Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7czq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-28T01:17:01.029Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bristol West India Merchants in the Eighteenth Century

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Kenneth Morgan
Kenneth Morgan
Affiliation:
The University Of Liverpool
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On the north wall of the cloisters in Bristol Cathedral there is a small headstone ‘Sacred to the Memory of Thomas Daniel Esq … a respectable Merchant of this City who was born in Barbados on the 14th March 1730 and departed this life on the 23rd February 1802.’ In the north transept, on a floor marble over the family vault, another inscription to the same man can be found. Thomas Daniel Sr, as he was known, came from a mercantile family that had settled in Barbados in the mid-seventeenth century. He spent his early career in that island and later emigrated to Bristol in 1764. From then onwards he built up a substantial business as a Bristol West India merchant, and handed this down to his son, Thomas Daniel Jr, at the turn of the nineteenth century. The son expanded his trade in Caribbean sugar and acquired slave plantations in Barbados, Antigua, Nevis, Montserrat, Tobago and British Guiana. After Emancipation in 1834 he and his brother, John, received £102,000 in compensation for the loss of their slaves— the second largest sum awarded to Bristol proprietors. The money accumulated by Thomas Daniel Jr enabled him to purchase a fine town house in Berkeley Square, in a fashionable residential area, plus a pleasant country seat at Henbury, just beyond the north-western boundaries of the city. Burgeoning wealth went hand in hand with civic status. From 1785 until 1835, Daniel served on the Bristol Common Council, the governing body of the city.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 3 , December 1993 , pp. 185 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1993

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Details taken from Caribbeana: Miscellaneous Papers relating to the History, Genealogy, Topography, and Antiquities of the British West Indies, ed. Oliver, Vere Langford, 6 vols. (1909–1919), II, 80Google Scholar; Burke's, Landed Gentry (1871), I, 321Google Scholar; and Cave, C. H., A History of Banking in Bristol from 1750 to 1899 (Bristol, 1899), 228Google Scholar, which provides a pedigree of the Daniel family.

2 Based on the sugar imports of the Daniel family listed in Society of Merchant Venturers, Bristol, wharfage books. Thomas Daniel & Sons' sugar trade with Barbados is documented in University of London Library, Newton Estate Papers, MS 523.

3 Marshall, Peter, Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery: The Politics of Emancipation (Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, pamphlet no. 37, Bristol, 1975), app., i–iiGoogle Scholar, The figure cited is an estimate, for the lists of compensation awards do not show the amounts awarded to particular firms or families. John Latimer gives a lower estimate of £55,178 received in compensation for slaves by Daniel, T. & J. (The Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century [Bristol, 1887], 188)Google Scholar. For indentures and deeds concerning the Daniels' West Indian properties see B[ristol] U[niversity] L[ibrary], D. M. 78/126–8, 130–1; D. M. 89/3/14–15; D. M. 89/7/56; and D. M. 183. Thomas Daniel Jr was a member of two mercantile firms: Thomas Daniel & Sons in Bristol and Thomas Daniel & Co. in London (P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice], London, PROB 11/2192/477 [PCC 1854], will of Thomas Daniel Jr).

4 Oliver, Vere Langford, The Monumental Inscriptions in the Churches and Churchyards of the Island of Barbados, British West Indies (1915), 25Google Scholar.

5 Beaven, Alfred B., Bristol Lists: Municipal and Miscellaneous (Bristol, 1899), 68, 285Google Scholar.

6 Larimer, John, The Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century (Bristol, 1893), 455Google Scholar.

7 Bush, Graham, Bristol and its Municipal Government, 1820–1851 (Bristol Record Society Publications, XXIX, Bristol, 1976), 239Google Scholar.

8 E.g. Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , II, 78–85, 137–42, 273–4, 37–82Google Scholar.

9 The general importance of sugar is emphasised in Davis, Ralph, The Industrial Revolution and British Overseas Trade (Leicester, 1979), 43Google Scholar. The significance of sugar to Bristol's economy is analysed in Hall, I. V., ‘A History of the Sugar Trade in England, with special reference to the Sugar Trade of Bristol’ (MA thesis, University of Bristol, 1925)Google Scholar; Maclnnes, C. M., Bristol: A Gateway of Empire (Bristol, 1939), ch. 11Google Scholar; and Morgan, Kenneth, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1993), ch. 7CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

10 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, Table 7.3, 191Google Scholar.

