GORE, John (c.1689-1763), of Bush Hill, Mdx.

Gore was a Hamburg merchant, trading in partnership with Joseph Mellish, M.P., who became his son-in-law. As a director of the South Sea Company at the time of the Bubble, he was found by the House of Commons to have had ‘little or no share in the fraudulent contrivances of the leading directors’, and was allowed to retain £20,000 out of a fortune valued at nearly £39,000.Hist. Reg. 1721, chron. 211. He subsequently became a leading government financier, obtaining contracts for remittances for British troops abroad and subsidies to foreign governments amounting to over £5,000,000 between 1741 and 1752, on which he received commission varying from five to fifteen per cent.Namier, Structure, 47 n. 1. For details of these contracts see Cal. Treas. Pprs. 1739-41 and 1742-5. When in 1743 a rival firm offered to undertake these remittances at a lower rate, Pelham decided for Gore, on the ground of his ‘superior advantages in ensuring the regularity of the remittances’.Coxe, Pelham, i. 59-60.

Gore was returned unopposed for Great Grimsby in 1747. He is described as ‘Gore the remittancer’ in the 2nd Lord Egmont’s electoral survey, c.1749-50, where he is put down as one of those to be ‘routed’ on Frederick’s accession. Re-elected in 1754, he died 3 Aug. 1763, ‘the last surviving director of the South Sea Company in the year 1720’.Gent. Mag. 1763, p. 415.