Family and Education

bap. 5 Mar. 1699, 1st surv. s. of William Hucks. educ. Trinity, Camb. 1717; I. Temple 1720. m. 22 Dec. 1730, Sarah, da. of Henry Coghill of Pennes Place, in Aldenham, sis. and h. of Henry Coghill of Pennes Place, niece and h. of Thomas Coghill of Wigbournes, in Aldenham, 2s. 6da. suc. fa. 1740.

Offices Held

Recorder, Wallingford 1733; King’s brewer 1740-d.; treasurer of the Foundling Hospital 1744.

Biography

Robert Hucks was returned for Abingdon, his mother’s town, at three contested elections, consistently voting with the Government. An ‘enemy of religious establishments’, he spoke in 1736 against a grant to repair Henry VII’s chapel and promoted the mortmain bill to restrain the alienation of land to religious and charitable institutions. Next year he was one of the common councillors of the Georgia trust who resigned owing to their objection to the appropriation of land in Georgia to the endowment of the Church of England there. Though remaining a trustee, he took little further interest in the colony, observing in 1739 that ‘if we may have peace with Spain by giving up Georgia it were a good thing’.1 He did not stand in 1741. In 1743, having succeeded his father as King’s brewer and the owner of ‘several thousand butts’, he presented a petition to the Treasury from London victuallers, praying for the repeal of the Pot Act, a levy on publicans.2

He died 21 Dec. 1745.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: R. S. Lea

Notes

See J. A. Gibbs, Hist. Antony and Dorothea Gibbs, 37-40.

• 1. HMC Egmont Diary, ii. 236, 372-3, 479; iii. 28, 36, 109; Harley Diary; see also WHITE, John, and MORE, Robert.
• 2. Mathias, Brewing Industry in England, 22, 116; Cal. Treas. Pprs. 1742-5, pp. 230, 232.