John Robinson

John Robinson (1727–1802) was an English lawyer, politician and government official. John Robinson, engraving by William Bond after George Francis Joseph He was a treasury secretary of obscure origin, characterized by extraordinary diligence, efficiency, persistence, and deep conservatism.

Life Born on 15 July 1727, and baptised at St. Lawrence, Appleby, Westmorland, on 14 August 1727, he was the eldest son of Charles Robinson, an Appleby tradesman, who died on 19 June 1760, in his fifty-eighth year, having married, at Kirkby Thore on 19 May 1726, Hannah, daughter of Richard Deane of Appleby. He was educated until 17 at Appleby grammar school, and was then articled to his aunt's husband, Richard Wordsworth, of Sockbridge in Barton, Westmorland, clerk of the peace for the county, and grandfather of the poet William Wordsworth. He was admitted as attorney, practised law in Appleby, and became town clerk on 1 October 1750; he was mayor in 1761. On 2 February 1759 he entered Gray's Inn.

Robinson acquired property and local influence, by marriage and inheritance, and Sir James Lowther made him his principal law agent and land steward. He was created a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of Westmorland in 1762, and through the influence of Lowther was returned as Member of Parliament for Westmorland on 5 January 1764, continuing to represent it until the dissolution in September 1774. it saw a challenge to a duel, which Robinson turned down. Robinson resigned the post of law agent to the Lowther estates, and was succeeded in it by his first cousin, John Wordsworth, the poet's father. Wyke Manor at Syon Hill, Isleworth, between Brentford and Osterley Park. There he modernised what became Wyke House, and added a dining room by Robert Adam (1778–79). The rest of the house was rebuilt shortly afterwards.

Robinson was created a D.C.L. of Oxford on 9 July 1773; he declined a peerage in 1784, but in December 1787 William Pitt the Younger appointed him surveyor-general of woods and forests. A favourite of George III, he planted at Windsor millions of acorns and 20,000 oak trees. In 1794 he printed a letter to Sir John Sinclair, chairman of the Board of Agriculture, on enclosures. One of the proprietors was William Birmingham Costello; later physicians there were John Stevenson Bushnan and then Robert Gardiner Hill. Hill parted company with his partner Edmund Sparke Willett in 1860; Willett was listed as proprietor in 1874. It was still in use as a mental hospital in 1958.