11 Maps showing the location of Bristol's sugar refineries and distilleries are included in Lobel, M. D. and Carus-Wilson, E. M., Bristol: Historic Towns Atlas (1975)Google Scholar. The history of Bristol's sugar refineries has been studied, mainly from an institutional perspective, in several articles by Hall, I. V.: see esp. ‘Whitson Court Sugar House, Bristol, 1665–1824,’ T[ransactions of the] B[ristol and] G[loucestershire] A[rchaeological] S[ociety], LXV (1944), 1–97Google Scholar, and ‘The Daubenys: Part I,’ ibid., LXXXIV (1965), app. II, 137–40.

12 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 184–5, 209Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., Table 7.3, 191. For a similar phenomenon in the tobacco and slave trades see Price, Jacob M. and Clemens, Paul G. E., ‘A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade: British Firms in the Chesapeake Trade, 1675–1775,’ Journal of Economic History, XLVII (1987), 1–43CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 Cf. Price, Jacob M., ‘The Rise of Glasgow in the Chesapeake Tobacco Trade, 1707–1775,’ W[illiam and] M[ary] Q[uarterly] 3rd series, XI (1954), 190Google Scholar.

15 Bailey's Western and Midland Directory: Or Merchant's and Tradesman's Useful Companion for the Year 1783; MacInnes, , Bristol: A Gateway of Empire, 235, 363Google Scholar.

16 Minchinton, W. E., ‘The Merchants of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century,’ in Sociétés et groupes sociaux en Aquitaine et en Angleterre, Fédérations Historiques du Sud-Ouest (Bordeaux, 1979), 185–200Google Scholar; Richardson, David, The Bristol Slave Traders: A Collective Portrait (Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, pamphlet no. 60, Bristol, 1985)Google Scholar.

17 The firms are listed in the appendix.

18 Fifty-eight years of the eighteenth century can be fully covered by these sources.

19 Eighteenth-century Liverpool Port Books are unavailable after 1726. All post-1696 London Port Books, with one defective exception, were destroyed in the late nineteenth century (Price and Clemens, , ‘A Revolution of Scale in Overseas Trade,’ 2, 29Google Scholar). The availability of customs accounts for Port Glasgow and Greenock means that, as for Bristol, a collective biography of leading West India merchants is feasible: see Devine, T. M., ‘An Eighteenth-Century Business Elite: Glasgow-West India Merchants, c.1750–1815,’ Scottish Historical Review, LXVII (1978), 40–67Google Scholar.

20 This section on the origins of Bristol West India merchants is based primarily on the apprenticeship lists and burgess books at the B[ristol] R[ecord] O[ffice]. I have not thought it necessary to give volume and folio citations. Supplementary data has been gathered from other sources. Material on Claxton, Robert, Daniel, Thomas Sr and JrDehany, David, Meyler, Richard Sr and Tobin, James was taken from Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , II, 80, 276, III, 290, V, 2–3, VI, 42–3Google Scholar. Details on George Gibbs were gleaned from Gibbs, John Arthur, The History of Antony and Dorothea Gibbs and of their contemporary relatives, including the History of the Origin & Early Years of the House of Antony Gibbs and Sons (1992), 4Google Scholar. The references to John Curtis and Samuel Munckley are based on Hall, , ‘Whitson Court Sugar House,’ 72–3, 77Google Scholar. The origins of John Pinney are discussed in Pares, A., A West-India Fortune (1950), 63Google Scholar, and in Udal, J. S., ‘The Story of the Bettiscombe Skull,’ Proceedings of the Dorset Natural History and Antiquarian Field Club, XXI (1910), 188, 195Google Scholar. The background of Isaac Hobhouse is outlined in Hobhouse, Henry, Hobhouse Memoirs (Taunton, 1927), 15Google Scholar. The origins of John and Michael Becher, Robert Gordon and James Laroche are given in Richardson, , The Bristol Slave Traders, 19–20Google Scholar. Details on Henry Swymmer are taken from his father's will: PRO, PROB 11/609/108 (PCC Plymouth). Evan Baillie's origins are dealt with in Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 216–17Google Scholar; History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820 (1986), ed. Thorne, R. G., III, 108Google Scholar; and Bulloch, Joseph Gaston Baillie, A History and Genealogy of the Family of Baillie of Dunain, Dochfour and Lamington … (Green Bay, Wisconsin, 1898), 35Google Scholar. Data on Henry, , Lowbridge, and Bright, Richard are taken from Familiae Minorum Gentium, ed. Clay, John W. (Publications of the Harleian Society, XXXVII, 1894), 135–6Google Scholar. Details on Span, John, Span, Samuel Jr , Miles, William and Farr, Richard Jr are given in The Trade of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Minchinton, W. E. (Bristol Record Society's Publications, XX, 1957), 9, 50, 59Google Scholar.

