John Eardley Wilmot

Sir John Eardley Wilmot PC SL (16 August 17095 February 1792), was an English judge, Chief Justice of the Common Pleas from 1766 to 1771. Family and early life Wilmot was the second son of Robert Wilmot (1669–1738), of Osmaston Hall, near Derby, and his wife Ursula, who was the daughter of Sir Samuel Marow, Bt, of Berkswell, Warwickshire. His paternal grandfather was Sir Nicholas Wilmot (1611–1682), a serjeant-at-law knighted in 1674. His elder brother Robert (c.1708–1772) was another lawyer who went into the service of the crown, was knighted in 1739 and created a baronet (Wilmot of Osmaston) in 1772. John Eardley Wilmot was educated at Derby School, then with Dr John Hunter at Lichfield, where his contemporaries included Samuel Johnson and David Garrick. He then went to Westminster School and Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he matriculated in 1727, before studying law in London at the Inner Temple, as his father and older brother had done before him, and was called to the bar in 1732. On 3 April 1743, Wilmot married Sarah Rivett (1721–1772), a daughter of Thomas Rivett of Derby, with whom he had three sons and two daughters. His eldest son, another Robert, died in Bengal, while his younger son, John Eardley Wilmot, became a barrister and wrote his father's memoirs. One of his daughters, Maria, married the Jewish City of London banker Sampson Gideon, who changed his surname to Eardley and in 1789 became Sampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley. Another daughter Elizabeth married Thomas Blomefield, Inspector of Artillery and Superintendent of the Royal Brass Foundry on 27 July 1788.