WOLLASTON, William (1693-1757), of Finborough, Suff.

Wollaston was descended from a wealthy Elizabethan wool merchant, whose son bought the manor of Finborough for £10,000 in 1656.Copinger, Suff. Manors, vi. 173. His father, the author of The Religion of Nature, was left the family estates, including Shenton in Leicestershire, by a first cousin once removed. Returned unopposed at a by-election for Ipswich, for which he was re-elected after a contest in 1734, he voted with the Government. He became a trustee of the Georgia Society in March 1734, but when a petition for a parliamentary grant for the colony came before the House in February 1739, he unexpectedly rose from his seat and left.HMC Egmont Diary, i. 66, 69; iii. 28. He voted with the Government on the Spanish convention in that year, was absent from the division on the place bill in 1740, did not stand again, and died 20 June 1757.