BOSS, John George (1781-1837), of Otterington Hall, nr. Northallerton, Yorks.

Boss was born at Beverley in 1781 ‘of parents in very humble circumstances’.2W.G. Boss, An inquiry concerning the Boss family and the name Boss (1902), 151. Educated by his aunt, Mrs. Frances Savage, ‘a very distinguished member of the methodist communion’ in Hornsea, he was apprenticed to the merchant navy, but soon left to join the royal navy as a midshipman in 1796. When hostilities with the French resumed after the short-lived peace of Amiens (1802), Boss was briefly captured by the enemy. He subsequently served in the West Indies (including in the Leeward Islands and Martinique) and at the Lisbon and Cadiz stations. In 1811 he was appointed commander, and the following year, he received a presentation of plate from merchants ‘for his zeal and valour in the destruction of two French privateers, and in defending a convoy from St. Jago de Cuba to Heneaga’. He received another presentation in 1813 to reward his exertions in saving all hands and almost all of the 500,000 dollars on board his sloop, the Rhodian, when it was wrecked off the coast of Jamaica. He was appointed a captain (on the half-pay list) in 1833.3Gent. Mag. (1838), i. 100.

A ‘hearty, coarse, good-humoured “jolly tar”’, Boss moved to live at Otterington Hall, four miles from Northallerton, in the late 1820s.4Daily News, 23 Feb. 1849. Boss had not moved to Northallerton as of 1828, being then resident at Ryton Grove, near Newcastle: W. Parson and W. White, History, directory and gazetteer of the counties of Durham and Northumberland (2 vols., 1828), ii. 5. Finding himself in the town during the 1831 contest, Boss, whose first wife was first cousin to Earl Grey, the prime minister, ‘harangue[d]’ the crowd on the subject of Reform, sending for barrels of ale to ‘wet his whistle’, with the result that ‘the town before long became the scene of a riot’, an event which served to boost Boss’s popularity.5Daily News, 23 Feb. 1849. Prior to 1832, Northallerton’s representation was shared between the earl of Harewood (the Lascelles family) and the Peirse family, but the Reform Act reduced it to a single seat.6HP Commons, 1820-32, iii. 276-7. Boss was approached in 1832 by a local deputation seeking a candidate to challenge William Battie Wrightson, a Whig who was being brought out ‘upon the old boroughmongering interest’.7Daily News, 23 Feb. 1849. His relationship to Grey provided ‘a strong recommendation to the favour of the Reformers’.8Gent. Mag. (1838), i. 100. Once assured of a reasonable chance of success – with a memorial signed by two-thirds of the electors – the ‘gallant captain’ agreed to stand ‘for the sole purpose of opening the borough’, and canvassed with a large gilded key displayed from his carriage.9J.L. Saywell, The history and annals of Northallerton (1885), 161, 167. At a Reform celebration in the constituency in June 1832, Boss declared that ‘I am a gentleman of small independence, and it might, perhaps, be no difficult matter for the earl of Harewood and sir John Beresford [from the Peirse interest] combined, by their purses and influences, to crush captain Boss of the navy in the dust, but my spirit they will never conquer… the noble love of liberty which warms the breast of every true-born Englishman, and particularly that of a sailor’. ‘Freedom and Independence’ were the watchwords of his campaign, but he provided little indication of his policies. Nevertheless, having won the show of hands, he was elected with a majority of 11 after Wrightson retired on the first day.10Ibid., 164-6.

Boss, who is not known to have spoken in debate during his time in Parliament, was appointed to the 1834 select committee on lighthouses, and formed part of a deputation to Lord Althorp on the subject of select vestries in the same year.11PP 1834 (590), xii. 1; Newcastle Courant, 8 Mar. 1834. A later account recorded that his attempts to listen to debates ‘usually ended in his falling to sleep on a back bench, or stretching himself out at length in the gallery… The forms of the house were an awful puzzle to him, and when the division bell sounded – or, as he used to say, “all hands were piped” – which gangway he ought to go out at, whether he was an “aye” or a “no”… were points on which he never could arrive at a decision.’12Daily News, 23 Feb. 1849. This confusion could explain why his votes do not appear to follow any consistent pattern. He voted with ministers to allow courts martial for civil offences under the Irish coercion bill, 19 Mar. 1833, but against them on Harvey’s motions for inquiry into the pension list, 18 Feb. and 5 May 1834. He divided for the bill to disfranchise Liverpool freemen (which came from a Conservative backbencher), 26 Feb. 1834, but opposed Hume’s motion for a moderate fixed duty on corn, 8 Mar. 1834. His naval background was reflected in his vote with the minority for a select committee to devise plans for a regular supply of naval recruits rather than resorting to forcible impressment, 4 Mar. 1834. His first wife having died during the 1832 election campaign, Boss remarried in July 1834, departing in ‘a splendid travelling carriage [with] four grays’ for an extensive Continental honeymoon.13The Times, 31 July 1834.

At the 1835 election, Boss canvassed for two days, before retiring in Wrightson’s favour, although he reserved the right to re-enter the field should a Tory candidate appear.14C.J.D. Ingledew, The history and antiquities of North Allerton, in the county of York (1858), 133; The Examiner, 14 Dec. 1834. The Lascelles and Peirse families had made efforts to reassert their electoral influence, and Northallerton’s electors were said to have realised that Boss ‘was out of his element’ in Parliament. He also alienated supporters by his complaints about the costs of the 1832 contest, when ‘from pure jollity of character, he had caused the tap to flow right easily’. As an army officer on half-pay (£184 per annum15PP 1833 (671), xii. 13.), he only met the ensuing £750 bill with difficulty after the contest.16Daily News, 23 Feb. 1849. Rumours that Boss would offer instead at South Shields in 1835 proved unfounded.17Leeds Mercury, 3 Jan. 1835. He died at Otterington Hall in October 1837 after a short illness, survived by his second wife and their daughter.18Newcastle Courant, 6 Oct. 1837.