Ralph Payne 1st Baron Lavington

Owner of Carlisle's estate in Antigua until his death in 1807. He was 'sole heir' of his grandmother Elizabeth Carlile nee Mackinnon, to whom William Carlile her son left (1742/3) his estate for her to pass to his nephew (and her grandson) Ralph Payne, 1st Baron Lavington. He was also earlier in his life owner of estates and enslaved people on both Nevis (which and whom he sold in 1772) and St Kitts, where he owned an estate in St John Capisterre that LBS has yet to identify with complete confidence but which appears to correspond to 'The Key of the late Lord Lavington' in William McMahon's 1828 map.

1. Son of Ralph Payne (d. 1763) and Alice Carlisle. Born in St Kitts; MP for various constituencies, 1768-1799; Governor of the Leeward Islands, 1771-1775 and 1799-1807; "a West India grandee".

2. Ralph Payne, Baron Lavington, has an entry in the ODNB as 'politician', which concludes: 'He died childless and almost destitute, and the legislature voted £300 per annum to his widow, who died at Hampton Court Palace on 2 May 1830. His career mirrored the meteoric rise and downfall of absentee sugar planters in Britain.' His half-brother John Willett Payne also has an entry as 'naval officer and royal official.'

T71/877 Antigua claim no. 353; Vere Langford Oliver History of Antigua Vol. I p. 113. In 1772, Ralph Payne agreed to sell two estates on Nevis on which his marriage settlement was secured for £37,000 to Andrew Hamilton, taking back a mortgage for the purchase price. He and his wife then applied to their trustees Viscount Stormont and Henry Wilmot to transfer the security for the annuity from the Nevis estates to Payne's estate in St John Capisterre on St Kitts with 182 enslaved people on it, and duly assigned the new estate and named enslaved people (already charged with an annuity of £500 p.a to Mary Magdalena Payne, widow of Stephen Payne (d. 1768)) to the trustees, Common Records 1773-1775, British Library, EAP794/1/1/14, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP794-1-1-14 pp. 100-121. LBS has inferred that one or both of the Nevis estates became Hamilton's; for the St Kitts estate in St John Capisterre, there is no obvious candidate in the 1753 Samuel Baker map but based on the description in the 1772 deed it appears to fit with 'The Key of the late Lord Lavington' in William McMahon's 1828 map.

1. http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/payne-sir-ralph-1739-1807 [accessed 09/09/2013].

2. W. P. Courtney, ‘Payne, Ralph, Baron Lavington (1739–1807)’, rev. Andrew J. O'Shaughnessy, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21652, accessed 30 Jan 2014]; Randolph Cock, ‘Payne, John Willett (1752–1803)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/21648, accessed 30 Jan 2014]