WILSON, William (c.1720-96), of Keythorpe, Leics.

In 1761 Wilson was recommended at Bossiney by Thomas Pitt sen., who was making a bid for the borough, but dropped it to avoid a clash with Bute. In July he applied to Lord Egmont, who had been returned at Ilchester and Bridgwater, to succeed him in the seat at Ilchester which he was going to resign;Egmont to Bute, 23 July 1761, Bute mss. and in December was returned for it unopposed on Lockyer’s interest. In Bute’s list of December 1761 Wilson was marked ‘Egmont’ and ‘connected with Lockyer’. He appears in Henry Fox’s list of Members favourable to the peace preliminaries, December 1762; was classed by Jenkinson in the autumn of 1763 as a Government supporter; and was described as a ‘friend in opposition’ on general warrants, 18 Feb. 1764. No other vote by him is recorded during this Parliament. In Rockingham’s list of July 1765 and November 1766 he was classed as ‘doubtful’, and in Newcastle’s of 2 Mar. 1767 as ‘doubtful or absent’.

In 1768 he was returned unopposed at Camelford. Robinson in both his surveys on the royal marriage bill, March 1772, described him as ‘pro, sick, present’. No other vote by him is recorded, but in Robinson’s list of 1774 he appears as ‘hopeful’. Apparently he never spoke in the House.

According to Nichols’s History of Leicestershire (iii(1), p. 10) Wilson ‘passed the principal part of his life at the German Spa and other parts of the continent, and died, immensely rich, at Pisa in Tuscany’ 12 Dec. 1796.