GLANVILLE, William (c.1686-1766), of St. Clere, nr. Sevenoaks, Kent.

After contesting Bletchingley unsuccessfully on the death of an elder brother in 1724, William Glanville was returned by the Duke of Dorset for Hythe, which he represented for nearly 40 years, despite complaints of his failure to make gifts ‘for the public good of the town’.Mayor of Hythe to Dorset’s secretary, Nov. 1734, Sackville mss, Kent AO. A member of the 1729 gaols committee of the House of Commons, in 1730 he introduced a bill for enabling civil cases to be finally decided at the assizes, ‘urging the inconveniences of prolonging suits by bringing them up to Westminster and the opportunities given to rascally attornies to eat up the substance of poor men’. In the same session he opposed a petition sponsored by Sir John Barnard for terminating the monopoly of the East India Company, describing it as ‘a pickpocket petition’. In 1731 he supported a bill for enabling unenumerated goods to come direct from the plantations to Ireland without touching at England. In 1732 he spoke in favour of the bill for voiding the sale of the Derwentwater estates; in 1733 he defended Sir Robert Sutton and opposed a bill for preventing ‘the pernicious practice of stock-jobbing’; in 1734 he opposed a bill for enforcing the land qualification for Members; and in 1730 he piloted through the Commons the Quakers’ tithe bill, which was thrown out by the Lords.HMC Egmont Diary, i. 54, 67, 177, 248, 368; ii. 31; N. C. Hunt, Two Early Political Assocs. 86-89; Harley Diary, 17 Mar. and 30 Apr. 1736. Voting regularly with the Government he was made a commissioner of Irish revenue in 1735, surrendering it to a friend, who paid him half the income,Chase Price to Grafton, 19 Oct. 1766, Chase Price mss in the possession of the Marquess of Salisbury. in 1747, when it became inconsistent with a seat in Parliament under the Place Act of 1742. He died 19 Oct. 1766.