Sir Bourchier Wrey, 6th Baronet

Content sourced from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Sir Bourchier Wrey, 6th Baronet (c.1715–13 April 1784) of Tawstock, Devon, was a Member of Parliament for Barnstaple from 1747 to 1754. The Wrey family had long been lords of Tawstock, a manor near Barnstaple. He was the eldest son of Sir Bourchier Wrey, 5th Baronet, and his wife Diana Rolle, linking him to the important Rolle family of Stevenstone.

He was educated at Winchester College and New College, Oxford, and became the 6th Baronet in 1726. He undertook a Grand Tour (1737–1740) visiting Paris, Geneva, Rome, Florence and Milan. In Rome, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu wrote of him sleeping with his landlady. In 1742 he joined the Society of Dilettanti, and a portrait by George Knapton from 1744 shows him aboard a ship with a punch bowl inscribed with Horace’s line “dulce est desipere in loco.”

Wrey was elected MP for Barnstaple in 1747 (serving until 1754) and supported the Whigs; he took the seat after his cousin Henry Rolle, 1st Baron Rolle, moved to the Lords in 1748. In 1752 he traveled to Bremen, Hamburg and Lübeck as a delegate for the Society for Carrying on the Herring Fishery. He also rebuilt the Ilfracombe pier and improved arrangements for English fishermen with northern Europe.

He married twice. He died on 13 April 1784 and was buried in Tawstock Church, where his monument survives. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Sir Bourchier Wrey, 7th Baronet (1757–1826). A substantial monument to the 6th Baronet stands in the south transept of Tawstock Church, described by Pevsner as “stately.”