Edward Leeds of Hackney

Under a deed of 03/06/1771 Edward Leeds of Hackney purchased for £450 two annuities of £25 p.a. each, one for the life of his son Richard then aged 2 and one for the life of Edward Balch, son of John Balch of Mile End Stepney, then aged 7, from Rowland Ash secured on Ash's estate and enslaved people on St Vincent, as one of a small group of purchasers paying in total £3175 for annuities amounting to £325 p.a. The schedule of annuitants immediately precedes a list of 76 enslaved people on whom the annuities were secured. Richard Willis of London guaranteed the payments.

1. Richard Leeds was baptised at St John Hackney son of Edward and Catherine Leeds, who had married at Hackney in 1767. The ODNB entry for Edward Leeds (d. 1758), the father of Edward Leeds one of the Masters in Chancery and MP for Reigate (1784-1787) who died in 1803, shows the father as of Hackney as well as Croxton. However, Edward Leeds the lawyer and MP was reportedly unmarried, both in his own History of Parliament entry and in the ODNB entry for his father.

Deed Book 1771-1772, British Library, EAP688/1/1/26, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP688-1-1-26 pp. 108-121. Edward Balch the son of John Balch was Edward Leeds Balch, baptised at St Dunstan and All Saints Stepney 20/10/1763, Ancestry.cm Edward-leeds Balch in the London, England, Church of England Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database online]. He died in 1830, Ancestry.com Edward Leeds Balch in the London, England, Church of England Deaths and Burials, 1813-2003 [database online].

1. London Gazette 15621 17 September 1803 p. 1256 shows Edward Leeds the Master in Chancery as late of Charlotte Street Bedford Square, and of Croxton Cambridgeshire; http://www.histparl.ac.uk/volume/1754-1790/member/leeds-edward-1728-1803 [accessed 19/10/2020]; Kilburn, Matthew. "Leeds, Edward (bap. 1693, d. 1758), serjeant-at-law." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 19 Oct. 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-16326.