Richard Cumberland

The author of The West Indian with an entry in the ODNB as 'playwright and novelist'. His father-in-law George Ridge of Kelmiston (q.v.) was part of the syndicate led by Lauchlin Macleane (q.v.) purchasing land and then enslaved people in Grenada c. 1769. One secondary source suggests that Cumberland himself was part of the syndicate and took a 'share of the burden' in managing the Grenada property. It appears that Cumberland was in fact the legatee of his brother-in-law Captain William Ridge (q.v.) for a share in the 'plantations' in 1773 subject to the right of Captain William Ridge's brother Thomas Ridge to buy out that share for £3000. It is not yet known by LBS whether Thomas Ridge exercised his option. In 1795 Richard Cumberland 'now of Charles Street, St James Square' received £2500 in the Exchequer Loans advanced by the British government to planters and merchants in St Vincent and Grenada.

1. Cumberland's own memoirs, published originally in1807, appear entirely silent on any involvement in the early Grenada speculation, on any inheritance from his brother-in-law and on any participation in the Exchequer Loans (which might conceivably have been received by his son). He presents his children as having married well and shows several of them to have been part of slave-related networks. His eldest daughter married Lord Edward Bentinck, brother to the Duke of Portland; His eldest son Richard (who predeceased him) married [Albinia] the eldest daughter of the [3rd] Earl of Buckinghamshire, and 'died in Tobago, where he went to qualify for a civil employment in that island'; his son Charles married the daughter of 'General Mathew' (q.v., under General Edward Mathew); his youngest son William married Eliza, daughter of 'Mrs Burt' (and probably of Charles Pym Burt the elder, q.v.) and served in the West Indies as a naval officer.

2. O'Shaughnessy shows Cumberland as the agent for the Bahamas (1760-1785) and for Dominica from 1777.

Sherbo, Arthur. "Cumberland, Richard (1732–1811), playwright and novelist." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 30 Apr. 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-6888; Asokha SinhaRaja Tammita-Delgoda, '''NABOB, HISTORIAN AND ORIENTALIST" The Life and Writings of Robert Orme (1728-1801)', unpublished PhD Thesis, King's College London (n.d.) https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/files/2926894/DX204899.pdf p. 113 [accessed 29/04/2020]; will of Captain William Ridge proved 03/02/1773 PROB 11/985/27; Museum of London in Docklands 681 99 Exchequer Bill receipts for Grenada and St Vincent.

1. Richard J. Dircks (ed.), The Memoirs of Richard Cumberland, written by himself (New York: AMS Press, 2002) Vol. II p. 88, pp. 153-4.

2. O'SHAUGHNESSY, ANDREW J. “THE FORMATION OF A COMMERCIAL LOBBY: THE WEST INDIA INTEREST, BRITISH COLONIAL POLICY AND THE AMERICAN REVOLUTION.” The Historical Journal 40, no. 1 (1997): 71–95, doi:10.1017/S0018246X9600684X, at p. 89.