21 On this theme see Minchinton, W. E., ‘Bristol—Metropolis of the West in the Eighteenth Century,’ these Transactions, 5th series, IV (1954), 69–89Google Scholar.

22 For seventeenth-century Bristol, emigrants to the West Indies see Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, V, 301–2Google Scholar; Dunn, Richard S., Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624–1713 (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1972), 70–1Google Scholar; Smith, Abbot Emerson, Colonists in Bondage: White Servitude and Convict Labor in America 1607–1776 (Chapel Hill, N. C., 1947), 309Google Scholar; Souden, David, ‘“Rogues, whores and vagabonds”? Indentured Servant Emigrants to North America, and the Case of Mid-Seventeenth Century Bristol,’ Social History, III (1978), 23–40CrossRefGoogle Scholar Lawrence-Archer, J. H., Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies (1875), 261, 401Google Scholar; Wright, Philip, Monumental Inscriptions of Jamaica (1966), 190Google Scholar; Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, ed. Howard, Joseph Jackson, 2nd series (1886), I, 4–5Google Scholar. Lists of seventeenth-century Bristol emigrants to the Caribbean can be found in various books compiled by Coldham, Peter W.: see esp. The Bristol Register of Servants sent to Foreign Plantations, 1634–1686 (Baltimore, 1988)Google Scholar; The Complete Book of Emigrants 1607–1660 (Baltimore, 1987)Google Scholar; and The Complete Book of Emigrants 1661–1699 (Baltimore, 1990)Google Scholar.

23 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 81–2, 185Google Scholar; ‘Letter by an Old Man,’ Bristol Gazette, Mar. 1787; Weare, G. E., Edmund Burke's Connection with Bristol: with a Prefatory Memoir of Burke (Bristol, 1894), 8Google Scholar.

24 Weare, , Edmund Burke's Connection with Bristol, 8Google Scholar; Pares, , West-India Fortune, 70, 78, 101Google Scholar; Latimer, , Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century, 455, 473Google Scholar; BRO, Camplin & Smith accounts with William & John Miles in Jamaica (1759–61), Acc. 11109/15; Liverpool Public library, Case & Southworth Sales account book (1754–60), fos. 36r, 43r, 54v, 58v (for Samuel Delpratt); U[niversity of] M[elbourne] A[rchives], Parkville, Victoria, Henry Bright letterbook (1739–48); Lowbridge Bright letterbook (1765–73); Alexander & Evan Baillie to Henry Bright, 2 Sept. 1766; and Evan Baillie to Henry Bright, 1 June, 26 July 1775; box 16A, Bright family papers.

25 Bourne, Fox, English Merchants, II, 16–17Google Scholar; Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, Table 7.7, 197Google Scholar. The poor origins of William Miles may be a legend, for he was apprenticed to a hooper at the age of thirteen and married the daughter of a substantial Bristol merchant (Minchinton, W. E., ‘The Merchants of England in the Eighteenth Century,’ Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, X [1957], 63)Google Scholar.

