Identity area
Type of entity
Person
Authorized form of name
Beckford, William, 1709-1770
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Dates of existence
1709-1770
History
BECKFORD, WILLIAM, second son of Peter Beckford, West Indian planter, Speaker of the Jamaica Assembly, and Bathsheba, dau. of Col. Julines Hering, Paul Island, Jamaica; bapt. 19 Dec 1709; adm. (aged 9) Jan 1718/9; Balliol Coll. Oxford, matr. 17 Dec 1725; BA 1729; MA 1732; Leiden Univ. 1731; a medical student in Leiden and Paris to 1735; succeeded brother in Jamaican estates 1737; settled in England 1744; purchased Fonthill Abbey estate, Wiltshire, 1745; a West India merchant in London; Alderman, City of London (Bishopsgate Ward) from 25 Jun 1752, Sheriff of London 1755-6, Lord Mayor 1762-3, 1769-70; Master, Ironmongers’ Co., 1753; MP Shaftesbury 8 Dec 1747-54, City of London from 1754; a Tory on his entry to politics, but from 1756 onwards a staunch supporter of William Pitt; gave his backing to John Wilkes; his famous impromptu speech to King George III on the misdeeds of his ministers, 23 May 1770, was subsequently inscribed on the monument erected to his memory in Guildhall; laid the foundation stone of the new Newgate Prison 31 May 1770; m. 8 Jun 1756 Maria, widow of Francis Marsh, Jamaica, and sister of John Hamilton (qv); d. while Lord Mayor 21 Jun 1770. DNB.
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Functions, occupations and activities
Estate probate in 1774 recorded 1356 enslaved people, of whom 718 were listed as male and 638 as female, valued at £84159.39. Listed in the Jamaican Quit Rent books for 1754 as the owner of 1027 acres of land in St Catherine, 40 acres in St Andrew, 2372 acres in St Thomas-in-the-East, 1000 acres in St Mary, 715 acres in Westmoreland, 7838 acres in Clarendon, 1713 acres in St Dorothy, 6920 acres in St John and 396 acres in St Thomas-in-the-Vale, for a total of 22021 acres.
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Authority record identifier
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GB 2014
Rules and/or conventions used
International Standard Archival Authority Record for Corporate Bodies, Persons and Families - ISAAR(CPF) 2nd edition
Status
Final
Level of detail
Full
Dates of creation, revision and deletion
Prepared for import into AtoM by Westminster School Archive staff, 2019-2020
Revised by Bethany Duck, Archive Assistant, September 2020
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Sources
Supplementary information drawn from UCL's Legacies of British Slave-ownership database. Entry URL: https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146640587
Users should note that the information recorded here that is not to be found in the first two volumes of the Record of Old Westminsters and its first Supplement has been assembled from various published and manuscript sources by Hugh Edmund Pagan MA FSA, and all new resulting text is his copyright, © 2014.
The Record of Old Westminsters: A biographical list of all those who are known to have been educated at Westminster School from the earliest times to 1927, Volumes 1 & 2, compiled by G. F. Russell Barker and Alan H. Stenning, London, 1928.