Читать книгу Crap MPs - Dr. Grosvenor Bendor - Страница 16

(d.c.1566) Bossiney 1555, Plympton Erle 1558, St Ives 1559, Grampound 1563

Perne is proof that Parliament has always had its fair share of madmen, and even some kleptomaniacs. He first gained a seat in the Commons through his Protestant connections during the reign of Edward VI. But when Catholic Queen Mary came to the throne, he was involved in Henry Dudley’s plot to replace her with her sister Princess Elizabeth, and was arrested and temporarily excluded from Parliament.

He was also excluded from the Royal Court, and told not to ‘come near [it] by the space of seven miles, upon pain of forfeiture of £500’. This odd instruction may be connected to reports of Perne having taken up ‘picking’, or pickpocketing. In 1563, when still an MP, he was ‘taken into a great mishap’ and began to act in a ‘lewd manner’. He was found stealing ‘gold buttons’, presumably from the clothing of wealthy colleagues, and was ‘committed to the Marshalsea for pickery, without any notice given to the House’. Marshalsea Prison (later made famous by Charles Dickens) was not a nice place, and there Perne went mad. In 1566, he was declared a ‘lunatick’, and a new election writ was moved for his seat. There is no record of his death or later life.