Lauchlin Macleane

MP for Arundel 1768-1771, Irish adventurer and speculator in East India Co. stock, Lt-Governor of St Vincent 1766 and slave-owner in Grenada and Dominica with a wider group of MPs and co-investors, dying ruined in India in 1778. He has an entry in the ODNB as 'political agent and speculator', which details his intensive involvement in land sales in the Ceded & Neutral Islands, but is silent on the purchase or ownership of enslaved people.

1. In 1769, Lauchlin Macleane, John Stuart, Sir Thomas Charles Bunbury, Clotworthy Upton and George Ridge, who owned shares in the La Tante, Saint Cloud (Saint Cloux), Le Grand Bras, Chantilly, Saint Maur and two other plantations in Grenada, and Balamonly [sic] and 11 other estates on Dominica issued a power of attorney to the London merchants Simond and Hankey. That this was Lauchlin Macleane the MP is confirmed by references to his 'land purchases' in the West Indies in his History of Parliament entry, which also identifies John Stuart as his partner as medical men in Philadelphia in 1756.

2. Letters from Macleane to Warren Hastings (1774-1777), Lord Shelburne (1766-1772) and John Wilkes (1765-1769) are held in the British Library and Bodleian Libraries.

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/macleane-lauchlin-1727-78 [accessed 19/12/2015]; Marshall, P. J. 2008 "Macleane, Lauchlin [formerly Laughlin McLean] (1728/9–1778), political agent and speculator." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 12 Jul. 2019. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-40597

1. The Beinecke Lesser Antilles Collection at Hamilton College, M196.

2. British Library, Manuscript Collections, Add MSS 29135-39 passim; Private Collection, Bodleian Library, Special Collections, MSS Film dep 961-1005; British Library, Manuscript Collections Add MSS 30868-71 passim.

We are grateful to Stephen Lewis for his assistance with compiling this entry.