Sir Edward Hyde East 1st Bart.

MP (for Great Bedwyn 1792-1796 and Winchester 1823-1831) and Chief Justice of Bengal (1813-1823) and a major slave-owner in Jamaica (where he was born). He died at Sherwood Lodge Battersea in 1847, his estate reportedly insufficient to cover his legacies and bequests. He is in the ODNB as 'judge in India and legal writer.'

1. Of Raymond Hall, Maryland estate (see St Andrew claim no. 171) it was written: 'Raymond Hall is the great house on Maryland coffee estate. Situated in the Blue Mountains ... it has been in the possession of the East family for upwards of two hundred years.' In the 1830s it was in the possession of Edward Hyde East and referred to by Anthony Trollope, 'The West Indies and the Spanish Main'. Cundall has a chapter on Raymond Hall. 

2. East's son, Sir James Buller East [q.v.], was on the committee of the Eyre Defence Fund in 1866.

3. The Survey of London identifies Sir Edward Hyde East's death-place as Sherwood Lodge and gives a history of the house, 'considered one of the finest riverside residences near London', including its earlier occupation by the royal mistress Mrs Fitzherbert, commenting that 'His move to Battersea [which it places as 'by 1844'] has been attributed to reduced circumstances caused by falling sugar prices as opposition to slavery grew. Superficially this hardly accords with the character of the house, but already the district was not quite what it had been.'

Philip Simon/Howard Spencer, 'East, Sir Edward Hyde (1764-1847) of 12 Stratford Place, Mdx.' History of Parliament online, accessed 23/10/2013, which gives his death-place as 'Sherwood House'; ODNB online H. J. Spencer, 'East, Sir Edward Hyde, frst baronet (1764-1847), judge in India and legal writer.' The entry describes the 'sugar plantations on which the family fortunes were based', which it also describes as his 'West Indian estates' as 'an economic and political liability' in the 1820s or early 1830s, and gives his estate at death as less than £3000.

1. Frank Cundall, Studies in Jamaica History (London, Sampson, Low, Marston and Company for the Institute of Jamaica, 1900), p. 73 and 70-76 ('Raymond Hall'). 

2. The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund (London, 1866), p. 4.

3. Survey of London: Battersea, p. 45, accessed 21 October 2016.