MARSH, Samuel (?1736-95), of Battersea, Surr. and Uxbridge, Mdx.

After the death of Sir Samuel Fludyer, 21 Jan. 1768, his mercantile house in Basinghall Street was continued by his brother as Sir Thomas Fludyer Co., and after Thomas’s death (19 Mar. 1769) as ‘Fludyer, Marsh Hudson’, till Marsh disappears from it in 1778. A William Marsh of Eltham, Kent, died 2 Mar. 1778. Possibly he was Samuel’s father and Fludyer’s partner, but the partner may have been Samuel himself, who appears in the Court City Register of 1775 as ‘a Blackwell Hall factor’ (the main business of the Fludyers) and whose address is given as Basinghall Street. He may have retired from business on coming into his father’s inheritance.

Marsh canvassed Chippenham on the death of Thomas Fludyer,Salisbury Jnl. 20 Mar. 1769. but gave up without a contest. In 1774 he was returned on the Fludyer interest: Samuel Fludyer’s sons were still under age, and Thomas left no sons. He seems at first to have voted with Government; on the contractors bill, 12 Feb. 1779, he was classed by Robinson ‘pro, absent, hopeful’; but in two divisions on economical reform and in that on Dunning’s motion, 6 Apr. 1780, he voted with Opposition. Still, in a report to the King on that last occasion, he was included among ‘persons generally with [Government] who went against’.Fortescue, iii. 419. He did not stand again in 1780, when his seat was filled by Giles Hudson, described in Robinson’s survey of 1780 as ‘acting partner in the house late of Sir Samuel Fludyer’.

Marsh died 18 Mar. 1795, aged 58, leaving bequests to the children of the two Fludyers.