William Fuller (banker)

William Fuller (1705–1800) was an English banker, at his death reputed to be one of the richest people in the country.^[1]

Early life

Born in Berkshire, Fuller went to London at age 14, as apprentice to a writing master. He went into business on his own, in that trade, in Fenchurch Street; and then set up a writing school in Lothbury. He had his son trained in accounts, and placed in a bank; he then joined his son in banking.^[1]

Banker

The London bank William Fuller & Son was founded "at the sign of the Artichoke", later 24 Lombard Street, around 1769. At the end of the century the firm's style was Fuller & Chatteris. It eventually failed in 1841, when it was known as Whitmore, Wells and Whitmore.^[2]

Religious views and charitable activities

Fuller was in the congregation of Samuel Pike, who became a Sandemanian. Fuller, however, opposed the influence of Robert Sandeman, and campaigned against it, in a 1759 pamphlet Reflections on an Epistolary Correspondence between S.P. and R.S.. Controversy ensued, but Pike was expelled by his congregation.^[3] By the end of his life, Fuller was considered a rigid Calvinist.^[4]

Fuller donated an estimated £60,000 to numerous causes, over the course of his life, in particular giving support to nonconformism.^[5] He was involved in the King's Head Society, and by eight annual major donations sustained the Congregational Fund Board.^[6] One beneficiary was a dissenting academy at Heckmondwike.^[7] Fuller founded six almshouses in Hoxton in 1794, and six more just before his death.^[4]

Family and legacy

Fuller married Bethia Wellingham from St Paul's Walden in 1734, before his move to Lothbury.^[8] At his death in March 1800, he left £600,000. His son Thomas had died a bachelor in 1796 and his youngest daughter Esther, wife of Joshua Ellis, in January 1800.^[9] In 1803 his second daughter Mary died, followed by the eldest Sarah in 1810, neither having married. His whole fortune then passed to his only grandchild Bethia Ellis (1781-1865), who in December 1800 had married Ebenezer Maitland.^[10]

Fuller's brother Richard Fuller was also a banker, at 84 Cornhill, London.^[11] His sister Martha (1718–1805) married the stationer George Flower, and was mother of Richard Flower and Benjamin Flower.^[12]

Notes

1. Monthly Magazine and British Register. Printed for R. Phillips. 1800. p. 299.
2. Frederick George Hilton Price, A Handbook of London Bankers, with some account of their predecessors the early goldsmiths (1890), p. 176; archive.org.
3. John Howard Smith (1 December 2008). The Perfect Rule of the Christian Religion: A History of Sandemanianism in the Eighteenth Century. SUNY Press. p. 79. ISBN 978-1-4384-2519-1.
4. Edmund Burke (1801). Annual Register. p. 8.
5. Wales and the Congregational Fund Board: "A beauty-spot of ecclesiastical history", Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion (1978), p. 164
6. The Congregational Fund Board 1695-1995: Can these bones live?, Y Cofiadur - Rhif 59a (1995), p. 18.
7. David Bogue and James Bennett, History of Dissenters, from the Revolution in 1688, to the Year 1808, vol. 4 (1812), p. 277; archive.org.
8. Edward Topham; John Elwes (1802). The remarkable life of John Elwes esq.; Followed by Life of William Fuller. p. 35.
9. Edmund Burke (1801). Annual Register. p. 56.
10. historyofparliamentonline.org, Fuller Maitland (formerly Maitland), Ebenezer (1780-1858), of Park Place; Shinfield Park, Berks.; Stansted Mountfitchet, Essex and 11 Bryanston Square, Mdx.
11. Timothy D. Whelan, ed. (2008). Politics, Religion and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808. National Library of Wales. pp. 86 note 54. ISBN 9781862250703.
12. Timothy D. Whelan, ed. (2008). Politics, Religion and Romance: The Letters of Benjamin Flower and Eliza Gould Flower, 1794–1808. National Library of Wales. p. xiv. ISBN 9781862250703.