Thomas Lucas of Lee, Kent

London merchant and slave-owner, MP for Grampound 1780-1784.

1. Will of Thomas Lucas of Lee, Kent proved 16/10/1784. In his will, he left £5000 to Thomas Lucas Wheeler of Trinity College Cambridge 'whose education I have taken care', and £6500 to his wife Eliza, together with his household effects at Lee and in Albemarle Street. He left his unnamed estate on St Kitts and the enslaved people on it in trust to secure for his wife (who was also one of the trustees) an annuity of £500 p.a. and for several other individuals (including Thomas Lucas Wheeler's mother in Charleston and several relatives of Thomas Lucas's late uncle Mr Coleman) annuities totalling a further £280 p.a. Thomas Lucas Wheeler in the absence of issue of Thomas Lucas became his residuary heir.

2. Thomas Lucas was a London sugar-factor, MP for Grampound 1780-1784 and President of Guy's Hospital 1775-1784, having served as Treasurer. His widow Eliza married John Julius Angerstein (q.v.), the Chairman of Lloyds of London, in 1785 and according to Anthony Twist, the couple immediately disposed of Eliza's 'life-interest' in Thomas Lucas's property in St Kitts.

3. James and Thos. Lucas were early purchasers of land in Tobago, buying Barbados Bay (St George parish) Lot No. 27 (200 acres) 19/03/1767, which with Lot no. 23 became Nutmeg Grove, 'now [c. 1860] Alma.' It is not yet clear whether this was the same Thomas Lucas.

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/lucas-thomas-1784 [accessed 13/11/2017].

1. PROB 11/1122/322; Joan Anim-Addo, Longest journey: a history of black Lewisham (1995), p. 31. Thomas Lucas Wheeler, 'Adm. Fell.-Com. (age 18) at TRINITY, Nov. 1, 1776. S. of Daniel, of Honiton, Devon. School, Wandsworth, London. Matric. Michs. 1776. There is a portrait of him (1778) by John Downman, in the Fitzwilliam Museum', Ancestry.com Cambridge University Alumni 1261-1900 [database online]. Thomas Lucas Wheeler's own will was subject to extended legal contestation.

2. Anthony Twist, 'Widening circles in finance, philanthropy and the arts: a study of the life of John Julius Angerstein, 1735-1823' (Phd Thesis, University of Amsterdam, 2002), p. 46.

3. 'Tables showing the Lots in each Parish, numbered as originally granted - the original Grantee - the name of the Lot, or lots, if one has been acquired, and the present Possessor where there is one' and 'A Table, showing the Estates in cultivation in 1832, and their Owners, in 1832, copied from the list appended to Byres' map of that date, with those in cultivation in 1862', Henry Iles Woodcock, A History of Tobago (Ayr: Smith and Grant, 1867; new impression London: Frank Cass and Company Limited, 1971); John Fowler, A summary account of the present flourishing state of the respectable colony of Tobago in the British West Indies illustrated with a map of the island and a plan of its settlement, agreeably to the sales by his Majesty’s Commissioners (London: A Grant, 1774) pp. 34-35.