Family and Education

b. c.1686, 1st s. of William Whitaker of Motcombe by Susanna Erle.  educ. New Coll. Oxf. matric. 16 Feb. 1704, aged 17. unm.  suc. fa. 1726.1

Offices Held

Sheriff, Dorset 1737.

Biography

The Whitaker family’s principal seat, which had been purchased in 1648, was at Motcombe, near Shaftesbury. The Member’s great-grandfather, William†, and his grandfather, Henry†, had been recorders of Shaftesbury and also represented the town in Parliament. The latter had been an Exclusionist, but Whitaker himself, like his father, was a Tory. Returned for Shaftesbury on the interest of his fellow Tory, Edward Nicholas*, at a by-election in 1711, he was a member of the October Club and was listed among the ‘worthy patriots’ who detected the mismanagements of the previous administration. In 1712 he was one of a number of Tories added to the Dorset commission of the peace by Lord Harcourt (Simon I*). Re-elected in 1713, he was marked as a Tory in the Worsley list. Whitaker did not stand again for Parliament and died in 1746, passing his estates to his brother, Walter.2

Ref Volumes: 1690-1715

Author: Paula Watson

Notes

• 1. Hutchins, Dorset, iii. 628.
• 2. B. Rand, Shaftesbury, 344; Keeler, Long Parl. 389–90; L. K. J. Glassey, Appt. JPs, 212.