William Bosville

Colonel William Bosville, FRS (21 July 1745 – 10 December 1813) was an English landowner and celebrated bon vivant.

He was a resident of New Hall, Gunthwaite, of Thorpe Hall, Rudston, both in Yorkshire, and of 76 Welbeck Street, St Giles in the Fields, London,

In politics he was an ardent Whig. When his friend William Cobbett was in Newgate Prison, Bosville went in his coach and four to visit him, and afterwards gave him a cheque for £1,000 as a token of sympathy with him in his persecutions. In appearance he was almost as eccentric as in his manners. He used always to dress in the style of a courtier of King George II, and wore a single-breasted coat, powdered hair and queue. In 1792 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. He appears as a minor figure in several political caricatures by James Gillray and two portraits of him survived at Thorpe Hall in 1927.