Edmund Boulter

Edmund Boulter (abt 1635 – 1709), was a London merchant and politician. He was the eldest son of John Boulter, a maltster, twice mayor of Abingdon and his wife born Susannah Cutler, sister of Sir John Cutler (baronet), later Edmund's business partner.

Growing up during the interregnum Boulter seems to have been by choice a Dissenter or Presbyterian. He was apprenticed to the Haberdashers' Company 23 July 1647 when he may have been as young as twelve. His father died young and Boulter helped educate his siblings and, later, their children. His brother Robert, a Cornhill stationer, and substantial supplier of books to Massachusetts was one of the original publishers of Milton's Paradise Lost.

Boulter was a successful businessman to the extent that though a Haberdasher he was courted at length by the Worshipful Company of Grocers to join their company his trade with them being so extensive.

Edmund Boulter was elected to the City Of London Lieutenancy in 1690, 1694, 1704 and 1708. He was also chosen Sheriff of London in July 1694 but paid a fine to be released from the obligation.

His uncle and sometime business partner, Sir John Cutler, baronet, died in 1693 and less than four years later Sir John's daughter, Elizabeth, Countess of Radnor, died without leaving children so that the property in her marriage settlement reverted to Edmund Boulter. He now had two extra landed estates to manage, Wimpole Hall in Cambridgeshire and Gawthorpe Hall and Harewood Castle near Leeds in Yorkshire. Obliged to ride the Great North Road regularly and now aged near three score years and ten he set up convenient re-mounting posts between Leeds and Cambridge. Here is a report on them made a century later "From Stilton to Grantham at convenient distances, are stones with three steps, placed there by a Mr Boulter, for the easy mounting of his horse, he being a very corpulent man, and traveling this road every week for many years; on each stone was engraved E.B. 1708, several of which are now defaced."

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