Samuel Boddington was an Irish

Ireland

Ireland is an island to the northwest of continental Europe. It is the third-largest island in Europe and the twentieth-largest island on Earth...

 politician. He was Member of Parliament

Member of Parliament

A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...

 (MP) for Tralee

Tralee (UK Parliament constituency)

Tralee was a constituency in Ireland of the Parliament of the United Kingdom Parliament, returning one Member of Parliament . It was an original constituency represented in Parliament when the Union of Great Britain and Ireland took effect on 1 January 1801...

 from January to May 1807.
The Boddington family held large estates in the West Indies and Samuel had been left a fortune by his father who had been a director of the South Sea Company as well as a West India merchant with offices at Mark Lane.
In 1792 Samuel fell in love with a penniless orphan, Grace Ashburner, and in 1792 they were married. But Grace soon tired of her husband's quiet intellectual interests (Henry Fox rather unkindly referred to Samuel Boddington as "the arch-bore old Bod.") and eventually she eloped with his cousin Benjamin Boddington who had recently joined the family firm. Thereafter, Samuel approached his friend, Richard Sharp (politician)

Richard Sharp (politician)

Richard Sharp, FRS, FSA , also known as "Conversation" Sharp, was a hat-maker, banker, merchant, poet, critic, British politician, but above all - doyen of the conversationalists.-Family background:...

, a fellow Dissenter, fellow member of the Fishmongers' Company, and both mutual friends of Samuel Rogers

Samuel Rogers

Samuel Rogers was an English poet, during his lifetime one of the most celebrated, although his fame has long since been eclipsed by his Romantic colleagues and friends Wordsworth, Coleridge and Byron...

, asking if he would join him in business, and eventually a West India company of Boddington, Sharp and Philips (George Philips

George Philips

Sir George Philips, 1st Baronet , later Sir George Philips MP.-Biography:Philips came from an old Staffordshire family that had held manors there since the reign of Edward VI of England, and were seated at Heath House in the same county since the early seventeenth century, that continued to be...

) was established at 17 Mark Lane. Both Boddington and Philips (later Sir George Philips) followed Sharp's example and became dissenting Whig members of Parliament.
There is an image of Samuel Boddington within the National Portrait Gallery collection which can be viewed online at http://www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait.php?search=sp&OConly=true&sText=Samuel+Boddington+by+William+Drummond%2C+circa+1835&rNo=0