Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 38.djvu/203

 1722 he was returned to parliament for the city of Lincoln, and was re-elected on 30 Aug. 1727. Created a knight of the Bath (17 June 1725), when that order was reconstituted by George I, he succeeded to the family baronetcy, in March 1727, on the death of his uncle Sir William. On 28 May of the following year he was created a peer, with the title of Baron Monson of Burton, Lincolnshire. Lord Hervey in mentioning him among the new creations calls him wrongly Sir William (Mem. i. 89). In June 1733 Monson was named captain of the band of gentlemen pensioners, and in June 1737 was appointed first commissioner of trade and plantations. In this office he was confirmed when the board was reconstituted in 1745, and he continued to hold it till his death. He was also, on 31 July 1737, made a privy councillor.

Monson died on 20 July 1748, and the Duke of Newcastle, in a letter to the Duke of Bedford, dated 12 Aug. 1748, condoles with him upon 'the loss of so valuable a man and so amiable a friend,' and Bedford in reply uses similar expressions of regret (Bedford Corr. i. 440-1). By his wife, Lady Margaret Watson, youngest daughter of Lewis, first earl of Rockingham, whom he married on S April 1725, he had three sons, viz. John, second baron Monson (see below) ; Lewis Thomas, who assumed the name of Watson, and was created Baron Sondes in 1760 ; and George Monson [q. v.]

, second baron (1727-1774), born 23 July 1727, was created LL.D. of Cambridge University in 1749. On 5 Nov. 1765 he was appointed warden and chief justice in eyre of the forests south of Trent (Gent. Mag. 1765, p. 539). On the fall of the first Rockingham ministry he was offered an earldom on the condition that he would relinquish the place ; he declined the proposal (, Mem. ii. 17, 18 ; and, Mem. George III, ii. 368). He ultimately resigned with Portland and other whigs on 27 Nov. (, Mem. ii. 25); but is mentioned by Walpole (Mem. of George III, ii. 454) as subsequently voting with the court on Bedford's motion that the privy council should take notice of the action of the Massachusetts assembly in pardoning the late insurrection. In 1768 he signed a protest against the bill to limit the dividends of the East India Company (Protests of the Lords, ii. 98). Monson died at his house in Albemarle Street on 23 July 1774 (Gent. Mag. p. 334). He married, 23 June 1752, Theodosia, daughter of John Maddison, esq., of Harpswell, Lincolnshire, by whom he had five sons and two daughters. His fourth son, William (1760-1807), is separately noticed.  MONSON, ROBERT (d. 1583), judge, was the second son of William Monson of South Carlton, Lincolnshire, by Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Robert Tyrwhitt of Kettelby in the same county, of which he was a native. The Monsons, Mounsons, or Munsons, as the name was variously spelt, belonged to an old Lincolnshire family, tracing their descent from one John Monson, living in 1378 at East Reson. Robert studied at Cambridge and entered, 23 Jan. 1545-6, Lincoln's Inn, where he was called to the bar 2 Feb. 1549-1550, elected reader in the autumn of 1565 his reading 'On the Act for the True Payment of Tithes' is extant in Harl. MS. 5265 and again in Lent 1570. In the first parliament of Queen Mary (5 Oct,-5 Dec. 1553) he sat for Dunheved, Cornwall, in the second (2 April-5 May 1554) for Looe in the same county, and in the third (12 Nov. 1554-16 Jan. 1554-5) for Newport-juxta-Launceston. In the parliament of 1557-8 he again represented Dunheved. In the first two parliaments of Elizabeth (1558-9-1566-7) he sat for Lincoln, in the fourth, which met in 1572, for Totnes, Devonshire. In the house he acted with Robert Bell [q. v.], sat on many important committees, and distinguished himself by boldness of speech, particularly in the autumn of 1566, when he offended the queen by the persistence with which he pressed for a direct answer to a petition of both houses praying her to marry and nominate her successor in the event of her death without issue. This, however, did not prevent his being placed on the high court of ecclesiastical commission on its renewal in 1570, and in Michaelmas term 1572 he was called to the degree of serjeant-at-law by special mandate of the queen, and immediately afterwards raised to the bench of the common pleas (31 Oct.)

Monson was a member of a special commission, appointed 11 May 1575, for the examination of suspected anabaptists. Most of the heretics recanted, but two Dutchmen, John Peters and Henry Turnwert, stood firm, and on 22 July were burned at West Smithfield. In December 1577 Monson gave an extra-judicial opinion in favour of the legality of punishing non-attendance at church by fine. For questioning the legality of the sentence passed on John Stubbs [q. v.] for his pamphlet against the French match he was committed to the Fleet in November 1579. He was released in the following

