The Nicholas family were originally settled at Roundway near Devizes, and one of them, John Nicholas, represented the borough 1713-15. But ‘Robert sold Roundway about 1780 and went to live at Ashton Keynes’, which came to him through his maternal grandmother.
At the general election of 1784, Nicholas and John Walker Heneage stood jointly as supporters of Pitt; were defeated on the poll but seated on petition. Nicholas voted with Pitt over parliamentary reform, 18 Apr. 1785, and during the Regency crisis, 1788-9, but against Richmond’s fortifications plan, 27 Feb. 1786. Apparently he never spoke in the House.
On 19 Mar. 1788 Nicholas wrote to Pitt asking on a vacancy to be appointed receiver of the land tax for North Wilts. The ‘severe contest at the last general election’ and the further expense of the petition, ‘though it has not involved me in any debt, has occasioned a diminution of my property which I could not justify to my family, except from those public principles upon which I acted’. A commissionership of Excise or Customs would be even more agreeable to him.
He was appointed commissioner of the Excise in March 1790, which vacated his seat. He died 27 Dec. 1826.