He was timid, and extremely diffident, had no friends and no interests apart from hoarding up his money and partridge setting.
[3] His grandfather Sir Gervase Elwes, 1st Baronet died on 11 April 1706 and he succeeded to the baronetcy and estate.
The estate was so debt-ridden that his uncle, John Hervey, 1st Earl of Bristol, advised him either to sell his lands or marry a rich wife.
[4] Elwes spent the next forty years of his life restoring his fortune by exercising severe economy.
He left at least a quarter of a million to his nephew, John Meggott, who took the name Elwes, and modelling his way of life on his uncle's, became as famous a miser.