# Peter Thellusson, 1st Baron Rendlesham

Peter Isaac Thellusson, 1st Baron Rendlesham (13 October 1761 – 16 September 1808), was a British merchant, banker and politician.

## Early life

Thelluson was born on 13 October 1761. He was the eldest son of Peter Thellusson, a wealthy London merchant, and his wife Ann Woodford, daughter of Matthew Woodford. Among his siblings were Charles Thellusson, MP for Evesham, and George Woodford Thellusson, MP for Southwark, Tregony, and Barnstaple.
His father had emigrated to Britain from France in 1760 but the Thellusons were originally Huguenots who fled from France to Geneva after the Edict of Nantes. His grandfather, Issac de Thellusson, became Genevan ambassador at Paris to the Court of Louis XV, where his uncle, George, founded a banking house. After his father's death in July 1797, his considerable estate, including the Brodsworth estate, a large house known as Plaistow Lodge at Bromley in Kent, and plantations in Grenada and Montserrat, was embroiled in the Thellusson will case.
He was educated at Harrow School in 1774.

## Career

Thellusson took over the thriving family business from his father. Like his father he also became a director of the Bank of England from 1787 to 1806. He also served as Lt.-Col. Commandant of the Rendlesham Volunteers in 1798 and Captain Commandant in 1803.
He was returned as a Member of Parliament on a vacancy for Lord Egremont's borough of Midhurst from 1795 to 1796, for Malmesbury from 1796 to 1802. At the general election, he was returned for Castle Rising as "a paying guest of the Prince of Wales's friend Lord Cholmondeley" from 1802 to 1806 and for Bossiney from 1807 to 1808.
Thellusson acquired the Rendlesham estate for £51,400 and invested in East India Company stock.

### Peerage

As early as January 1795, Theullusson supported William Pitt and earned a reputation as a peerage-hunter. In July 1805 he asked Pitt to "expedite an earlier promise to recommend him for an Irish peerage by invoking the power vested in the crown" by the Acts of Union 1800 to create one new peer when three Irish titles had become extinct, as they had, so Thellusson claimed, with the deaths of the Earl of Mountrath, Viscount Bateman and Lord Ross in 1802. While Thellusson was mistaken, because Mountrath's barony passed by special remainder to Charles Henry Coote, upon Baron Holmes's death in 1804, the required three were obtained. While the title was delayed, it was eventually conferred on 1 February 1806 as Baron Rendlesham, of Rendlesham in Suffolk.

## Personal life

On 14 June 1783 Thellusson was married to Elizabeth Eleanor Cornwall, the daughter of John Cornwall, a Russia merchant of Hendon, Middlesex. Together, they were the parents of six sons and one daughter, including:
* John Thellusson, 2nd Baron Rendlesham (1785–1832), who married Mary Andalusia Dickens, daughter of Lt.-Gen. Samuel Trevor Dickens, in 1809. After her death, he married Ann Sophia Tatnall, daughter of William Tatnall, in 1816.
* Hon. George Thellusson (1791–1813), a Lieutenant in the 11th Dragoons who was killed in action at the Battle of Vitoria in 1813.
* Hon. Caroline Thellusson (1793–1862), who married Charles Crabb Boulton.
* William Thellusson, 3rd Baron Rendlesham (1798–1839), the Vicar at Aldenham who married Lucy Pratt, daughter of Edward Roger Pratt, in 1826.
* Frederick Thellusson, 4th Baron Rendlesham (1798–1852), who married Elizabeth Charlotte Prescott, daughter of Sir George Prescott, 2nd Baronet, in 1838.
* Hon. Edmund Thellusson (1799–1818), who drowned in 1818.
* Hon. Arthur Thellusson (1801–1858), who married Caroline Anna Maria Bethell-Codrington, daughter of Christopher Bethell-Codrington and Hon. Caroline Foley (daughter of the 2nd Baron Foley), in 1826.
Lord Rendlesham, who lived at Rendlesham Hall, died in September 1808, aged only 46, but with a fortune said to be £400,000. He was succeeded in the barony by his eldest son John.