26 Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , III, 147Google Scholar; PRO, PROB 11/1114/129 (PCC 129 Rockingham), will of Samuel Delpratt, abstracted in B[ritish] L[ibrary], Add. MS 34, 181: Abstract of Wills relating to Jamaica, 1625–1792, fo. 174.

27 MacInnes, , Bristol A Gateway of Empire, 313Google Scholar.

28 Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , V, 5Google Scholar; Pares, , West-India Fortune, 151Google Scholar.

29 Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , I, 76, III, 147, 149–50Google Scholar; Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 216–17, 228Google Scholar.

30 For plantations owned by the Blights and Meylers see BL, Add. MS 12, 436, fo. I2v; PRO, CO 142/31 and PROB 11/1928/390 (PCC Arden), will of Richard Bright; BRO, will of Lowbridge Bright, Bright papers, Acc. 8015(58), and genealogical notes on the Bright family, microfilm F/47. fo. 426; UMA, Richard Meyler to Jeremiah Meyler, 15 July 1762; indenture of the mortgage of Cabaritta plantation from Jeremiah Meyler to Henry Bright, 25 July 1772; Thomas Chambers and Alexander Rankin's valuation of Round Valley Estate, Jamaica, 19 June 1781; and Bright, A. E., ‘Letters of the Bright Family,’ I, 12, II, 5 (unpublished typescript deposited at UMA)Google Scholar; all in boxes 8, 39, 48, Bright family papers. For plantations owned by John Curtis and Thomas Harris see PRO, PROB 11/992/419 (PCC Stevens), will of John Curtis, and CO 142/31. Dehany's, David landholdings in Jamaica are referred to in Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , III, 289Google Scholar, and in BL, Add. MS 12, 434: Long Papers, fo. 5r. Delpratt's, Samuel plantations are mentioned in Caribbeana, ed Oliver, , III, 147Google Scholar. Documentation on the Gordons' estates is available in Bulloch, J. M., The Making of the West Indies: The Gordons as Colonists (priv. printed, 1915), 30Google Scholar; BL, Add. MS 12,435, fos. 3–4; PRO, PROB 11/1138/88 (PCC Norfolk), will of Robert Gordon; and PROB 11/1922/94 (PCC Arden), will of Gordon, John Jr. Miles's, William Jamaican properties are noted in Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , I, 211Google Scholar; in BRO, Records of me Miles family, Acc. 12151, nos. 41(a), 47(a), 50, 52(a); and in ‘Calendar of Correspondence from William Miles, a West Indian Merchant in Bristol, to John Tharp, a Planter in Jamaica, 1770–1789,’ ed. Morgan, Kenneth, in A Bristol Miscellany, ed. McGrath, Patrick (Bristol Record Society's Publications, XXXVII, 1985), 105, 107, III nGoogle Scholar. 70, 113.

31 This is true of Henry, Lowbridge and Richard Bright, David Dehany, Samuel Delpratt, John Gordon Sr and Jr, Robert Gordon, William Gordon and William Miles: see the documentation in note 30 above.

32 For Protheroe, Claxton, and Miles, , see Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , I, 211, II, 169Google Scholar; for Pinney and Tobin, see ibid., I, 212, and Pares, West India Fortune, passim.

33 Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , I, 351Google Scholar; The History of the Island of Antigua, ed. Oliver, Vere Langford, 3 vols. (1894–1899), III, 275Google Scholar.

34 BUL, D. M. 183.

35 PRO, C 54/6143 and PROB 11/1063/192 (PCC Collins), will of David Hamilton.

36 PRO, PROB 11/1270/40 (PCC Harris), will of Samuel Span Sr, and PROB 11/1527/511 (PCC Crickett), will of Samuel Span Jr.

37 Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , I, 28, 207, 297Google Scholar.

38 See above, 185.

39 Marshall, , Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery, app., iGoogle Scholar.

40 Pares, , West-India Fortune, 239–319Google Scholar; ‘Calendar of Correspondence from Miles to Tharp,’ ed. Morgan, , 81–121Google Scholar; and the records for the Daniels and the Brights cited in notes 3 and 30 above.

