Sir James Willoughby Gordon

Son and heir of Captain Francis Grant-Gordon (q.v.). Career soldier, left £120,000. MP for Launceston 1829-1831. He has an entry in the ODNB which is completely silent on the origins in slavery of the fortune of his great-uncle 'James Gordon of Moor Place, Hertfordshire' or of the property in people transmitted to him under his great-uncle's will.

1. In 1805, James Willoughby Gordon initiated a suit to induce Alexander, Duke of Gordon, to assign to him the estate [and enslaved people] on Antigua of which the Duke of Gordon had become trustee as heir-at-law of Lord Adam Gordon, one of the original trustees of the entail by James Gordon of Moor Place under which Francis Grant-Gordon was tenant-for-life and James Willoughby Gordon was remainder man. The suit was successful and the estate was conveyed to James Willoughby Gordon and his wife 02/07/1806.

http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1820-1832/member/gordon-sir-james-1772-1851; H. M. Chichester, ‘Gordon, Sir James Willoughby, first baronet (1772–1851)’, rev. Roger T. Stearn, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, 2004; online edn, May 2014 [http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/11058, accessed 8 March 2017]

1. Vere Langford Oliver, History of Antigua Vol. II p. 26.