William Roe

William Roe, DL (1748 – 6 March 1826) was an English civil servant. He was a Commissioner for Auditing Public Accounts from 1783 to 1788, and then a Commissioner for Customs until 1819; he was chairman of the Board of Customs for England and Wales from 1805 to 1819.

Early life and family Born in 1748, Roe was the only surviving child of Robert Roe (died 1753) of Brinwith, Glamorganshire, and his wife, Hester (died 1760), daughter of William Wraxall of Bristol. In 1775, he married Susan Margaret (died 1831), daughter of Sir William Thomas, 2nd Baronet (died 1777), of Yapton Place; they had five children: Roe was close to his eldest son William and thought highly of him.

Career and later life "A provincial from Bristol" Roe attracted the attention of Thomas Anguish after writing a series of critical, moralistic articles concerning Lord Shelburne's 1783 peace treaty with America. That year, Anguish co-opted Roe as a Commissioner for Auditing Public Accounts; Roe himself authored one of the reports (the fifteenth in the series) and was the most active member, after Anguish.

In 1788, Roe was appointed a Commissioner of Customs, replacing John Pownall; seen as an "active administrator", the appointment was made by William Pitt the Younger's government as part of a series of moves to reform the "tangled" finances and inefficiencies of the Board of Customs, a department which (with the Board of Revenue) was responsible for two thirds of the national income. He became chairman of the board in 1805, succeeding Thomas Boone, and served in that office until 1819, chairing the board jointly with Richard Frewin until 1813 and then Francis Fownes Luttrell. He and Luttrell were succeeded as chairmen by Richard Betenson Dean. for the historian John Ehrman, this highlights the blurred distinctions between administrative appointees and political or social ones, He also authored A Practical Treatise on the Law of Elections, relating to England, Scotland and Ireland, 2 vols. (London, 1812) and Observations Relative to the Present State of Finance (London, 1828).

Roe bought the manors of Withdean and Withdean Caycliffe near Brighton in 1794, and was active in improving and managing the estate; he planted a large number of trees on some of the land, establishing Withdean Park. He was also a deputy lieutenant of Sussex.

Roe died on 6 March 1826 at Brighton, aged 78.

Roe's eldest son William inherited Withdean, living there and dying in 1834; he had married his cousin, Mary Elizabeth (died 1842), daughter of Daniel Byam Mathew, of Felix Hall. The younger William received an income from an estate called Cochrane's, Old North Sound, in Antigua, which (with its slaves) had been placed in trust for Roe and his wife by Mathew under the terms of their marriage settlement made in 1815; it was sold by the trustees a year later. The younger Roe and his wife had two sons and a daughter; the sons being George Cholmeley Roe, who died shortly after his birth, and William Dering Adair Roe (1816–1838), who died childless; the daughter Eliza Sophia Frances, who became William Roe the younger's sole heir, married Sir Chaloner Ogle, 3rd Baronet.

The elder William Roe's younger son Frederick was a prominent lawyer, who served as Chief Magistrate of the Bow Street Magistrates; created a baronet in 1836, he died childless in 1866.