41 These activities are documented in many of the sources cited in notes 3 and 30 above.

42 Jones, D. K., ‘The Elbridge, Woolnough and Smyth Families of Bristol, in the Eighteenth Century, with special reference to the Spring Plantation, Jamaica’ (Mlitt thesis, University of Bristol, 1972)Google Scholar; PRO, CO 142/31.

43 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 186, 191–2Google Scholar.

44 Pares, , West-India Fortune, 209Google Scholar.

45 Bush, , Bristol and its Municipal Government, 239Google Scholar; History of Parliament: The House of Commons, 1790–1820, ed. Thorne, , III, 108Google Scholar; Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 92Google Scholar; Bourne, Fox, English Merchants, II, 16–17Google Scholar;Quilici, Ronald H.. Turmoil in a City and an Empire: Bristol's Factions, 1700–1775’ (PhD dissertation, University of New Hampshire, 1976), 174, 247Google Scholar; Rogers, Nicholas, Whigs and Cities: Popular Politics in the Age of Walpok and Pitt (Oxford, 1989). 273Google Scholar.

46 Bush, , Bristol and its Municipal Government, 235Google Scholar; Rogers, , Whigs and Cities, 273Google Scholar; Gibbs, , History of Antony and Dorothea Gibbs, 4–6Google Scholar; Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 92Google Scholar; Latimer, , Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, 285Google Scholar; Quilici, , ‘;Turmoil in a City and an Empire,’ 174, 247, 254Google Scholar; The Trade of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, ed. Minchinton, , 21Google Scholar; Jones, Ignatius, Bristol Congregationalism (Bristol, 1947), 40–3Google Scholar; Hall, , ‘Whitson Court Sugar House,’ 71–6Google Scholar.

47 Weare, , Edmund Burke's Connection with Bristol, 8Google Scholar. For Davis's sugar imports see Morgan, Kenneth, ‘Bristol Merchants and the Colonial Trades, 1748–1783’ (DPhil thesis, University of Oxford, 1984), app. C, 338, 348, 359Google Scholar.

48 Inferred from the fact that Philip Protheroe did not come of age until that year.

49 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, Table 7.7, 197Google Scholar.

50 Derbyshire R[ecord] O[ffice], Matlock, Mark Davis Sr to W. P. Perrin, 2 Mar. 1776; Davis & Protheroe to W. P. Perrin, 23 Aug., 24 Nov. 1783; Davis, Protheroe & Claxton to W. P. Perrin, 28 Apr. 1784, 1 May 1796; Protheroes & Claxton to W. P. Perrin, 29 Jan. 1808; all in Fitzherbert MSS: West Indian papers, 239M/E19974, 20106, 20110, 20118, 20188, 20339.

51 Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 126Google Scholar.

52 Derbyshire RO, Protheroes & Claxton to W. P. Perrin, 29 Jan. 1808, Fitzherbert MSS: West Indian papers, 239M/E20339; Pares, , West-India Fortune, 214–15Google Scholar.

53 Marshall, , Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery, 3–24Google Scholar.

54 Pares, , West-India Fortune, 171–4Google Scholar.

55 BRO, apprenticeship lists, 1724–40, fo. 135v; Caribbeana, ed. Oliver, , II, 276Google Scholar.

56 These activities are documented in UMA, Henry Bright letterbook (1739–48). The records left by the Brights and the Meylers are discussed in Kenneth Morgan, ‘The Bright Family Papers,’ Archives (forthcoming).

57 Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 221Google Scholar.

58 UMA, Henry Bright to Richard Meyler, 25 July 1749, 10 June, 25 July 1750; Jeremiah Meyler to Richard Meyler, 29 Aug. 1761, 16 May 1763; Jeremiah Meyler to Richard Bright, 5 Nov. 1783; and Francis Bright letterbook (1752–3); boxes 8, 40, 85, Bright family papers.

59 E.g. UMA, Richard Meyler to Meyler & Hall, 22 Nov. 1763, and Jeremiah Meyler to Richard Meyler, 7 Apr. 1759, 1 Apr. 1765, box 8, ibid.

