Colonel John Bullock
Encyclopedia
Colonel John Bullock of Faulkbourne M.P.
(1731 - 1809) was an English
landowner and Member of Parliament
for 56 years becoming Father
of the House. He was appointed High Sheriff
of the County
of Essex
in 1802.
.
He was educated as a Fellow Commoner at Clare Hall, Cambridge
.
His period in the House spanned the Seven Years’ War, the War of American Independence, the French Revolution
and the earlier Napoleonic Wars
. He sat as a fellow Member with the Pitts, Burke
, Fox
and Sheridan
.
He commenced his Parliamentary career in 1754 as Member for Steyning in Sussex which returned two members until the Reform Bill of 1832. Steyning began returning two Members of Parliament
from 1278 and as a rotten borough
made up of a depopulated port became similar to Dunwich
until the Reform Act 1832
.
In 1768, he was returned for the Borough of Maldon
, polling 443 votes against the 455 of John Huske and the 328 of Jon Hennker.
In 1784, he shared the representation of the County of Essex with Thomas Bramston of Screens and sat as Whig Member for the County continuously and without contest for 26 years. This absence of contest was due a “family compact”, which was the outcome of the ruinous expenses of the two previous elections, by which for more than thirty years one Whig and one Tory were regularly returned. The Colonel’s second co-member was Admiral Harvey
who commanded the “Téméraire”
at Trafalgar
.
Despite the efforts of other Parliamentarians, the Colonel resisted attempts to make him understand the complexities of foreign affairs and his kinsman the Duke of Bedford
described him as “a good-natured fox-hunting boy”.
The long duration of the “compact” was due to the high respect in which Colonel Bullock was held throughout the County for his political independence and he was well-liked. At his death, the peaceful state of affairs came to an end.
He was a Colonel in the East Essex Militia and appointed High Sheriff in 1802.
Hall and undertook many improvements to the house and grounds in the C18th. A drawing shows a 'Palladianisation' of the west front, but the later work seems to have taken it back to - and extended - the gothic original look. He ordered fine tapestries from Aubusson in France and armorial porcelain from China.
A patron of the arts, he founded a wide-ranging collection of pictures. In 1803, the house contained many good paintings by van Dyck
, Van de Velde
, Michelangelo
, Sir William Beechey
, Sartorius
and other masters.
The death of the Colonel without issue led to the first break in the regular family succession for more than 200 years, since John Bullock of Mulsham founded the Essex Branch of the family.
He left his estates on his death, in 1809, to Jonathan Josiah Christopher Watson, son of his sister, Elizabeth who had married Jonathan Watson JP DL FRS of Ringhall in Suffolk. In 1810, Jonathan Josiah Christopher took the surname Bullock under Royal Sign Manual.
showing the Colonel in full uniform resting his left elbow on a pedestal which supports a classic urn. In his right hand, he holds his laced hat. By his side sits a large Newfoundland dog. In the background are trees and water.
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
(1731 - 1809) was an English
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
landowner and Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for 56 years becoming Father
Father of the House
Father of the House is a term that has by tradition been unofficially bestowed on certain members of some national legislatures, most notably the House of Commons in the United Kingdom. In some legislatures the term refers to the oldest member, but in others it refers the longest-serving member.The...
of the House. He was appointed High Sheriff
High Sheriff
A high sheriff is, or was, a law enforcement officer in the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.In England and Wales, the office is unpaid and partly ceremonial, appointed by the Crown through a warrant from the Privy Council. In Cornwall, the High Sheriff is appointed by the Duke of...
of the County
County
A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain modern nations. Historically in mainland Europe, the original French term, comté, and its equivalents in other languages denoted a jurisdiction under the sovereignty of a count A county is a jurisdiction of local government in certain...
of Essex
Essex
Essex is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East region of England, and one of the home counties. It is located to the northeast of Greater London. It borders with Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, Hertfordshire to the west, Kent to the South and London to the south west...
in 1802.
