CALVERT, Thomas (b.1755), of Wimpole Street, Mdx.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1790-1820, ed. R. Thorne, 1986
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

21 Feb. 1792 - 30 Oct. 1795

Family and Education

b. 26 May 1755, o.s. of Felix Calvert of St. Giles without Cripplegate, London by Rebecca, da. of Thomas Bayley of Arley, Warws. m. 13 July 1787, at Calcutta, Anne, da. of Thomas Philpott, 2s. 5da. suc. fa. 1764.

Offices Held

Writer, E.I. Co (Bengal) 1772; salt agent, Chittagong 1776; factor 1777, jun. merchant 1780; salt agent, Hijili 1782, sen. merchant 1785; comptroller of salt agency 1788; res. 1789.

Vol. London and Westminster light horse 1798-1800.

Biography

Calvert, a nephew of John Calvert I*, entered the East India Company service after three years’ commercial education at Bromley by Bow. He described himself to Lord Cornwallis as the senior servant of the salt department, with 11 years’ service, when he applied to become comptroller of it, 18 Oct. 1786. A year before, he had paid unsuccessful court to a colleague’s daughter, Anne Philpott. As ‘diffidence or bashfulness was not amongst his failings’, he bought a post-chaise and four to impress her and asked her, ‘What think you of the bait within it’, to which she replied ‘Do you mean to speak in French or English?’. Having exercised her wit upon him, she married him. In September 1787 Calvert applied to Cornwallis for the position at Chittagong for his father-in-law. William Hickey, who claimed that Calvert made a large fortune, described him as ‘a man of not very elegant manners nor person’.2 He came home to England in 1789.

Calvert was returned for St. Mawes on the Marquess of Buckingham’s interest on a vacancy for which Pitt recommended him, in November 1791, as ‘an East Indian of good fortune and character, and a nephew of Calvert of Hertfordshire’, who was ready ‘to go as far as three thousand pounds’.3 He made no mark in Parliament and vacated his seat in 1795. His name features in the betting book of White’s Club, and he was an East India Company stockholder. His death seems to have taken place abroad; he was preparing to leave England in September 1819 and was not described as deceased in 1821 when his son was admitted to Lincoln’s Inn.4

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: J. W. Anderson

Notes

  • 1. Herts. RO, Calvert mss 25864.
  • 2. India Office Lib. J/1/8, ff. 298-300; Bengal Past and Present, xlix. 115; PRO, Cornwallis mss; Hickey Mems. ed Spencer, iii. 289, 291-2.
  • 3. W. H. Rose, Pitt and Napoleon, 107.
  • 4. Calvert mss 25872.