Colonel John Bullock

Colonel John Bullock of Faulkbourne M.P. (31 December 1731 – 28 December 1809) was an English landowner and Member of Parliament for 56 years becoming Father of the House and a prominent member of the Bullock family.

John Bullock was born in 1731, the younger son of Josiah Bullock J.P. D.L. of Faulkbourne and Mincing Lane, London and Hannah Cooke, youngest daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke, Member of Parliament for Colchester and governor of East India Company.

He was educated as a fellow commoner at Clare Hall, Cambridge.

At the age of 23, he embarked on a parliamentary career that lasted 56 years and culminated in him becoming father of the house until his death.

His period in the house spanned the Seven Years’ War, the War of American Independence, the French Revolution and the earlier Napoleonic Wars. He sat as a fellow member with the Pitts, Burke, Fox and Sheridan.

He commenced his parliamentary career in 1754 as member for Maldon; he was returned twice more for the borough in 1761 and in 1768 (polling 443 votes against the 455 of John Huske and the 328 of Jon Hennker). In 1774, he temporarily abandoned his parliamentary career for reasons of cost and it was not until 1780 that he returned to the house.

He was returned as member for Steyning in Sussex in 1780, which returned two members until the Reform Bill of 1832. Steyning began returning two Members of Parliament from 1278 and as a rotten borough made up of a depopulated port became similar to Dunwich until the Reform Act 1832.

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