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LISLE, Warren (c.1695-1788), of Upway, Dorset
Available from Boydell and Brewer
Constituency
Dates
Family and Education
b. c.1695, s. of Warren Lisle, searcher of the customs at Poole. m. (1) 1da. and other issue; (2) Ruth, da. of Henry Clapcott of Winterbourne Abbas, Dorset, 1s. and other issue.
Offices Held
Searcher of the customs at Weymouth 1721-73.
Biography
Warren Lisle was the captain of an anti-smuggling sloop based at Weymouth. He was said to have been, for more than forty years, ‘the utmost terror to the smugglers, and thereby realized an ample fortune’.1 His reasons for retiring were given in a letter to Shelburne of 31 July 1782:2
Because I could serve no longer with honour or credit to myself; for being connected at Lyme and having some interest there, and choosing to exercise my own opinion and to give my vote agreeable to my own dictates, I thought it more prudent to quit that service which I and every other person in my predicament were threatened we should be dismissed from, if we dared speak against the interest of the Fanes there.
Lisle was connected by marriage with Gabriel Steward, the patron of Weymouth and Melcombe Regis. At the general election of 1780 Steward was mayor and returning officer and therefore ineligible to contest the borough. He chose Lisle, then aged 85, as locum tenens until his mayoralty ended.
Lisle died July 1788, aged 93.