James Heywood Markland

Awarded compensation as treasurer of the 'Hon Revd Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts' for Codrington estate in Barbados.

James Heywood Markland, antiquary and solicitor, son of Robert Markland, a check and fustian manufacturer in Manchester, and Elizabeth Hibbert. Parliamentary agent to the West India planters in 1814. Also awarded compensation with John Nembhard Hibbert (q.v.) and Thomas Hibbert (q.v.) for Great Valley Sugar estate, Coventry Pen and Albion estate in Jamaica as trustee and executor of Robert Hibbert senior. He has an entry in the ODNB as 'antiquary' that relates his appointment as 'parliamentary agent' for the West India planters and notes his publications including the Sketch of George Hibbert without mentioning slavery or the enslaved.

1. Born in Manchester 07/12/1788, married Charlotte Freeling in Marylebone, Middlesex, 24/09/1821. Lived at 14 Upper Gower Street [now 114 Gower Street] 1823-1829. In the census of 1841 at 1 Lansdown Crescent, Bath, Landed Proprietor & Fundholder, with his wife Charlotte and daughter Elizabeth. Census of 1851 at 1 Lansdown Crescent, Bath, with his wife Charlotte and daughter Elizabeth J. Markland. At the same address in the census of 1861 with his wife Charlotte and Charles Rivers Freeling, visitor, 49 and Arthur Charles Freeling, visitor, 15. Died at 1 Lansdown Crescent on 28/12/1864.

2. Effects valued at £30,000 on his death in 1864. Executors were Charles Rivers Freeling of 1 New-square Lincoln's Inn and Frederick George Davidson of 18 Spring-gardens, Middlesex.

3. One of 7 people co-opted into the Roxburghe Club by the first 18 members at the St. Albans Tavern on 17 June 1812, he presented Chester Mysteries: De Deluvio Noe. De Occisione Innocentium, edited by J. H. Markland, to the club in 1818.

4. Author, Remarks on the Sepulchral Memorials of Past and Present Times with some suggestions for improving the Condition of our Churches, Oxford, John Henry Parker, 1840, and On the Reverence due to Holy Places, London, J. Murray, 1845, and other works. Contributer to the Archaelogia.

5. Fellow of the Royal Society 28/03/1816.

6. Markland was the most important figure on the Literary Committee of the London Society of West India Planters and Merchants in the 1820s as well as secretary and solicitor to the Standing Committee. The Literary Committee was established in 1823 as the agent of publicity for the pro-slavery cause through pamphlets, publishers, newspapers, journalists. Markland was 'ideally placed to procure for the West Indians the services of booksellers and publishers. He was, for example, the West Indians’ point of contact with both John Murray and William Blackwood'. He was also literary agent for several pro-slavery authors including Mrs A.C. Carmichael and Henry Nelson Coleridge (1798-1843), the nephew and editor of Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

T71/866 St David claim no. 45. T71/872 Hanover claim nos. 81 and 82. T71/899 Barbados claim no. 4215; Courtney, W. P., and Bernard Nurse. "Markland, James Heywood (1788–1864), antiquary." Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. 23 Sep. 2004; Accessed 11 Apr. 2020. https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-18073.

1. J. R. Howard Roberts and Walter H. Godfrey (editors) Survey of London: volume 21: The parish of St Pancras part 3: Tottenham Court Road & neighbourhood (1949), available at www.british-history.ac.uk/report.aspx?compid=65176Ancestry.com; Ancestry.com, London, England, Marriages and Banns, 1754-1921 [database online]; 1841 census online; 1851 census online; 1861 census online; National Probate Calendar 1865.

2. National Probate Calendar 1865.

3. www.roxburgheclub.org.uk/membership/index.php?MemberID=22 [accessed 05/02/2013].

4. See also entry for James Heywood Markland in the ODNB for a full list of his publications and further biographical details.

5. http://royalsociety.org/uploadedFiles/Royal_Society_Content/about-us/fellowship/Fellows1660-2007.pdf [accessed 05/02/2013].

6. Michael Taylor, 'Conservative political economy and the problem of colonial slavery, 1823-33' (unpub. PhD, University of Cambridge, 2015), p. 40.