60 UMA, Lowbridge Bright to Henry Bright, 28 June, 11 Dec. 1765, Lowbridge Bright letterbook (1765–73).

61 Bright, , ‘Letters of the Bright Family,’ I, 14–16Google Scholar.

62 Baillie, George, Interesting Letters Addressed to Evan Baillie Esq. of Bristol, Merchant, Member of Parliament for that Great City, and Colonel of the Bristol Volunteers (1809), 56Google Scholar.

63 Ibid.; UMA, Alexander Baillie to Henry Bright, 12 Apr. 1766, and Evan Baillie to Henry Bright, 26 July 1775, box 16A, Bright family papers.

64 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, Table 7.7, 197Google Scholar; BRO, genealogical notes on the Bright family, microfilm F/47, fo. 426.

65 Baillie, , Interesting Letters, 57Google Scholar.

66 Bright, ‘Letters of the Bright Family,’ I, n.p.

67 See the extensive legal papers scattered throughout UMA, Bright Papers and the summary in Bright, ‘Letters of the Bright Family,’ I, ‘Law Suit,’ n.p.

68 BRO, genealogical notes on the Bright family, microfilm F/47, fo. 426.

69 Hall, , ‘Whitson Court Sugar House,’ 74Google Scholar, and the Appendix below, 207.

70 Gibbs, , History of Antony and Dorothea Gibbs, 13, 456–7Google Scholar.

71 Marshall, , Bristol and the Abolition of Slavery, app., i–iiGoogle Scholar.

72 Checkland, S. G., ‘Finance for the West Indies, 1780–1815,’ Economic History Review, 2nd series, X (1957–1958), 465Google Scholar.

73 E.g. F[elix] F[arley's] B[ristol] J[ournal], 26 Feb. 1763 (Hobhouse, Isaac), 19 03 1763Google Scholar (Michael Atkins), 24 Nov. 1764 (Jeremiah Innys), and 17 Sept. 1768 (John Curtis).

74 FFBJ, 8 Jan. 1785, reprinted in Larimer, Annals of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, 463.

75 History of Parliament: House of Commons, 1790–1820, ed. Thorne, , III, 109, IV, 898Google Scholar.

76 See above, 186, 192.

77 See above, 196–8.

78 History of Parliament House of Commons, 1790–1820, ed. Thorne, , III, 108Google Scholar; Alford, B. W. E., W.D. & H. O. Wills and the Development of the U. K. Tobacco Industry, 1786–1963 (1973), 67Google Scholar; PRO, PROB 11/1453/950 (PCC Pitts), will of John Maxse, and PROB 11/1301/91 (PCC Walpole), will of Thomas Deane; Hobhouse, Memoirs of the Hobhouse Family, xxx; Buckley, Francis, «The Early Glasshouses of Bristol,’ Journal of the Society for Glass Technology, IX (1925), 53Google Scholar; Bright, , «Letters of the Bright Family,’ I, 161Google Scholar; Trinder, Barrie, The Industrial Revolution in Shropshire, 2nd edn. (Chichester, 1981), 272Google Scholar.

79 Lowbridge and Richard Bright, Thomas Deane, and Samuel Munckley were all investors in sugar refineries (Hall, , ‘Whitson Court Sugar House,’ 76–9Google Scholar; ‘Letters of the Bright Family,’ II, n.p.; and BRO, I. V. Hall research notes on Bristol sugar refineries, Box 14).

80 The eight were Henry and Richard Bright, John Curtis, Thomas Daniel Jr, Thomas Deane, Samuel Munckley, Philip Protheroe and Henry Swymmer (Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 85–6, 90–2, 100, 103, 110–11, 113, 126)Google Scholar.