Early Years
John Bullock was born in 1731, the younger son of Josiah Bullock J.P. D.L. of Faulkbourne and Mincing Lane, London and Hannah Cooke, youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke, Member of Parliament for Colchester and Governor of East India CompanyEast India Company
The East India Company was an early English joint-stock company that was formed initially for pursuing trade with the East Indies, but that ended up trading mainly with the Indian subcontinent and China...
.
He was educated as a Fellow Commoner at Clare Hall, Cambridge
Clare Hall, Cambridge
Clare Hall is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge, England. It is a college for advanced study, admitting only postgraduate students.Informality is a defining value at Clare Hall and this contributes to its unique character...
.
Political Career
At the age of 23, he embarked on a Parliamentary career that lasted 56 years culminated in him becoming Father of the House until his death.His period in the House spanned the Seven Years’ War, the War of American Independence, the French Revolution
French Revolution
The French Revolution , sometimes distinguished as the 'Great French Revolution' , was a period of radical social and political upheaval in France and Europe. The absolute monarchy that had ruled France for centuries collapsed in three years...
and the earlier Napoleonic Wars
Napoleonic Wars
The Napoleonic Wars were a series of wars declared against Napoleon's French Empire by opposing coalitions that ran from 1803 to 1815. As a continuation of the wars sparked by the French Revolution of 1789, they revolutionised European armies and played out on an unprecedented scale, mainly due to...
. He sat as a fellow Member with the Pitts, Burke
Edmund Burke
Edmund Burke PC was an Irish statesman, author, orator, political theorist and philosopher who, after moving to England, served for many years in the House of Commons of Great Britain as a member of the Whig party....
, Fox
Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox PC , styled The Honourable from 1762, was a prominent British Whig statesman whose parliamentary career spanned thirty-eight years of the late 18th and early 19th centuries and who was particularly noted for being the arch-rival of William Pitt the Younger...
and Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Sheridan
Richard Brinsley Butler Sheridan was an Irish-born playwright and poet and long-term owner of the London Theatre Royal, Drury Lane. For thirty-two years he was also a Whig Member of the British House of Commons for Stafford , Westminster and Ilchester...
.
He commenced his Parliamentary career in 1754 as Member for Steyning in Sussex which returned two members until the Reform Bill of 1832. Steyning began returning two Members of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
from 1278 and as a rotten borough
Rotten borough
A "rotten", "decayed" or pocket borough was a parliamentary borough or constituency in the United Kingdom that had a very small electorate and could be used by a patron to gain undue and unrepresentative influence within Parliament....
made up of a depopulated port became similar to Dunwich
Dunwich
Dunwich is a small town in Suffolk, England, within the Suffolk Coast and Heaths AONB.Dunwich was the capital of East Anglia 1500 years ago but the harbour and most of the town have since disappeared due to coastal erosion. Its decline began in 1286 when a sea surge hit the East Anglian coast, and...
until the Reform Act 1832
Reform Act 1832
The Representation of the People Act 1832 was an Act of Parliament that introduced wide-ranging changes to the electoral system of England and Wales...
.
In 1768, he was returned for the Borough of Maldon
Maldon (district)
Maldon is a local government district in Essex, England. Its council is based in the town of Maldon, and the next largest centre of population is Burnham-on-Crouch. The district covers the Dengie peninsula as well as an area to the north of the Blackwater Estuary, a total area of...
, polling 443 votes against the 455 of John Huske and the 328 of Jon Hennker.
In 1784, he shared the representation of the County of Essex with Thomas Bramston of Screens and sat as Whig Member for the County continuously and without contest for 26 years. This absence of contest was due a “family compact”, which was the outcome of the ruinous expenses of the two previous elections, by which for more than thirty years one Whig and one Tory were regularly returned. The Colonel’s second co-member was Admiral Harvey
Eliab Harvey
Admiral Sir Eliab Harvey, GCB was an eccentric and hot-tempered officer of the Royal Navy during the French Revolutionary and the Napoleonic Wars who was as distinguished for his gambling and dueling as for his military record...
who commanded the “Téméraire”
HMS Temeraire (1798)
HMS Temeraire was a 98-gun second-rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy. Launched in 1798, she served during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, mostly on blockades or convoy escort duties...
at Trafalgar
Battle of Trafalgar
The Battle of Trafalgar was a sea battle fought between the British Royal Navy and the combined fleets of the French Navy and Spanish Navy, during the War of the Third Coalition of the Napoleonic Wars ....
