Alice Eliot (née Byam)

Owner of Eliots estate on Antigua, widow of Samuel Eliot and mother of Elizabeth Lady Le Despencer or Despenser, Samuel Eliot of Eling (q.v.), Freeman Eliot and Mrs Mary Cope.

1. The 'will' of Alice Eliot widow of St Mar[y]lebone was proved 29/02/1828. In fact, she described the paper as a memorandum, saying that she had destroyed all wills she had previously made and 'trusting this will do as well', to save the expense of execution of a will. It opens 'As I expect my estate in Antigua will now very shortly be sold...'. She left half the expected proceeds to her son Samuel, and the other half equally between her other three [surviving] children, Eliza Lady Despencer, Freeman Eliot and Mary Mrs Cope. An affidavit verifying her will by the London lawyer John Hopton Forbes described her as formerly of the island of Antigua and late of Eling in the county of Southampton but at Nottingham Place Middlesex. Two daughters who predeceased her were Lady Cosby, wife of Sir Henry Cosby; and the Countess of Erroll.

2. Her son-in-law Sir Henry Cosby, who married Ann Eliot (d. 1817 at Clifton) in 1793, has an entry in the ODNB as an army officer in the East India Co.

T71/244 pp. 202-207 shows the registration in 1817 of 202 enslaved people by 'John Osborn attorney to the estate of Mrs Alice Eliot'; T71/246 pp. 410-415 shows Joseph Whittingham atty of Mrs Alice Eliot late of this island at present in GB; T71/248 registering 208 people; pp. 85-89 shows Paul Bridger registering 210 enslaved people on an unnamed estate as agent to Mrs Alice Eliot; T71/249 pp. 230-234 shows Alice Eliot prop. by Wm Byam atty to Messrs Plummer & Wilson merchants of London.

1. PROB 11/1736/513.

2. H. M. Stephens, ‘Cosby, Sir Henry Augustus Montagu (1743–1822)’, rev. Roger T. Stearn, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/6369, accessed 20 March 2015]