MARTIN, Samuel (1714-88), of Abingdon Bldgs., London.

Martin came of one of the oldest and most respected West Indian families.Caribbeana, i. 184. In 1747 he was included in the Prince of Wales’s list of persons ‘not able to bring in themselves’ for whom safe seats had been provided.HMC Fortescue, i. 108. Returned by Thomas Pitt for Camelford, in February 1748 he opposed a bill of poundage on all imported goods and merchandises, enlarging on the ruinous effects of existing duties on English trade; on 4 Feb. 1751 he ‘made a speech of great wit against standing armies, with very new arguments’; and a few days later spoke ably against the Bavarian subsidy.Parl. Hist. xiv. 178-9; Walpole, Mems. Geo. II, i. 26, 48. The second Lord Egmont wrote of him as ‘a fellow whom I had supported with the Prince ... and who slighted me in the House, warping into Nugent’s set’, and who, on the Prince’s death ‘had insolently answered me the first day that his attachments were now at an end’.Occasional memoranda, Add. 47091. Going over to the Government, he supported the regency bill in May 1751, but in November of that year he voted against the army, with Lords Egmont and Middlesex, the only members of the late Prince’s faction to do so.Mems. Geo. II, i. 136, 216.

He died 20 Nov. 1788.