Henry Brouncker of St Christopher

Slave-owner on St Kitts, first husband of Susanna Feuilleteau (q.v., under Susanna Stanley). Their daughter Catherine married John Willett Adey (q.v., under John Willett Willett senior).

1. Attended Westminster School: "BROUNCKER, HENRY, son of Francis Brouncker, Monmouth Street, Westminster; b. 18 Jul 1707; adm. Jan 1717/8; in under school list 1721; apprenticed to John Swinnerton, Lincoln’s Inn, attorney, 7 Dec 1721; adm. solicitor 7 Dec 1730, and adm. attorney 4 Nov 1750; Deputy Collector of St. Kitts, West Indies, 1736; m. 1st, 8 Nov 1758 Elizabeth, widow of John Orton, and dau. of Charles Payne, St. Kitts; m. 2nd, 1761 Susannah, dau. of Lewis Feuilleteau, St. Kitts; d. 4 Jul 1769."

2. Will of Henry Brouncker of St Christopher proved 01/12/1769. In the will he recited his marriage settlement with Lewis Feuilleteau, under which his estate was obliged to pay £25,000 to his wife Susanna. He also gave her £200 immediately and the 'negro woman called Bess who usually waits upon her' and five other enslaved people to be chosen by his widow. He left an annuity of £200 p.a. to his sister Mary Johnson widow. He left £15,000 to his son Henry Brouncker, £10,000 to his son Lewis William Brouncker and £5000 each to his daughters Catherine and Mary. He also requested that his wife pay over £5000 to each of the daughters from her £25,000, 'as I now find that settlement too large for me to make considering the number of children I now have.' He divided the rest of his estate between his children equally.

3. Henry's daughter Mary Brouncker married William Clement Finch at the house of her mother and stepfather in Marylebone in 1789. Finch was buried in Albury, Surrey, age 41 in 1794: "Rear Admiral of the Blue & one of the Representatives in Parliament for the County of Surrey". She remarried, to William Strode in Marylebone in 1803; one of the witnesses to the ceremony was John Willett Willett (q.v., Mary's brother-in-law). In her will, where she described herself as "late of Brook Street in the County of Middlesex and of Northaw in the County of Hertford but now of Upper Harley Street in the County of Middlesex, widow", she included a bequest "to Elizabeth Bowrey a Mulatto woman formerly belonging to and in the service of my Mother and now living at Northaw aforesaid the annual sum of twenty pounds during her life." She may be the Mary Strode, age 47, buried in St Etheldreda, Hatfield, in 1813.

1. The Record of Old Westminsters (1928), with improvements © Hugh Edmund Pagan MA FSA, available via the online catalogue for Westminster School's Archive & Collections, http://collections.westminster.org.uk/index.php/brouncker-henry-1707-1769 [accessed 05/01/2020].

2. PROB 11/953/58.

3. Ancestry.com, London, England, Church of England Marriages and Banns, 1754-1932 [database online]; History of Parliament Online, https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1790-1820/member/finch-hon-william-clement-1753-94 [accessed 14/09/2020]; Findmypast.co.uk, Boyd's marriage index, 1538-1850 [database online]; Ancestry.com, Surrey, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database online]; PROB 11/1549/99; Findmypast.co.uk, National Burial Index For England & Wales [database online]. See also separate entry for Elizabeth Bowrey.

We are grateful to Elizabeth Burling, Hugh Pagan, Bethany Duck and Elizabeth Wells for their assistance with compiling this entry.