WEBB, John (?1730-95), of Cote House, nr. Bristol, Glos.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

1780 - 4 Feb. 1795

Family and Education

b. ?1730, 3rd s. of Nicholas Webb, merchant, of Gloucester by Susanna, da. of John Bliss of Chalford. educ. ?Westminster 1742-6. m. Arabella, da. of Thomas Bushell of Sevinbroke, Oxon., 2s. 1da.

Offices Held

Sheriff, Gloucester 1756-7, 1761-2, mayor 1776-7, 1786-7.

Biography

Webb, the son of a Gloucester mercer and brewer who also owned cloth mills near Stroud, was by 1760 captain of the London in the service of the East India Company. Dismissed for illicit trading in 1766, he was reinstated in 1770. By 1776 he owned the vessel and in 1782 stood unsuccessfully, with Edmund Burke’s support, for election as a director of the Company. He had disposed of the ship by 1793.1

An opponent of Pitt in the 1784 Parliament, he joined the Whig Club on 4 Apr. 1785, attended the opposition meeting at Burlington House, 11 May 1790, and at the general election a month later was re-elected without opposition for Gloucester on the interest of the Whig corporation and the 11th Duke of Norfolk. He paired on the Whig side for the division on Oczakov, 12 Apr. 1791, and was listed favourable, the same month, to repeal of the Test Act in Scotland. No other trace of parliamentary activity in this period has been found, but he was included on Windham’s provisional list for the ‘third party’ in February 1793 and may have transferred his support to government as a result of events in France. It is also possible that his health was unequal to parliamentary attendance, for he made his will on 11 June 1790. He directed that Cote House and his London home in Mortimer Street should be sold to provide for his wife and bequeathed legacies totalling over £13,000 to her and his three children, in addition to the fortunes to which they were entitled under his marriage settlement.2 He died 4 Feb. 1795, ‘aged 64’.3

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: David R. Fisher

Notes

  • 1. PCC 126 Jenner; VCH Glos. xi. 72; Farington, viii. 91; C. and H. C. Hardy, Reg. E. I. Co. Ships; Burke Corresp. v. 31.
  • 2. PCC 221 Newcastle.
  • 3. T. Rudge, Hist. Gloucester, 346