JEKYLL, Joseph (1754-1837).

Jekyll was returned for Calne on Lord Lansdowne’s interest; voted with the Administration on Impey’s impeachment and during the Regency crisis; and spoke a few times in the House, 1789-1790, mainly on legal matters. In the Dictionary of National Biography W. P. Courtney classes him as a ‘wit’. But Lady Susan O’Brien, having dined in his company during the Dorchester assizes, wrote in her ‘Journal’ on 25 July 1806: ‘quite disagreeable, such endless attempts at wit and spinning every idea threadbare as to be quite wearisome to the hearers.’Lord Ilchester’s mss. Some of his jeux d’esprit have been reproduced, but it requires an effort to read them.N. Q. (ser. 1), x. 172; Fitzmaurice, Shelburne, ii. 416-18.

Jekyll died 8 Mar. 1837.