HUCKS, Robert (1699-1745), of Clifton Hampden, nr. Abingdon, and Aldenham, Herts.

Robert Hucks was returned for Abingdon, his mother’s town, at three contested elections, consistently voting with the Government. An ‘enemy of religious establishments’, he spoke in 1736 against a grant to repair Henry VII’s chapel and promoted the mortmain bill to restrain the alienation of land to religious and charitable institutions. Next year he was one of the common councillors of the Georgia trust who resigned owing to their objection to the appropriation of land in Georgia to the endowment of the Church of England there. Though remaining a trustee, he took little further interest in the colony, observing in 1739 that ‘if we may have peace with Spain by giving up Georgia it were a good thing’.1HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 236, 372-3, 479; iii. 28, 36, 109; Harley Diary; see also WHITE, John, and MORE, Robert. He did not stand in 1741. In 1743, having succeeded his father as King’s brewer and the owner of ‘several thousand butts’, he presented a petition to the Treasury from London victuallers, praying for the repeal of the Pot Act, a levy on publicans.2Mathias, Brewing Industry in England, 22, 116; Cal. Treas. Pprs. 1742-5, pp. 230, 232.

He died 21 Dec. 1745.