Family and Education

b. c.1694, 1st s. of Joseph Gulston, merchant of Lisbon. m. secretly c.1733, Maricas de Sylva, da. of a Portuguese merchant, 2s. 2da.

Offices Held

Director, South Sea Co. 1742-60.

Biography

Gulston came of a younger branch of the Gulstons of Wyddial, Herts. (see Gulston, Richard). He was the ‘head of the first mercantile house in the British factory at Lisbon,’ presumably inherited from his father, who is said never to have been in England. Some time before 1730 he moved to England, accompanied by his widowed sister, who subsequently married John Goddard, her daughter, who married Henry Penton, and a Portuguese friend of the daughter’s, whom he married himself.1 In 1737 he successfully contested Tregony, for which his brother-in-law, Goddard, had sat 1727-36, and Penton sat 1734-47. In 1741 he transferred himself to Poole, with which borough he was probably connected through his extensive trade with both North and South America. In Parliament he regularly voted with the Administration, from whom he held various contracts: e.g. in 1739 for supplying masts to the Royal Navy, in which connexion his trading interests in New Hampshire are mentioned.2 In 1742, together with John Gore, he obtained a contract for remitting money for paying Danish and Hessian troops, and in January 1743 for remittances to Flanders.3 These contracts were continued to the end of the war.

Gulston continued to sit for Poole till 1765, when he vacated his seat in favour of his son. He died 16 Aug. 1766.

Ref Volumes: 1715-1754

Author: Eveline Cruickshanks

Notes

• 1. Nichols, Lit. Hist. v. 2-5.
• 2. APC Col. 1720-45, p. 637.
• 3. Cal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1742-45, pp. 37-38, 225-6, 443, 664; T29/30, ff. 258, 378; 29/31, f. 143.