The son of Sir Edward Payson Wills, 1st Baronet, Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath and of Lady Wills (she was Mary Ann, elder daughter of J Chaning Pearce FGS, of Montagu House, Bath), Wills succeeded his elder brother in the baronetcy in 1921.
The Wills family were part owners of West. Doctorate. & H. O. Wills, tobacco importers and cigarette manufacturers, which had been founded by Wills"s great grandfather, Henry Overton Wills, in 1786, and later became part of Imperial Tobacco. Wills was a cousin of Gilbert Wills, 1st Baron Dulverton. Wills owned substantial properties in England and Scotland: Littlecote House, near Hungerford, Wiltshire, and Meggernie Castle in Perthshire, and also owned the Château de l"oiseau bleu at Menton on the French Riviera.
He was a director of Imperial Tobacco and of the Portishead District Water Company.
