REVELL, Thomas (d.1752), of Fetcham Park, Surr.

Revell, of whose origins and first two marriages nothing is known, started his career as victualling agent at Lisbon in 1716,Add. 15936, f. 90. rising to become a commissioner of victualling at £500 p.a. Awarded a lucrative contract for victualling the garrison of GibraltarCal. Treas. Bks. and Pprs. 1731-4, p. 400. in 1733, he was able by 1735 to buy Fetcham Park. During the remainder of his life he made a considerable fortune out of such army contracts. When, on his standing in 1734 at Dover, his fellow commissioners ‘agreed to have four hundred head of oxen killed at Dover ... Thomas Revell ... bought the offals of the said four hundred oxen and ordered them to be given to the poor inhabitants.’St. James’s Evening Post, 29 Jan. 1734. He consistently supported the Administration but in 1747 resigned his office which, under the Place Act of 1742, was about to become incompatible with a seat in the Commons. He died 26 Jan. 1752, leaving his daughter Jane, still a minor, a fortune of over £20,000.