John Dyke Acland

Colonel John Dyke Acland (18 February 1746 – 31 October 1778 ), of Tetton and Pixton in Somerset, was Tory Member of Parliament for Callington in Cornwall and fought in the American War of Independence in 1776.

He was the eldest son and heir apparent of Sir Thomas Dyke Acland, 7th Baronet (1722-1785) of Killerton in Devon and Petherton Park in Somerset, by his wife Elizabeth Dyke (d.1753), daughter and heiress of Thomas Dyke of Tetton, Holnicote and Pixton in Somerset. The ancient Acland family, believed to be of Flemish origin, originated at the estate of Acland in the parish of Landkey in North Devon, where it is first recorded in 1155.

Acland was Colonel of the 1st Battalion, Devon Militia, formed to protect Great Britain from a feared French invasion. In 1774 he was elected Member of Parliament for the rotten borough of Callington in Cornwall, and forcefully expressed his Tory views in parliament by virulently opposing the movement by the American colonists to obtain independence following their complaint of "No taxation without representation". He poured scorn on those fellow MP's who sought to appease the colonists and called their proposed concessions "nugatory and humiliating" and certain to result in "a total convulsion of the British Empire". His vehemence is said to have alarmed even King George III himself, no friend of the revolutionary colonists. In his capacity as a Colonel of Militia and bypassing parliament, he presented a loyal address to the king in person promising him aid whenever and wherever called upon to put down sedition and in which he portrayed the Whig opposition as rebels to the King's interests, akin to the American colonists. This action of his gained him the enmity of the Whig party. His wife's second cousin was the prominent Whig Charles James Fox, who criticised him savagely in Parliament. Whilst still a member of Parliament he purchased a commission as an officer in the 20th Regiment of Foot. At the State opening of Parliament in October 1774, the King spoke of a "rebellious war" which had been opened by the colonists who had fired shots at Lexington and Concord, and John Acland received the privilege of moving the formal vote of thanks to the King's Speech in the House of Commons. This he did in "fulsome and adulatory" terms, which were ill-received by the Whig opposition.

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