.
Despite the efforts of other Parliamentarians, the Colonel resisted attempts to make him understand the complexities of foreign affairs and his kinsman the Duke of Bedford
Duke of Bedford
thumb|right|240px|William Russell, 1st Duke of BedfordDuke of Bedford is a title that has been created five times in the Peerage of England. The first creation came in 1414 in favour of Henry IV's third son, John, who later served as regent of France. He was made Earl of Kendal at the same time...
described him as “a good-natured fox-hunting boy”.
The long duration of the “compact” was due to the high respect in which Colonel Bullock was held throughout the County for his political independence and he was well-liked. At his death, the peaceful state of affairs came to an end.
He was a Colonel in the East Essex Militia and appointed High Sheriff in 1802.
Faulkbourne
He took a keen interest in FaulkbourneFaulkbourne
Faulkbourne is a civil parish in the Braintree district of Essex, about 2 miles north-west of Witham.According to Faulkbourne's Victorian era rector, the Rev...
Hall and undertook many improvements to the house and grounds in the C18th. A drawing shows a 'Palladianisation' of the west front, but the later work seems to have taken it back to - and extended - the gothic original look. He ordered fine tapestries from Aubusson in France and armorial porcelain from China.
A patron of the arts, he founded a wide-ranging collection of pictures. In 1803, the house contained many good paintings by van Dyck
Anthony van Dyck
Sir Anthony van Dyck was a Flemish Baroque artist who became the leading court painter in England. He is most famous for his portraits of Charles I of England and his family and court, painted with a relaxed elegance that was to be the dominant influence on English portrait-painting for the next...
, Van de Velde
Van de Velde
A number of people have had the surname van de Velde including:Artists*Pedro Campaña , also known as Peter Van de Velde, Flemish Renaissance painter*Esaias van de Velde , Dutch landscape painter...
, Michelangelo
Michelangelo
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni , commonly known as Michelangelo, was an Italian Renaissance painter, sculptor, architect, poet, and engineer who exerted an unparalleled influence on the development of Western art...
, Sir William Beechey
William Beechey
Sir Henry William Beechey , English portrait-painter, was born at Burford, the son of William Beechey and Hannah Read ....
, Sartorius
Francis Sartorius
Francis Sartorius was an English painter of horses, horse-racing and hunting scenes, of the famous Sartorius family of artists. Also known as Francis Sartorius the Elder to distinguish him from his grandson Francis Sartorius Jr. .-Life and work:Francis was the son and pupil of John Sartorius...
and other masters.
Family
Whilst his wife Elizabeth, the only daughter of Robert Lant of Putney, was a considerable heiress, he exhausted a large part of her fortune on Parliamentary life. She died in 1793 and they had no children.The death of the Colonel without issue led to the first break in the regular family succession for more than 200 years, since John Bullock of Mulsham founded the Essex Branch of the family.
He left his estates on his death, in 1809, to Jonathan Josiah Christopher Watson, son of his sister, Elizabeth who had married Jonathan Watson JP DL FRS of Ringhall in Suffolk. In 1810, Jonathan Josiah Christopher took the surname Bullock under Royal Sign Manual.
Gainsborough Portrait
A fine portrait was painted by GainsboroughThomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough was an English portrait and landscape painter.-Suffolk:Thomas Gainsborough was born in Sudbury, Suffolk. He was the youngest son of John Gainsborough, a weaver and maker of woolen goods. At the age of thirteen he impressed his father with his penciling skills so that he let...
showing the Colonel in full uniform resting his left elbow on a pedestal which supports a classic urn. In his right hand, he holds his laced hat. By his side sits a large Newfoundland dog. In the background are trees and water.