ELIOT, SIR JOHN (1592-1632), English statesman, son of Richard Eliot, a member of an old Devonshire family lately settled in Cornwall, was born at his father's seat at Port Eliot in Cornwall in 1592. He matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford, on the 4th of December 1607, and leaving the university after a residence of three years he studied law at one of the inns of court. He also spent some months travelling in France, Spain and Italy, in company, for part of the time, with young George Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham. He was only twenty-two when he began his parliamentary career as member for St Germans in the "addled parliament" of 1614. In 1618 he was knighted, and next year through the patronage of Buckingham he obtained the appointment of vice-admiral of Devon, with large powers for the defence and control of the commerce of the county. It was not long before the characteristic energy with which he performed the duties in his office involved him in difficulties. After many attempts, in 1623 he succeeded by a clever but dangerous manoeuvre in entrapping the famous pirate John Nutt, who had for years infested the southern coast, inflicting immense damage upon English commerce. The issue is noteworthy. The pirate, having a powerful protector at court in Sir George Calvert, the secretary of state, was pardoned; while the vice-admiral, upon charges which could not be substantiated, was flung into the Marshalsea, and detained there nearly four months. A few weeks after his release Eliot was elected member of parliament for Newport (February 1624). On the 27th of February he delivered his first speech, in which he at once revealed his great powers as an orator, demanding boldly that the liberties and privileges of parliament, repudiated by James I. in the former parliament, should be secured. In the first parliament of Charles I., in 1625, he urged the enforcement of the laws against the Roman Catholics. Meanwhile he had continued the friend and supporter of Buckingham and greatly approved of the war with Spain. Buckingham's incompetence, however, and the bad faith with which both he and the king continued to treat the parliament, alienated Eliot completely from the administration. Distrust of his former friend quickly grew in Eliot's excitable mind to a certainty of his criminal ambition and treason to his country. Returned to the parliament of 1626 as member for St Germans, he found himself, in the absence of other chiefs of the opposition whom the king had secured by nominating them sheriffs, the leader of the House. He immediately demanded an inquiry into the recent disaster at Cadiz. On the 27th of March he made an open and daring attack upon Buckingham and his evil administration. He was not intimidated by the king's threatening intervention on the 29th, and persuaded the House to defer the actual grant of the subsidies and to present a remonstrance to the king, declaring its right to examine the conduct of ministers.