14 Facts About Ayscoghe Boucherett

Ayscoghe Boucherett was the chairman of the Grimsby Haven Company, which oversaw the reopening and expansion of Grimsby's first dock.

Ayscoghe Boucherett was a friend of the artist Sir Thomas Lawrence and the proprietor of Willingham, Lincolnshire, where he constructed his country seat, Willingham House, in 1790.

Ayscoghe Boucherett was not a frequent voter, but used his position to further the interests of his corporation.

In 1803, Ayscoghe Boucherett resigned his seat in favour of Yarborough's heir and pursued a quieter political life.

The younger Ayscoghe Boucherett was admitted at Queens' College, Cambridge, in 1773, aged 18, but did not take a degree.

Ayscoghe Boucherett paid for the construction of a new family seat in 1790; Willingham House was a larger and grander mansion than the family's previous seat closer to Willingham, and was constructed in the neoclassical style, most likely by Robert Mitchell, two miles west of the earlier house.

Ayscoghe Boucherett visited Willingham House, the Boucherett family's country home, composing a number of studies in pastel of Boucherett's young children, beginning in 1793.

Ayscoghe Boucherett secured the friendship and patronage of Charles Anderson Pelham, 1st Baron Yarborough, a prominent local land-owner involved in the Haven Company, and was returned as the Member of Parliament for Great Grimsby in 1796 owing to this friendship.

Yarborough, Ayscoghe Boucherett's patron, was an opponent of the administration of William Pitt the Younger and supported the Duke of Portland during the 1790s.

Ayscoghe Boucherett was an infrequent voter, but he told the diarist Joseph Farington that, when he did vote, he tended to do so with Charles James Fox, rather than Pitt the Younger, although, he later became "disgusted" at Fox's style of opposition; he is known to have voted against the Ferrol Expedition in 1801.

Ayscoghe Boucherett found, though, that his funds and the financial success of the company were both in decline by 1801.

Ayscoghe Boucherett was High Sheriff of Lincolnshire in 1795 and an officer in the Yeoman volunteers, being a Captain the Market Raisen Yeomanry in 1798 and then a Lieutenant-Colonel in and Commandant of the North Lincolnshire Yeomanry from 1814 until his death.

Ayscoghe Boucherett died in a carriage accident on 15 September 1815.

Ayscoghe Boucherett was succeeded as the High Steward of Grimsby by the Hon.