Henry Barkly

1815-1898. Son of Aeneas Barkly (q.v.). Educated Bruce Castle near Tottenham. Knighted in 1853.

Joined Davidson & Barkly [c. 1832].

MP for Leominster 1845-48.

Governor and commander-in-chief of British Guiana and in 1853 of Jamaica.

November 1856: appointed governor of Victoria

Moved to the government of Mauritius in 1863.

August 1870: sent to the Cape of Good Hope as Governor and British high commissioner in South Africa.

Recalled in March 1877.

1879: member of the Royal Commission on Colonial Defence.

Fellow of the Royal Society, 1864, Royal Geographical Society 1870.

In retirement he devoted himself to scientific pursuits and to committee work for the London Library. He died on 20 October 1898 and was buried in Brompton cemetery.

Barkly's eldest son, Arthur Cecil Stuart Barkly (1843–1890) was a colonial governor, After school (Harrow) and the army (the 6th Carabiniers) he became, private secretary to his father at Mauritius and the Cape, then resident magistrate in Basutoland (1877–81), chief commissioner of the Seychelles (1881–6 and 1887–8), lieutenant-governor of the Falkland Islands (1886–7), and the last British governor of Heligoland (1888–90). Died at Stapleton Park, near Pontefract, Yorkshire, on 27 September 1890.

See Knox for further details and assessment.

T71/880 Grenada claim no. 446 (Mount Parnassus Estate); T71/891 Tobago claim no. 50 (Mt St George).

Scottish Archive Network: Barkly of Mount Eagle, Ross and Cromarty [accessed 12/10/2010].

Entry by B. A. Knox in Australian Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 3 (Melbourne University Press, 1969), pp. 95-6; available at the online edition [accessed 12/10/2010].

John Benyon, ‘Barkly, Sir Henry (1815–1898)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 ODNB, accessed 18 Nov 2012.

The image of Barkly, taken in the 1860s-1870s by an unknown photographer, is from the National Portrait Gallery: NPG Ax38727.