Richard Muilman Trench Chiswell formerly Richard Muilman

London merchant and speculator, MP for Aldborough 1790-Feb.1797. He has an entry in the ODNB as 'merchant banker and antiquary.'

1. Only son of Peter Muilman, Dutch merchant, of London, and Kirby Hall, Essex and Mary, daughter of Richard Chiswell, Turkey merchant, of Debden Hall. Married in 1756, Mary, daughter of Dr James Jurin of Shoreditch, Middlesex. 1 daughter> He succeeded his maternal uncle Richard Chiswell to Debden and took the additional names of Trench Chiswell by royal licence, 28 Nov. 1772. “Chiswell’s father, one of two Dutch immigrant brothers, and he in his turn were associated with the Amsterdam banking house of Muilman; in partnership with the Hamburg merchant John Berens (d.1787) they ‘could regulate the Dutch exchange’ and were believed to receive £10,000 p.a. commission for the Dutch dividends. Apart from this, Muilman had married well, had succeeded an uncle to an Essex estate and personalty of some £120,000 and was heir, on his father’s death, to estates estimated at £350,000. This was in 1790, the year he entered Parliament, and he was then said to be ‘worth near a million sterling’. He was subsequently described as ‘the great commercial friend of Mr [George] Rose’ [a prominent, if controversial, politician, government minister etc.] Among other things, an investor in East India Company stock and an investment agent for Mrs Warren Hastings. Voted against the abolition of the slave trade, 15 March 1796. By 1797 Chiswell and his business partner, [Henry] Nantes, were on the verge of bankruptcy. ‘An adventure in East Indian scrip, about seven years ago, proved a very losing account; and upon our getting foot in St. Domingo, a most amazing quantity of goods was exported thither.’ This was accompanied by ‘a chain of unsuccessful speculations on West India estates’, which Chiswell referred to in a suicide note before he shot himself, 3 Feb. 1797. His partner disappeared and the firm went bankrupt.

2. Muilman & Co. were reported by John Turnbull (q.v.) in a letter to Henry Dundas in 1797 to have had £100,000 invested in St Domingue in advances to French slave-owners there. 'Mr Chiswell made away with himself and the house became insolvent.'

1. Appleby, John H. "Chiswell, Richard Muilman Trench (1735–1797), merchant banker and antiquary." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 17 Jan. 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-5332.; http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/muilman-trench-chiswell-richard-1735-97 History of Parliament online: entry by Winifred Stokes / R. G. Thorne.

2. Carl Ludwig Lokke, 'New Light on London Merchant Investments in St. Domingue' The Hispanic American Historical Review, Vol. 22, No. 4 (Nov., 1942), pp. 670-676.