ALSTON, Sir Rowland, 4th Bt. (1679-1759), of Odell, Beds.

Sir Rowland Alston represented the county as a Whig in three Parliaments, voting for the Administration in all recorded divisions. Before the 1734 election his uncle, the Duke of Kent, wrote to Walpole: ‘As for Sir Rowland Alston, tho’ I have no reason to like him nor his behaviour to me, yet my resentment would not carry me so far but I could give it up if the public required it’.15 Dec. 1733, Cholmondeley (Houghton) mss. Alston was then standing with John Spencer, the Duchess of Marlborough’s grandson. The Duchess disliked ‘joining with so bad a man as Alston ... a certain enemy to the public’,G. Scott Thomson, Letters of a Grandmother, 113-14. but both he and Spencer were returned. He did not stand in 1741 and died 2 Jan. 1759.