Colonel William Wollaston (1731,

Finborough Hall Finborough Hall is a Grade II listedHistoric England.St Georges School, Finborough Hall. National Heritage List for England. Retrieved 8 March 2016. stucco-faced Tuscan-style country house in Great Finborough, Suffolk, England. The grounds were ...

Great Finborough Great Finborough is a village and civil parish in the Mid Suffolk district, in the county of Suffolk, England; about south west of Stowmarket and near one of the sources of the River Gipping. It has two schools, a pub and an active church. In 2 ...

Suffolk Suffolk () is a ceremonial county of England in East Anglia. It borders Norfolk to the north, Cambridgeshire to the west and Essex to the south; the North Sea lies to the east. The county town is Ipswich; other important towns include Lowes ...

– 10 November 1797,

Bath Bath may refer to: * Bathing, immersion in a fluid ** Bathtub, a large open container for water, in which a person may wash their body ** Public bathing, a public place where people bathe * Thermae, ancient Roman public bathing facilities Plac ...

) was a British M.P. for

Ipswich Ipswich () is a port town and borough in Suffolk, England, of which it is the county town. The town is located in East Anglia about away from the mouth of the River Orwell and the North Sea. Ipswich is both on the Great Eastern Main Line r ...

between 1768 and 1784. He was born the eldest son of

William Wollaston William Wollaston (; 26 March 165929 October 1724) was a school teacher, Church of England priest, scholar of Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, theologian, and a major Enlightenment era English philosopher. He is remembered today for one book, which he ...

, 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 Eastern Battalion in the Suffolk Militia. He was a close friend of artist

Thomas Gainsborough Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...

, 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

to Roger Pettiward (d.1833), whose family owned the neighbouring estate at

Onehouse Onehouse is a small village in the England, English county of Suffolk, about 3 miles west from the centre of Stowmarket near to the Golf Club. The population of the parish at the 2011 Census was 810. Recorded in the Domesday Book of 1086 various ...

. He was married to Blanche, daughter of Robert Hyde Page and sister of Sir Thomas-Hyde Page. Bernard Burke, ''Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain.'' 4th ed. London : Harrison, Pall Mall, 1863. 1689
/ref> They had no children.

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 f J. Kirby' (Ipswich, 1844) p. 536 *

External links

Bookplate of William Wollaston
Rare Books of the Shimeon Brisman Collection in Jewish Studies, Washington University 1730 births 1797 deaths People from Great Finborough Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for Ipswich British MPs 1768–1774 British MPs 1774–1780 British MPs 1780–1784 {{England-GreatBritain-MP-stub