Richard Bull (MP) facts for kids
Richard Bull (1721–1805) was an English landowner and a member of Parliament. He served in the House of Commons from 1756 to 1780. Richard Bull was also a famous art collector. He lived in a historic house on the Isle of Wight.
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Contents
Early Life and Family
Richard Bull was born in London and was baptized on November 15, 1721. He was the only son of a rich businessman named Sir John Bull and his second wife, Elizabeth Turner.
His younger sister, Kitty Bull (1732–1805), married Reverend Charles Smith. Charles was the brother of William Smith, who managed the money for the King's weapons.
Education and Marriage
Richard Bull went to Westminster School in 1735. Later, in 1742, he started studying law at Lincoln's Inn. However, his father passed away, and Richard inherited the family home called The White House in Chipping Ongar. He also inherited land on the Isle of Wight.
Because of this, he stopped his law studies. Instead, he went to Trinity Hall, Cambridge in 1743, where he studied classical subjects. In 1747, he married Mary Ash, a widow who already had two children. Richard took care of her children, Richard Henry Alexander Bennet and Levina Bennet. Levina later married John Luther in 1762. Richard and Mary also had two daughters together, Elizabeth and Catherine, who never married.
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Homes and Later Years
From 1755 to 1774, Richard Bull had a house in London on Upper Brook Street. After that, he moved to another London house on Stratton Street.
In 1783, he started spending time at Northcourt Manor in Shorwell on the Isle of Wight. This was a special place because his grandfather came from there. When his daughter Catherine died in 1795, he bought Northcourt. He and his daughter Elizabeth moved there and spent years making the house, gardens, and grounds even better.
Richard Bull did not have any sons. He gave a large sum of money to his nephew, Charles Hewitt Smith, but it was all spent. Richard Bull died on December 12, 1805. He did not leave a will, so his daughter Elizabeth inherited everything. When Elizabeth died in 1809, Northcourt and everything inside it went to her half-brother Richard and half-sister Levina.
Political Life
In 1756, Richard Bull became a Member of Parliament (MP) for Newport, Cornwall. He was chosen without anyone running against him. Newport was known as a "rotten borough". This meant it was a very small town with few voters, but it still had the power to elect MPs.
Through a friend, Richard Bull asked the Prime Minister, Lord Bute, for a job in 1761. Instead, he was given an annual income of 600 pounds from the government's Secret Service budget. This amount was worth about 83,000 pounds in 2014. Because he received this money every year, he never voted against the government. There is also no record of him ever speaking in Parliament. From 1770 to 1774, his stepson was the other MP for his area.
Art Collection and Books
Richard Bull loved collecting prints, drawings, and books. One of his main interests was something called "extra-illustration". This is when someone adds extra pictures, especially engravings, into an existing book.
Richard Bull extra-illustrated nearly seventy books. One of his most famous projects was a copy of James Granger's Biographical History of England. He made this book much bigger, expanding it into thirty-five large volumes by adding many pictures. His daughters helped him a lot with the physical work of cutting and pasting.
Richard Bull's extra-illustrated Granger book is now kept at the Huntington Library in California. It was one of the first books to be extra-illustrated in this way. What makes his copy special is that there are many letters between him and James Granger. These letters, kept at Eaton College, show how much Richard Bull learned about prints, British history, and the art trade in the 1700s.
His passion for collecting prints made their prices go up, and his friend Horace Walpole even blamed him for it! However, Richard Bull's careful search for and collection of prints actually saved many of them from being lost forever.
His library had about five hundred illustrated books, mostly about places. He also had about two hundred books printed before 1700. Both Horace Walpole and Anthony Morris Storer gave him books. Richard Bull had these books bound in simple red leather and placed them in his library at Northcourt. He was a very important customer for Edwards, the bookbinders from Halifax. They even gave his daughter a free prayer book to thank him for recommending them and for his other kindnesses.
After he died, an article said that he "showed a passion for the arts, especially engraving, which he studied a lot and turned into a deep knowledge almost unique to him." It also said that "this respected man continued his favorite hobby for most of the century and built a monument of good taste for himself." His collection was sold at an auction at Sotheby's in 1881, and the sale lasted for six days.
Portraits
Two paintings by Arthur Devis show Richard Bull. One is a "conversation piece" painted in 1747, showing Richard and Mary when they were newly married. A later painting shows the couple with Mary's two children, Richard and Levina.
