Anthony Browne

Profile & Legacies Summary

2^nd Oct 1769 - 6^th Mar 1840

Claimant or beneficiary

Biography

London banker, MP and colonial agent who claimed unsuccessfully as creditor of the Harman's estate on Antigua but probably also the same man as the Anthony Browne who received a smaller award for two enslaved people elsewhere on Antigua.

Browne was from a merchant family in Antigua since the C17th (where, he told the House of Commons, he had spent ten of the happiest years of his life: Thorne, p. 277). (Born, St Philip's, Antigua.) Married Dorothy Harman of St Philip's, Antigua, 31 October 1791. In London, a colonial agent and partner in the banking house of Bowles, Beachcroft, Reeves and Collins (1796-1802). Senior partner in the house of Browne, Cobb and Stokes, 1802-1816. MP for Hedon (Yorkshire), 1806-1818. Staunch defender of the planter interest and anti-abolitionist. Browne appears to have become Agent for Antigua and Montserrat although at what point is not yet known. In 1824 he was writing, with others, to protest against the impression that slavery was about to be abolished; that this was having a damaging effect on the enslaved themselves and on colonial property in general. See Times, 10/09/1824, reproducing a letter from the Agents of 25 February 1824.
The will of Anthony Browne [formerly of the Island of Antigua but at present residing in the Crescent at Kensington], proved 08/05/1840, is extremely brief, bequeathing 'all I have in the world' to Emma Letitia Browne Browne [sic] 'residing with me in the Crescent' and appointing as his executors Lewis Farley Clogstoun Johnston 'at present or lately acting Chief Justice in the Island of Trinidad' and Joseph Liggins 'of Homers Villa Addison Road in the parish of Kensington and a West India merchant in the City of London' (both of whom q.v.). Emma Letitia Browne Browne, the adopted daughter of Anthony Browne and Dorothy Browne, was baptised 10/08/1815 (born December 1812) at St Mary Willesden, and her death was registered at Croydon Q3 1886.

Sources

T71/877 Antigua claim no. 757; see also notes on Antigua claim no. 270 (Harman's), where Browne was annuitant and execution creditor £5126 2s 3d (withdrawn).

R. G. Thorne (ed.), The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (5 vols., London, Secker & Warburg for the History of Parliament Trust, 1986), vol. 3, pp. 277-8.
PROB 11/1927/40; Ancestry.com, London, England, Births and Baptisms, 1813-1906 [database online]; Ancestry.com, England and Wales FreeBMD Death Index, 1837-1915 [database online].

Further Information

Absentee?

British/Irish

Spouse

Dorothy Harman

Associated Claims (2)

Associated Estates (1)

The dates listed below have different categories as denoted by the letters in the brackets following each date. Here is a key to explain those letter codes:

SD - Association Start Date
SY - Association Start Year
EA - Earliest Known Association
ED - Association End Date
EY - Association End Year
LA - Latest Known Association

1802 [EA] - 1817 [LA] → Joint owner

Golden Grove [ St Vincent ]

In 1817 the enslaved people on Golden Grove estate was registered to 'McCracken and Brown'. Deeds of lease and release of 09/04/1804 and 10/04/1804 show William Doyle late of St Vincent but then of Trinidad (eldest son and heir at law of William Doyle of St Vincent) selling Golden Grove and 104 'negroes and other slaves' named in a schedule to Andrew McCracken of St Vincent and Anthony Browne of the City of London. The indentures rehearsed an earlier agreement of 12/11/1796 whereby the elder William Doyle had agreed to sell Golden Grove to Andrew McCracken for £24,666 free of all encumbrances other than (1) a mortgage for £10,863 11s 4d to Col [sic] Turner and Alexander Innes of London which by assignment was vested in Alexander Houstoun & Co. of Glasgow and (2) judgments for over £10,000 of which the largest was £8640 currency to Peter Haffey against William Doyle and Charles James Warner; and (3) an annuity of £200 p.a. on the lives of William Doyle and Susannah his wife that McCracken agreed to grant to the couple. On 24/06/1802 McCracken agreed to sell Anthony Browne a moiety of the estate and the 137 enslaved people then attached to it for £13,500. Browne was to clear the mortgages and McCracken was to apply the purchase money to clearing the judgments. William Doyle the elder had died in 1799 without perfecting the sale to McCracken and the 1804 deed by the younger William Doyle was to remedy this.