William Wollaston MP
Finborough Hall, Suffolk

Colonel William Wollaston (1731, Finborough Hall, Great Finborough, Suffolk – 10 November 1797, Bath) was a British Member of Parliament for Ipswich between 1768 and 1784.[1]

Life

He was born the eldest son of William Wollaston, MP and his wife Elizabeth Faquier and educated at Bury St Edmunds Grammar School.

Before gaining his position in Parliament, he served as Colonel of the 2nd or East Suffolk Battalion in the Suffolk Militia. When the militia was embodied in 1778 during the War of American Independence, when the country was threatened with invasion by the Americans' allies, France and Spain, Wollaston commanded his battalion at a training encampment at Warley in Essex. However, he gave up the command in 1780.[2]

He was a close friend of artist Thomas Gainsborough, with whom he shared a love of music. Gainsborough painted Wollaston's portrait in about 1758. In 1794 to pay off a gambling debt Wollaston sold the family estate of Finborough Hall to Roger Pettiward (d.1833), whose family owned the neighbouring estate at Onehouse.

Family

Wollaston was married to Blanche, daughter of Robert Hyde Page and sister of Sir Thomas-Hyde Page. [3] They had no children.

Notes

  1. ↑ "WOLLASTON, William (1731-97), of Finborough Hall, Suff". History of Parliament. Retrieved 21 September 2017.
  2. ↑ Webb, pp. 426–7.
  3. ↑ Bernard Burke, Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain. 4th ed. London : Harrison, Pall Mall, 1863. 1689

References

  • John Bernard Burke, A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain (1863) p. 1689
  • John Nichols, Illustrations of the Literary History of the Eighteenth Century (1817) p. 834
  • Augustine Page, John Kirby, A supplement to The Suffolk traveller [of J. Kirby] (Ipswich, 1844) p. 536
  • Lt-Col E.A.H. Webb, History of the 12th (The Suffolk) Regiment 1685–1913, London: Spottiswoode, 1914/Uckfield: Naval & Military, 2001, ISBN 978-1-84342-116-0,


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