Family and Education

b. ?1742, ?s. of James Bolland, linen draper, of Cheapside, London. m. lic. 31 Dec. 1778, Elizabeth, da. of Henry Gipps of Canterbury, Kent, 1s. 6da.

Offices Held

Biography

Bolland, described as being of St. Lawrence Poultney, London at his marriage, was a hop merchant, listed at 106 Upper Thames Street in 1791 and later at Mark Lane. In 1796 he acted as London agent for his wife’s uncle George Gipps* in the Canterbury election.1 He was a subscriber to the loyalty loan for 1797. He himself did not come into Parliament until he was 72. He was a paying guest of William Kenrick*, who had offered the vacancy to the prime minister; but Bolland was not Lord Liverpool’s choice and his conduct suggests that he made his own bargain, unless it was influenced by his patron’s sale of the borough or by the post-war crisis.2

Though a silent Member, he opposed agricultural protection, 27 Feb., 1 and 3 Mar., and the East India Company pension to Lord Melville, 24 May 1815. He voted for retrenchment, 11 and 18 Mar., and after pairing for it on 20 Mar., again on 3 and 25 Apr. 1816. He was in the civil list minorities, 6 and 24 May. Though absent on 12 June, he authorized The Times to state that he would have voted with the opposition majority on the Rochester writ,3 and he was in the minorities of 14 and 20 June on public revenue questions. He was in the minorities on the composition of the finance committee, 7 Feb. and Admiralty retrenchment, 17 and 25 Feb., and against the salt duties, 25 Apr. 1817. He voted against Catholic relief, 9 May. He paired with ministers for the suspension of habeas corpus, 23 June 1817, and voted against censure of their use of informers against sedition, 5 Mar. 1818; but on 15 Apr. he was in the opposition majority on the ducal marriage grant and he opposed the continued restriction of cash payments by the Bank, 18 May. He voted for inquiry into popular education on Brougham’s motion, 3 June.

Bolland did not seek re-election in 1818. That year he presented his son to the living of Fetcham, Surrey, the advowson of which he had purchased. He retired from business about 1825 and died at Clapham 7 June 1829, aged 87.4

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: Brian Murphy

Notes

• 1. The Times, 20 May 1796.
• 2. Add. 38458, ff. 195, 197.
• 3. The Times, 17 June 1816.
• 4. Brayley and Walford, Surr. iv. 160; Gent. Mag. (1829), i. 572.