John Cartwright – [Heath 1750–1758]
Major John Cartwright was born on in Bassetlaw, Nottinghamshire to Anne and William Cartwright of Marnham Hall. His older brother was George Cartwright, the trader and explorer, and his younger brother was Edmund Cartwright, the designer of the power loom. After a brief spell at Newark Grammar School, he went to Heath in 1750 where he appears to have stayed until 1758 when he joined the Royal Navy. (His younger brother, Edmund, went to Queen Elizabeth Grammar School in Wakefield and from there to University College, Oxford.)
He saw immediate service in a raid on Cherbourg but was later posted to the Newfoundland Station where he commanded HM Cutter Sherborne from 1763 to 1766 and served as chief magistrate of the settlement from 1765 to 1770. He retired from the Navy in 1771 on grounds of ill-health.
He was appointed a major in the Nottinghamshire Militia but he did not achieve any further promotion probably on account of his liberal views. In 1774 he published American Independence the Interest and Glory of Great Britain in which he supported the arguments of the colonists and in 1776 Take your Choice! Representation and respect; imposition and contempt. Annual Parliaments and liberty, long Parliaments and slavery in which he argued for annual parliaments, universal suffrage and secret ballots. He remained active in arguing for constitutional reform to the end, only escaping the Peterloo masacre because he was late getting to Manchester.
An anonymous biography of him appeared in The Heathen 1925 III(3) pp. 46–47:
Born in 1740, Major Cartwright was one of the earliest and most honourable of English Parliamentary reformers. He was educated at Heath Grammar School, and at eighteen years of age entered the Navy. He took part in the capture of Cherbourg, and in the following year in the action between Sir Edward Hawk and Admiral Conflaus. Engaged afterwards under Admiral Byron on the Newfoundland station, he was appointed as chief magistrate of the Settlement; and the duties of this position he discharged with exceptional uprightness and efficiency for five years, during which period he undertook explorations in the interior of the island and discovered Lieutenant’s Lake. His health, however, broke down and necessitated his retirement from active service for a time in 1771.
During the early history of the disputes with the American colonies he perceived that the Colonists had right on their side, and warmly supported their cause. At the beginning of the war he was offered the appointment of First Lieutenant to the Duke of Cumberland, which would have put him on the path of certain promotion. But he resolutely refused to fight against the cause which he felt to be just, and thus nobly renounced the prospects of advancement in his profession. The year 1774 marks the publication of his first plea on behalf of the Colonists, entitled American Independence the Glory and Interest of Great Britain.
In the following year, when the Nottinghamshire Militia was first raised, he was appointed major, and in this capacity he served for seventeen years. He was at last superseded on account of his political opinions. In 1776 appeared his first work on Parliamentary reform, which, with the solitary exception of Earl Stanhope’s pamphlets, seems to have been the earliest publication on the subject. Thenceforth he devoted his life chiefly to the attainment of universal suffrage and annual Parliaments. In 1778 he unsuccessfully contested the county elections of Nottinghamshire, and in the same year he conceived the project of a political association, which took shape in 1780 as the Society for Constitutional Information, and which included among its members some of the most distinguished men of the day. From this organisation sprang the more famous Corresponding Society. Major Cartwright worked assiduously for the promotion of Parliamentary reform; published several pamphlets; carried on a very extensive correspondence, and attended a host of political mectings.
He was included in the witnesses at the trial of his confreres, Horne Tooke, Thelwall, and Hardy in 1794, and was himself arraigned for conspiracy in 1819. He was found guilty, and condemned to pay a fine of £100. He took up his abode in London, and there spent the last years of his life. He was warmly loved by all who knew him intimately; for while outsiders looked chiefly at his inflexibility of political principle, and styled him the Father of Parliamentary Reform, personal friends saw his unfaltering integrity, his gentleheartedness, his warm affections, his unfailing courtesy, and Spartan simplicity of life. His health waned in 1822, and his unconquerable spirit, was greatly depressed at the same time by public sorrows and private bereavements. The reverses in Spain, occurring simultaneously with the illness of a sister and the death of his brother, conspired to snuff out a feebly flickering flame, and his death occurred in 1824.