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KEMYS, Sir Charles, 4th Bt. (1688-1735), of Cefn Mably, Glam.
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Family and Education
b. 23 Nov. 1688, o.s. of Sir Charles Kemys, 3rd Bt., M.P., of Cefn Mably by his 1st w. Mary, da. and coh. of Philip Wharton, 4th Baron Wharton, sis. of Thomas Wharton, M.P., 1st Mq. of Wharton, wid. of William Thomas of Wenvoe, Glam. educ. Trinity, Camb. 1706. unm. suc. fa. Dec. 1702.
Offices Held
Sheriff, Glam. 1712-13.
Biography
Although Kemys was nephew to the Whig leader, Lord Wharton, and a personal friend of George I’s before his accession, he was an avowed Jacobite, who was reputed to have declined the new King’s invitation to attend him at court, saying; ‘I should be happy to smoke a pipe with him as Elector of Hanover, but I cannot think of it as King of England’.1 He did not stand in 1715, but was returned unopposed for Glamorgan at a by-election early in 1716, voting against the Administration in all recorded divisions of that Parliament. He was again unopposed in 1722 and 1727. No further votes of his are known. Continuing to support the Stuart cause in Glamorgan,2 he was listed in 1730 along with Lord Gower, Lord Barrymore, and Watkin Williams Wynn as one of the Jacobite leaders in the north-west.3 Before the general election of 1734 he made known his ‘intention of giving myself ease, being of late years deprived of health’.4 He died soon afterwards, 29 Jan. 1735.