John Grant

John Grant (c.1720–1804) was a British nabob of the East India Company service, known as a Member of Parliament of the 1780s and banker.

Early life He was the third son in the family of seven sons and three daughters of the Rev. John Grant, parish priest of Nolton and Roch in Pembrokeshire. Of his sisters, Elizabeth married the Rev. Benjamin Hall of Llandaff and was mother of Benjamin Hall; and Margaret married the surgeon George Elliot of Laugharne and was mother of John Elliot. Coote returned to Great Britain in 1762. Grant took part in the Bengal campaign of Thomas Adams on behalf of Mir Jafar, against the usurper Nawab Mir Qasim. Ann Grant married Capt. David McKenzie at Calcutta in 1771. The partners included others with a British India background, such as John Call. The bank was in existence from 1773 to 1865, and became known as Call, Marten & Co.

Grant also bought the country house Waltham Place at White Waltham, in 1776. Waltham Place had belonged to James Theobald the elder, who changed its name from Hill House and died in 1759; his son James Theobald the younger sold it in 1773 to the Rev. William Reid. Grant bought it from Reid.

In politics In 1780 Grant took an interest in the borough of Cricklade, which had once wooed Robert Clive, and where Robert Fletcher, son-in-law of John Pybus, had been the Member of Parliament for six years. With Paul Benfield standing, nothing came of it for Grant. In the 1784 general election he was a candidate at Fowey, where the two seats traditionally were split between the Edgcumbe and Rashleigh families. That year Philip Rashleigh was a sitting member, while Molyneux Shuldham, a naval officer who supported Lord North and Lord Sandwich, stood down. Grant was brought in, and kept out the Whig Lord Lewisham who came in third.

Grant, as expected by the Tory political manager John Robinson who paid the Edgcumbes for his place, supported William Pitt the Younger in parliament.