Robert Monckton (died 1722)

Robert Monckton (c. 1659–1722) was an English revolutionary, a Whig Member of Parliament for two constituencies and a Yorkshire landowner. He was also notable for his involvement in a number of exceptionally bitter and prolonged electoral disputes.

Robert Monckton's father was Sir Philip Monckton, lord of the manors of Cavil, near Howden, and Hodroyd, near Barnsley, Yorkshire. His mother was Anne Eyre, daughter of Robert Eyre of Highlow Hall, Derbyshire. Robert was the eldest son and had one brother, William, a naval officer, and a sister, Margaret.

Robert Monckton's education seems to have been patchy. On 26 May 1677, aged 17, he entered Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge, the college formerly attended by Oliver Cromwell, but by 19 Nov. 1678 he was receiving legal training at the Middle Temple. He inherited the family estates at about the age of 20.

Unlike his father, who preened himself on his apparently shaky royalist credentials, Robert had Puritan associates: he was listed as Low Church in an analysis of the 1705 Parliament. He became a committed opponent of the Duke of York, later James II. He went into exile in the Netherlands during the 1680s and was commissioned as an officer by William, Prince of Orange, on 10 November 1688. He took part in the invasion which carried through the Glorious Revolution of 1688 and was rewarded with a post as Commissioner for Trade and Plantations.

Monckton became a client of the Whig grandee John Holles, 1st Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne. With Newcastle's support, he contested the previously Tory constituency of Pontefract at the general election of 28 October 1695. His Whig running mate was Sir William Lowther of Swillington, a Presbyterian landowner who was jeered as a "Commonwealthsman" when he plied the electorate with wine. However, Lowther and Monckton had taken the precaution of securing a number of burgage votes in the borough and there was actually a sizeable Dissenting community in the town, described by an Anglican clergyman as a "schismatic town." Lowther topped the poll with 80 votes and Monckton came a close second with 78. Sir John Bland, a defeated Tory, petitioned against the election, claiming electoral malpractice by the returning officer, but the petition failed.

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