BFH: Captain Joseph Boultbee of Bunny

Captain Joseph Boultbee (1758 - 1821)

(Written by the Editors)

To TPB and JB's notes on his life we add the following:

Record of Service in the Royal Marines:: - Commissioned Second Lieutenant, 14th February, 1780
- Attached Portsmouth Division Portsmouth Division, No. 103 Company, 1782
- Attached Portsmouth Division, No. 56 Company, 1783
- Retired on half-pay with rank of Lieutenant, 3rd of January, 1785

    He was appointed Captain Commandant of the Bunny Troop of Volunteer Cavalry, 4th May, 1798.
    TPB's statement after one or two removals (he) retired to Plas Newydd, Anglesey needs explanation.
    After giving up the farm near Bunny about 1818 Joseph, of necessity, resumed his former employment as agent for the estates of various noble families. At what must have been very near the end of his life he moved to Anglesey to live with his eldest surviving son, Edwin, on the latter's farm at Plas Newydd and died there.
    Finally, JB gives us a lively personal anecdote, from the period when Joseph was commanding the Bunny Troop, which he wrote down in 1889.
    My father [i.e. JB's father Thomas, the Vicar of Bidford] told me that on one occasion he had ridden into Nottingham with his father the Captain and put up their horses at the Flying Horse inn. A considerable mob of idlers to whom he was a terror in his Regimentals found that he was there alone and they intended to molest him as he rode out homewards. The Captain mounted his horse and taking a broomstick from the stables rode at them, at once clearing the way for himself and his son. [Thomas must have been very young at the time of this episode, perhaps still a schoolboy.]