General Charles Leigh

The Camp estate on St Kitts was shown in the 1822, 1825 and 1828 Slave Registers as registered in the name of 'General Leigh, deceased owner.' This must be General Charles Leigh, formerly Commander-in-Chief on St Kitts, which he left abruptly in 1796. His path to ownership is unclear. In 1817 the estate was shown as belonging to Catherine Longe (nee Jackson), an absentee living at Spixworth in Norfolk who under her will left a portrait of General Leigh as well as property on St Kitts. General Charles Leigh was a lifelong friend of his Eton schoolmate Francis Longe (1748-1812), Catherine Longe's husband, a relationship unusually commemorated in the plaques to the two men in the parish church, so it is reasonable to assume that General Charles Leigh left the estate to his friends. However, no will had yet been found for Charles Leigh and this remains speculative.

1. General Charles Leigh was the uncle by marriage of Lord Byron, and the uncle by marriage and subsequently the father-in-law of Augusta Leigh, Lord Byron's half-sister, who married Col. George Leigh (1771-1850), Charles's son.

http://www.churchmonumentssociety.org/Monument%20of%20the%20Month%20Archive/2015-08.html [accessed 31/01/2016].

1. Byron's Letters and Journals (1973) p. 44.