Sir George Colebrooke 2nd Bart.

MP, banker and speculator and slave-owner in Antigua and elsewhere in the Caribbean, Husband of Mary Gaynor, daughter and heir of Peter [the ODNB gives Patrick] Gaynor (d. 1738); Sir George Colebrooke is shown as having inherited £200,000 from his father-in-law, but presumably the property in fact was Mary Gaynor's until her marriage. Their second son Sir James Edward Colebrooke (q.v.) succeeded his father in 1809 after the death of both Sir George Colebrooke and their eldest son that year.

1. Sir George Colebrooke has an entry in the ODNB as 'banker'. He was MP for Arundel 1754-1774, and Chairman of the East India Co. His bank closed its doors in 1773 and he was bankrupted in 1777 after loses including £190,000 in speculation on hemp, but appears to have recovered some of his property before his death in 1809.

2. His younger son Henry Thomas Colebrooke is in the ODNB as 'administrator in India and scholar.'

3. In 1786 a group of creditors of Sir George Colebrooke & Co known as the 'Second Shop creditors' were called to consider the sale of estate in Grenada and Dominica mortgaged to Sir George Colebooke and assigned by him to the creditors.

R.B. Sheridan ‘The rise of a colonial gentry: a case study of Antigua 1730-1775’ Economic History Review NS 13.3 (1961) pp. 342-357, at p. 349.

1. H. V. Bowen, ‘Colebrooke, Sir George, second baronet (1729–1809)’, rev. Anita McConnell, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, Jan 2008 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/37301, accessed 21 March 2015]; http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/colebrooke-george-1729-1809 [accessed 05/09/2016].

2. Richard F. Gombrich, ‘Colebrooke, Henry Thomas (1765–1837)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/5866, accessed 21 March 2015].

3. London Gazette 12748 02/05/1786 p. 192.