Edmund Boulter

Edmund Boulter (abt 1635 – 1709), was a London merchant and politician. He was the eldest son of John Boulter, a maltster, twice mayor of Abingdon and his wife born Susannah Cutler, sister of Sir John Cutler (baronet), later Edmund's business partner.^[1]

Great North Road Sibson Cambridgeshire
milestone and mounting block
engraved EB 1708

Family

Growing up during the interregnum Boulter seems to have been by choice a Dissenter or Presbyterian. He was apprenticed to the Haberdashers' Company 23 July 1647 when he may have been as young as twelve. His father died young and Boulter helped educate his siblings and, later, their children. His brother Robert, a Cornhill stationer, and substantial supplier of books to Massachusetts was one of the original publishers of Milton's Paradise Lost.^[1]

Career

Boulter was a successful businessman to the extent that though a Haberdasher he was courted at length by the Worshipful Company of Grocers to join their company his trade with them being so extensive.^[1]

Elected positions in London

Edmund Boulter was elected to the City Of London Lieutenancy in 1690, 1694, 1704 and 1708. He was also chosen Sheriff of London in July 1694 but paid a fine to be released from the obligation.^[1]

His uncle and sometime business partner, Sir John Cutler, baronet, died in 1693 and less than four years later Sir John's daughter, Elizabeth, Countess of Radnor, died without leaving children so that the property in her marriage settlement reverted to Edmund Boulter. He now had two extra landed estates to manage, Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire and Gawthorpe Hall and Harewood Castle near Leeds in Yorkshire. Obliged to ride the Great North Road regularly and now aged near three score years and ten he set up convenient re-mounting posts between Leeds and Cambridge. Here is a report on them made a century later "From Stilton to Grantham at convenient distances, are stones with three steps, placed there by a Mr Boulter, for the easy mounting of his horse, he being a very corpulent man, and traveling this road every week for many years; on each stone was engraved E.B. 1708, several of which are now defaced."^[2]

House of Commons

In 1698 Boulter was elected representative for the parliamentary borough of Boston, having business of long standing there. This may have been designed to defuse the effect of a claim of parliamentary privilege by his cousin's widower, the Earl of Radnor, by acquiring similar privilege. Boulter did not stand again.^[1]

Death

“Mr. Boulter, a grocer of the citty, and executor of the late Sir John Cutler, is dead, worth 150,000 L, 'tis said, has left 2000l. per ann. to Mr. Boulter, a relation of him in Yorkshire, and 2000l. per ann. more to his nephew, Mr. Fryor,^{[note 1]} a pewterer in Gracechurch street.”^[3]

Edmund Boulter died 15 February 1708/1709 and was buried nine days later in the south chancel of St Christopher le Stocks, Threadneedle Street, London.

Aside from the reverted property Wimpole, Gawthorpe and Harewood, where Sir John Cutler had lived in the castle, Boulter owned Little Haseley Oxfordshire, estates in Lincolnshire, the manor of Deptford near London, and estates in Hampshire Wherwell and Goodworth Clatford acquired in 1695 from Lord de la Warr, property in Kent and London and in Somerset.

Boulter Exhibition, Pembroke College, Oxford

In 1736 his nephew of the same name died at Avignon where he had taken his daughter for the benefit of her health. "Edmund Boulter (1678-1736), of Harewood, Yorks, and Hasely Court, Oxon, left to the College £20 yearly for a Scholarship, to be called the Cutler-Boulter Scholarship, in honour of his [great-]uncle, Sir John Cutler. This is the millionaire the opening of whose will on April 20, 1693, excited so much interest (see Luttrell's Brief Relation, iii. 81, and Wood's Life and Times, iii. 409, 420). In it were bequeathed lands worth £6000 a year to the testator's daughter, the Countess of Radnor, and her issue, and failing such issue to Sir John's nephew, Mr. Boulter, who also inherited half the personal estate, about £300,000, and was executor of the will." . . . " left money also to found the Almshouse in Oxford which bears his name."^[4] See: Oswald Lewis, Thomas Smith, Richard Sorabji.

Wherwell crypt for John Fryer's descendants

Notes

1. Sir John Fryer, Baronet (1671 – 1726) lord mayor of London 1720, built Wherwell Priory

References

1. David Hayton, Eveline Cruickshanks, Stuart Handley (editors) The House of Commons, 1690-1715 Vol. 1, Page 276, 2002 Cambridge University Press
2. Daniel Paterson, A new and accurate description of all the direct and principal cross roads ... 15th edition, London 1811, Longman Hurst Rees & Co.
3. Narcissus Luttrell A Brief Historical Relation of State Affairs 1857 Oxford
4. Douglas MacLeane Pembroke College 1900 reprinted London 1998 Routledge Thoemmes Press

External links

• Remains of Gawthorpe Hall discovered in Yorkshire