Edward Jeffries Esdaile

Appears as a counterclaimant with Henry Esdaile (q.v.) as 'undermortgagees' for £150,000 for the Carrickfolye estate in Trelawny (for which the compensation was paid into the colonial court), for 57 enslaved people who had previously been moved onto the York estate from Carrickfoyle, and for the Belvidere estate in Hanover (in the latter case, the compensation was paid into a Chancery suit of Esdaile v Hibbert). The connection between the three claims appears to have been the indebtedness of the Reid family, mortgagees or former owners of the estates, to Sir James Esdaile & Co., the London bankers. Edward Jeffries Esdaile and Henry Esdaile were the sons of William Esdaile and grandsons of Sir James Esdaile. Barely credibly, in 1831 the two men bought, apparently at face value, over £151,000 owed by the Reid family to Sir James Esdaile & Co., and took what security they could, subsequently launching a Chancery suit to contest the compensation.

1. Baptism of Edward Jeffries Esdaile, son of William and Elizabeth 'banker' at St Thomas's 11/05/1785.

2. In 1851 Edward Jeffries Esdaile aged 65 county Magistrate born London was living with his wife Elisa aged 62 at East Bagborough, Bishops Lydeard Somerset. He left £30,000 at his death 'late of Cothelstone' in 1867. Edward Jeffries Esdaile of Cothelston, the son of the man of these awards (and often confused with his father), married Percy Bysse Shelley's daughter Ianthe.

3. The Edward Esdaile implicated in the collapse of the Royal British Bank in 1857 was a different man, a London timber merchant.

TS11/603; Hanover no. 14; T71/874 Trelawny no. 538; T71/1121 Counterclaims, Hanover 14; T71/1212 Counterclaims Westmoreland no. 686; T71/1212 Counterclaims Trelawny no. 538.

1. 1851 census online; National Probate Calendar 1867.

2. His address as a shareholder is given as City Sawmills, London Gazette21072 27/02/1850 p. 635.

3. Ancestry.com, England and Wales, Non-Conformist and Non-Parochial Registers, 1567-1970, [database online].