Arthur Balfour

Arthur Balfour of Portland Place was an East India Co. man but appears to have invested in mortgages and guarantees in the West Indies. He appeared among the pledgers of security for the Grenada and St Vincent loans advanced by the British government in the 1790s, standing security for £10,000 as one of several guarantors for a penal sum of £120,000 to cover the the £60,000 lent to William Lushington and James Law of the City of London 21/07/1795. He appeared separately as a secured creditor of James Law for £15,000 under a bond and covenant of 1803 and 1805 respectively in the suit of Ellice v Goodson, brought by Balfour's representative in 1836. He was also one of three transferees (the other two were Walter Robertson and Thomas Fairholme, each of whom q.v.) of a mortgage or mortgages over plantations [and enslaved people] on Tobago by John Anthony Rucker, Patrick Maxwell and Arnold Mello in 1785. His will, proved 20/12/1817, offers no information about 'slave-property': he left his house in Portland Place to his brother John Balfour (q.v., under John Crawfurd Balfour, whom LBS has inferred to have been the same man). He left £160,000 at death.

Museum of London in Docklands Archives BA 2182 678; Ellice v Goodson' in The Jurist, containing reports of cases determined in law and in equity during the year 1838 (1839) Vol. 2 pp. 127-129; National Library of Scotland, 'Legal documents relating to properties in the West Indies belonging to Alexander Ellice and his descendants', Ch. 12662 10/06/1785, http://manuscripts.nls.uk/repositories/2/archival_objects/3505 [accessed 30/05/2018]; PROB 11/1599/295; W.D. Rubinstein, 'Who were the rich?' Vol. I (revised edition 2017) 1816/19.