FULLER, John (1732-1804), of Lewes, Suss.

John Fuller was a small man, who made himself a nuisance to Newcastle at Lewes. To keep him quiet, Newcastle in 1754 arranged for him to be brought into Parliament for Tregony, and £1455 for his expenses was paid out of secret service funds.Namier, Structure, 200. In Dupplin’s list he is naturally classed as a supporter of Administration. No vote or speech by him is recorded.

By 1760 he was again on bad terms with Newcastle. To a list of ‘persons to be brought into Parliament the next election’, dated 8 May 1760, Newcastle added: ‘To be left out absolutely—Mr. John Fuller of Lewes.’Add. 32999, f. 4. Still, Fuller does not seem to have interfered in Lewes at the general election of 1761. A report, however, in the Stowe papersHuntington Lib.(unsigned and undated but placed by internal evidence in the second half of 1762) examining how Newcastle’s influence could be destroyed in Sussex and its boroughs, points to Fuller as an ‘unexceptionable candidate’ for Lewes.

He would warmly enter into any opposition both from a spirit of revenge (arising from some slights), and the hopes of success. He lives in the town and has the interest of all the malcontents there.

And at the by-election of Feb. 1763 Henry Fox was prepared to back him had there been any chance of success.Fox to J. L. Nicholl [Feb. 1763], Henry Fox mss. But nothing was done, and at the next by-election, in December 1766, Fuller, though described by Newcastle as his ‘great antagonist’, informed the Duke that he would not interfere, and apparently never did so again.Add. 32978, ff 321, 358.

He died 26 Jan. 1804.