FELLOWES, Coulson (1696-1769), of Ramsey Abbey, Hunts. and Eggesford, Devon.

Coulson Fellowes’s grandfather, a London merchant, married the sister and heir of Thomas Coulson, M.P. for Totnes, a director of the East India Company; his uncle, Sir John Fellowes, 1st Bt., was deputy governor of the South Sea Company; his father, a lawyer, acquired an estate in Devonshire.Polwhele, Devon, iii. 388. Buying Ramsey Abbey in 1737,VCH Hunts. ii. 194. he was returned for Huntingdonshire in 1741 as an opposition Whig, with the support of Lord Sandwich. He voted consistently against the Administration, even after Sandwich accepted office in 1744. None the less in 1747 Sandwich made his own candidate join with Fellowes,

as I knew it would be a more certain method of securing great part of Mr. Fellowes’s interest upon any other occasion by joining him, than by suffering him to connect and unite his personal friends with the Tory interest.Sandwich to Devonshire, 10 Oct. 1746, Devonshire mss; Bedford Corresp. i. 281-2.

In the new Parliament Fellowes was classed by the ministry as Opposition. Soon after the election, in recommending a place for a constituent, Sandwich wrote to the Duke of Bedford:

If hereafter I should have any occasion (as may very likely be the case) to oppose Mr. Fellowes or his son, I shall by obliging this man be able to carry more than half his own town of Ramsey against him.

When at the end of 1751 John Proby became a candidate, Sandwich claimed to have prevailed upon Fellowes to decline in Proby’s favour, provided that the latter joined Sandwich’s brother, Captain William Montagu. But on 18 Apr. 1753 Fellowes sent out a circular letter stating that Montagu, having declined standing at the next general election, ‘recommended me to his friends for their votes and interests.’Sandwich to Bedford, 2 Feb. 1748 and 15 Dec. 1751, to Ld. Trentham, 15 Dec. 1751, Bedford mss. Re-elected unopposed, he died 23 Feb. 1769.