The Hon. William Henry Irby

Appears as a joint owner (of Hannay's estate) in 1832 with William Henry Rowland Irby (his son) even though he had died in 1830.

Son of William Irby, 1st Baron Boston and Albinia Selwyn. Married Mary Blackman, daughter of Rowland Blackman, in 1781.

Will of Hon. William Henry Irby of Farnham Royal (made in 1806) proved 07/07/1830. In the will he rehearsed his marriage settlement of 1781 under which he had settled £10,000 on his wife and children, and disposed of it between his daughter Augusta Priscilla and son William Henry Rowland. He left £3000 secured on his wife's moiety of 'plantations' in Barbados (which formed part of their marriage settlement) to his daughter. In a codicil to the will of 1820, William Henry Irby granted an annuity of £200 p.a. to his daughter Augusta Priscilla, then widow of Sir William Langham of Cottesbrooke, and £100 to his sister-in-law expressing regret that high taxes following the Napoleonic wars and 'many other calamities attendant upon West India property' (e.g. poor harvests, hurricanes) prevented him providing for her more fully without injuring the property he was leaving to his son: he expressed his hope that the estate would recover to support the heavy indebtedness on them.

In his will, William Henry Irby asked to be buried in Northamptonshire, where his wife was buried. She has a memorial by Nollekens in the Whiston parish church.

Irby [unlike his son] appears to have been a man of culture and of a range of interests. He was, among other things, an amateur botanist of some reputation.

TNA, T71/549, pp. 100-101.

The Peerage

PROB 11/1773/428.

http://www.british-history.ac.uk/vch/northants/vol4/pp288-292 [accessed 23/11/2015].

E.g H.C. Andrews, The Botanists Repository, for new and rare plants (1797), Vols. 5-6, plates CCCVIII, CCCLXXXI, CCCXCV, CCCXCIX, CCCCXVIII, CCCCXXII