BULLER, Sir Anthony (1780-1866), of Pound, nr. Tavistock, Devon

Buller, the youngest of seven sons, was left a portion of about £1,500 from his father’s estate in 1793. PROB 11/1274/234. He was called to the bar and practised as an equity draftsman and on the western circuit. He appears not to have taken up his appointment to the Madras bench in 1815, but was knighted the following year on his acceptance of a similar posting in Bengal, where his brother Charles was a civil servant. He subsequently purchased the Pound estate in west Devon and had it rebuilt in about 1820, presumably in anticipation of his coming home; he left India in 1827. N. Pevsner, Buildings of England: Devon, 234. At the general election of 1831 he was returned for West Looe by his brother John, in the room of their nephew Charles, who had voted for the Grey ministry’s reform bill.

He divided against the second reading of the reintroduced bill, 6 July, but was in the majorities against two adjournment motions, 12 July 1831. He voted for use of the 1831 census to determine the disfranchisement schedules, 19 July. He was presumably the ‘Mr. Buller’ who supported a proposal for East and West Looe to return a single Member together, 22 July. In the case of Saltash, where his family also held the predominant interest, he opined that ‘a fair case had been made out’ for it to retain one Member, 26 July. Next day he voted to postpone consideration of Chippenham’s inclusion in schedule B. He divided against the bill’s passage, 21 Sept., and the second reading of the Scottish bill, 23 Sept. Thereafter his attendance seems to have lapsed, and he was absent from the divisions on the second and third readings of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831, 22 Mar. 1832. He voted in the minorities for Buxton’s motion on the abolition of slavery, 24 May, and Sadler’s proposed tax on absentee landlords to fund poor relief in Ireland, 19 June. He was listed as an absentee from the division on the Russian-Dutch loan, 12 July 1832. The passing of the Reform Act deprived him of his seat, and he apparently aspired thereafter to no higher public position than that of a magistrate. He died in June 1866 at Mary Tavy, Devon, of which his eldest son Anthony (1809-81) was rector. Gent. Mag. (1866), ii. 261-2.