CALL, John (1732-1801), of Whiteford, nr. Callington, Cornw.

John Call, who had returned from India with an ‘ample fortune which might have been much larger’,Gent. Mag. (1801), i. 369; J. Allen, Liskeard, 505. continued to sit for Callington on his own interest and to support Pitt’s administration. He was from 1782 a conscientious commissioner of crown lands and bought a town house in Old Burlington Street in 1785 to carry on his work. He interested himself particularly in the promotion of timber growing, a subject on which he corresponded frequently with Pitt, to whom he also communicated his services in India.PRO 30/8/119, ff. 24, 29-32, 33, 39, 62, 74, 76. He wrote on 17 Dec. 1793 about the situation in the French islands (f. 80). He was rewarded in July 1791 with a baronetcy.

Call, listed hostile to the repeal of the Test Act in Scotland in 1791, is not known to have spoken in the House until he did so on 3 May 1792 ‘in strenuous support’ of the bill to encourage the growth of timber in the New Forest. On 20 May 1795 he said a few words on the abuse of franking and on 1 June spoke in favour of the immediate discharge of the Prince of Wales’s debts and the sale of the duchy of Cornwall, which would ‘in every respect be advantageous to the public and relieve the Prince from his embarrassment’.

‘Cataracts in his eyes produced total blindness six years previous to his death; throughout which period he was never heard to murmur at the dispensations of Providence.’Gent. Mag. loc. cit. Call retained his seat in Parliament, but without drawing attention to himself. On 3 Apr. 1797 he was a defaulter, but he voted with ministers on the loyalty loan, 1 June 1797. He turned ‘his naturally active and benevolent mind to agricultural pursuits, for which he received a medal from the board of agriculture’. He also had interests in banking (Pybus, Call, Grant & Co. of Bond Street), copper smelting and plate glass manufacture, and was an East India Company stockholder. He died of apoplexy, 1 Mar. 1801.