NOEL, William (1695-1762), of Bloomsbury Sq., London.

Noel, a practising lawyer, was descended from a Leicestershire family, seated at Kirkby Mallory. He was returned for Stamford in 1722, on the interest of the 8th Earl of Exeter, from whom he received a yearly pension for dealing with his accounts.1‘The Historical Part of Stamford Election 1734’, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. He acted with the Opposition till Walpole’s fall, speaking against the Hessians in 1731, against the army in 1732, and for the allowance to the Prince of Wales in 1737;2HMC Egmont Diary, i. 125-6; Harley Diary. but he withdrew on the motion for the removal of Walpole in February 1741. In March 1742 his name appears in both the court and the opposition lists for the secret committee on Walpole, to which he was elected.3Walpole to Mann, 1 Apr. 1742. At the opening of the next session he went over to the Government, voting for the Hanoverians, 10 Dec. 1742; but on 6 Dec. 1743 he spoke in favour of an address for disbanding them, saying that though he was in general for them, he thought that the ‘national discontent must be given way to’ and that he was ‘afraid of acting with a discontented army’, which would be ‘not an addition of strength but of weakness’.4Yorke’s parl. jnl. Parl. Hist. xiii. 146. He voted against the Hanoverians on 18 Jan. 1744 but spoke next day against an opposition motion for an inquiry into them,5Owen, Pelhams, 212. and voted for them in 1746, when he was classed as ‘Old Whig’, One of the managers of the House of Commons at the trial of Lord Lovat, he sat for West Looe on the government interest from 1747, till he was made chief justice of Chester in 1749. He died 8 Dec. 1762.