DISTON, Josiah (c.1667-1737), of Bakewell Hall, Basinghall St., London.

Josiah Diston was for many years a leading factor in the cloth trade at Bakewell Hall, the London cloth market.2Bd. Trade Jnl. 1715-18, pp. 95-96. Under Queen Anne he represented Devizes in two Parliaments, and was reported by Sir James Long to spare ‘no pains or cost to support’ the interest of the low churchmen there.3HMC Portland, iv. 175. He was again returned as a Whig in 1715 but lost his seat in 1722, when he only polled two votes, and did not stand again. In Parliament he voted for the septennial bill and the repeal of the Occasional Conformity and Schism Acts, but against the peerage bill in 1719. As receiver general he failed in 1726, having incurred the large debt of £23,446, of which his sureties had paid up only £17,574 by August 1730.4W. R. Ward, English Land Tax in 18th Cent., 111; Cal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1729-30, pp. 194, 428. He was in receipt of royal bounty from that year till his death,5Cal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1729-30, p. 329; 1735-8, p. 435; Diston to Walpole, 13 Oct. 1734, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. on 7 Nov. 1737.