account of the Moral Virtues for the Use of Schools.