HALLIDAY, John (?1737-1805), of Yard House, nr. Taunton, Som.

Published in The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1754-1790, ed. L. Namier, J. Brooke., 1964
Available from Boydell and Brewer

Constituency

Dates

16 Mar. 1775 - 1784

Family and Education

b. ?1737, 1st s. of John Halliday. educ. I. Temple 1756. unm. suc. fa. 1754.

Offices Held

Biography

About 1770 Halliday founded the banking firm of Halliday and Co. in Lombard Street, and in 1776 went into partnership with Sir John Duntze.

In 1774 he contested Taunton; was defeated, but returned on petition. He at first voted with Opposition, but over the contractors bill, 12 Feb. 1779, was listed as ‘pro, absent. Query hopeful’, and henceforth supported Administration till the fall of North. He voted against Shelburne’s peace preliminaries, 18 Feb. 1783, for parliamentary reform, 7 May 1783, and for Fox’s East India bill, 27 Nov. 1783, but was classed as ‘pro’ by Robinson, January 1784, and in Stockdale’s list of 19 Mar. There is no record of his having spoken in the House.

Halliday did not stand at the general election of 1784, hoping instead to obtain a vacant commissionership of taxes. To this end he exerted himself to get an Administration supporter returned at Taunton (‘by which [zeal] I greatly endangered my life at a time when I had been confined to my bed by the gout’, he later wrote to Pitt),1 and at the same time ‘relinquished a partnership in the banking house of Sir John Duntze and Co. which would ... since have been very profitable to me on purpose to remove any objection to the appointment then promised me’. But he did not get it. In 1790 he again stood at Taunton but was defeated.

He died 21 Apr. 1805, aged 68.

Ref Volumes: 1754-1790

Author: Mary M. Drummond

Notes

  • 1. 20 July 1792, Chatham mss.