Geoffrey Chaucer was elected a knight of the shire for Kent in 1386 before falling out of favour. The Cavalier poets were defined by the struggle between king and parliament, but only one of them made it to the House: John Suckling, elected for the rotten borough of Bramber in 1640.
Andrew Marvell was on the other side of the civil war conflict but avoided sanction after the Restoration to represent Hull for almost 20 years from 1659.
Hilaire Belloc became Liberal MP for Salford South in the landslide of 1906, despite a campaign against him telling voters not to support a French Catholic. And Siegfried Sassoon's open letter "Finished with the War: a Soldier's Declaration" was read to the Commons on 30 July 1917 by H B Lees-Smith, Liberal MP for Northampton.
