Robert BENNET of Lawhitton, Esq.

   Research Notes:

son and heir, named in his grandfather's will 1607, aged 13 years 10 months and 2 days at the death of his father, one of the executors of his father's will

The Visitation of the County of Cornwall in the year 1620, Bennet of Lawhitton, p. 27

buryed in Woollen only recd Affidavit July 14th

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He matriculated at Exeter College, Oxford on 13 December 1622, aged 17 and was awarded BA on 25 October 1624. He was a student of the Middle Temple in 1622. Bennet was a Parliamentary colonel, and governor of St. Michael's Mount and St. Mawes Castle in the Civil War.

During the civil war he was one of the chief Cornish adherents of the Commonwealth, and governed St. Michael's Mount and St. Mawes castle in its interest. He formed one of the thirteen members appointed as a council of state on 30 April 1653, and represented Cornwall among the 139 persons summoned to attend at Whitehall as a parliament on 4 July 1653 ; ten days later he became one of thirty-one members forming an interim council of state. In the parliament of 1654 he was elected both for the boroughs of Launceston and Looe ; in that of 1659 he sat for the former borough. After the death of Oliver Cromwell he advocated the recognition of Richard as protector, his predilection being for a commonwealth, though he recognised the necessity, in times 'so full of distraction,' of a single person and two houses.

Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 04

Died aged 79 years.