Rice James

London West India merchant and mortgagee of 'slave-property' who reportedly sold his share of his partnership with Richard Beckford in May 1793 to James Inglish Keighley (q.v.) for £30,500. He was almost certainly the Rice James of Wallington [sic] Suffolk whose will (the main beneficiaries of which were his nieces Elizabeth Williams, Hannah Bowen and Margaret Beavor or Beaven), was proved 28/03/1822. The will does not refer to West India property or to a mercantile past but was attested by two men in the City of London, while the testator Rice James and his wife Martha nee Ladbroke had baptised a child in London: the identification of the testator as the London merchant is cemented by the insertion of four men known from his will to have been his executors into the suit of Beckford v Kemble in 1822, after his death. Rice James was shown as living at Lyndford Hall in Norfolk in Carys New Itinerary of 1810 and at Thetford New Place in A Topographical and Historical Description of Norfolk: Containing an Account ... also in 1810.

1. Martha James widow of Brighton left over £10,000 in her will proved 27/01/1831, most of it to members of the Calvert family.

James v Kynnier 1799, in Francis Vesey (ed.) Reports of Cases Argued and Determined in the High Court of Chancery, 1789-1817 (1827) Vol. V p. 108; PROB 11/1654/401; TNA C 13/2351/9.

1. PROB 11/1780/242.