OLMIUS, John (1711-62), of New Hall, Boreham, Essex

Olmius was the grandson of a wealthy Dutch merchant of St. Peter-le-Poor, London, who bought the Essex estates of the Earl of Scarsdale at the beginning of the 18th century.Morant, Essex (1816), p. 84. Olmius bought New Hall, near Chelmsford, formerly the seat of the dukes of Buckingham and Albemarle, in 1737. He was a supporter of Walpole and subsequently of the Pelhams; and was returned for Colchester in 1754, after an interval of 12 years.

In 1757 Olmius presented a memorial to Newcastle,Add. 32874, f. 209. ‘to be laid before the King when there was any design to create Knights of the Bath’, detailing his services in elections at Weymouth and Colchester and during the ’45. About Colchester he wrote: ‘I may say no man has a better interest than myself’; and about Weymouth: ‘I stand in fear of none.’ Both statements appear to be highly exaggerated.

In the next reign he applied to Bute for an English peerage in the Coronation honours,1 Aug. 1761, Bute mss. and received an Irish one three months before his death on 5 Oct. 1762.