Sir John Hippisley, 1st Baronet

Sir John Coxe Hippisley, 1st Baronet (c. February 1746 – 3 May 1825), was a British diplomat and politician who pursued an 'unflagging, though wholly unsuccessful, quest for office' which led King George III of Great Britain to describe him as 'that busy man' and 'the grand intriguer'.

In 1781 Hippisley secured an appointment with the East India Company and moved to Madras, eventually becoming paymaster in Tanjore.

In 1792 Hippisley returned to Italy and remained there until 1795, during which time he served as a semi-official representative of the British Prime Minister William Pitt the Younger at the Court of Pope Pius VI.

Cardinal York was living in France, ill and penniless, and Hippisley persuaded George III to award him an annual pension of £4,000.

In 1800 he served as High Sheriff of Berkshire, where he owned Warfield Grove, a red-brick Georgian mansion which he had bought from Admiral Sir George Bowyer.

John Skinner referred to him as 'that great orator' and a 'great ass' in his diary, published as The Journal of a Somerset Rector, while in 1810 the wit and politician Joseph Jekyll described how during a speech by Hippisley in parliament 'the house coughed him down five times in vain, and the catarrh lasted two hours'.

His widow Elizabeth died on 25 March 1843 in Grosvenor Square, London, whereupon the Ston Easton estate was inherited by her grandnephew, John Hippisley.