81 Bright, Pamela, Dr Richard Bright 1789–1858 (1983), 15, 113Google Scholar.

82 Cave, , History of Banking in Bristol, 126Google Scholar.

83 PRO, PROB 11/905/21 (PCC Rushworth).

84 History of Parliament' House of Commons, 1790–1820, ed. Thorne, , III, 108–9Google Scholar.

85 Beaven, , Bristol Lists, 275–315Google Scholar.

86 Politics and the Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century: The Petitions of the Society of Merchant Venturers 1698–1803, ed. Minchinton, W. E. (Bristol Record Society Publications, XXIII, 1963), 209–16Google Scholar; Latimer, John, The History of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol (Bristol, 1903), 328–31Google Scholar.

87 These aspects of the Merchant Venturers' activities are covered in McGrath, Patrick, The Merchant Venturers of Bristol; a History of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol from its Origin to the Present Day (Bristol, 1975)Google Scholar and in Politics and the Port of Bristol, ed. Minchinton.

88 Based on notices for merchants in FFBJ, on Sketchley, James, Bristol Directory (Bristol, 1775Google Scholar; facsimile reprint, Bath, 1971), and on Matthews, W., The New History, Survey and Description of the City of Bristol, or Complete Guide and Bristol Directory for the Year 1793–4 (Bristol, 1794)Google Scholar.

89 The interior of this house is described in Ison, Walter, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol (1952), 217–20Google Scholar.

90 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 154, 156, 158–9, 161–2Google Scholar.

91 Richardson, , The Bristol Slave Traders, 24Google Scholar.

92 Based on a comparison of ibid., 29–30, with my list of leading sugar merchants in the appendix below, 207–8.

93 Richardson, , The Bristol Slave Traders, 12, 14Google Scholar.

94 Clarkson, Thomas, The History of the Rise, Progress and Accomplishment of the Abolition of the African Slave Trade by the British Parliament, 2 vols. (1808), I, 294–367Google Scholar; Richards, A. M., ‘The Connection of Bristol with the African Slave Trade, with some account of the currents of public opinion in the city’ (MA thesis, University of Bristol, 1923), 23–87Google Scholar; Marshall, Peter, ‘The Anti-Slave Trade Movement in Bristol’ in Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, ed. McGrath, Patrick (Newton Abbot, 1972), 185–215Google Scholar.

95 Quoted in Pares, , West-India Fortune, 176Google Scholar.

96 Historical Society of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, Robert Philips to Philips, Cramond & Co., 7 Apr. 1790, Cramond, Philips & Co. correspondence.

97 UMA, Bright & Milward to Henry Bright, 15 June 1773, box 16, Bright family papers.

98 UMA, Lowbridge Bright to David Duncombe, 6 Apr. 1791, box 16, Bright family papers; Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 79–80Google Scholar.

99 The Journal of John Wesley, ed. Curnock, Nehemiah, 8 vols. (1909–1916), VII, 209Google Scholar, 15 Sept. 1786.

100 Marcy, Peter T., ‘Eighteenth Century Views of Bristol and Bristolians’ in Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, ed. McGrath, , 11–40Google Scholar.

101 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 185Google Scholar.

102 Ibid., 80–5, 87, 195–6.

103 Details on the debts of John Pinney, James Tobin and William Miles are available in Pares, , West-India Fortune, 239–319Google Scholar, and in ‘Calendar of Correspondence from Miles to Tharp,’ ed. Morgan, , 93–101, 103, 105, 111, 113–16, 118–21Google Scholar.

104 Pares, , West-India Fortune, 212Google Scholar.

105 Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 215–16Google Scholar; BRO, I. V. Hall research notes on Bristol sugar refineries.

106 Pugsley, Alfred J., ‘Some Contributions towards the Study of the Economic Development of Bristol in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries’ (MA thesis, University of Bristol, 1921), ch. 5, p. 7Google Scholar.

107 E.g. Hyde, F. E., Liverpool and the Mersey: An Economic History of a Port, 1700–1970 (Newton Abbot, 1971), 21, 31Google Scholar; Langton, John, ‘Liverpool and its Hinterland in the late Eighteenth Century’ in Commerce, Industry and Transport: Studies in Economic Change on Merseyside, ed. Anderson, B. L. and Stoney, P.J. M. (Liverpool, 1983), 1–25Google Scholar.

108 Alford, B. W. E., ‘The Economic Development of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century: An Enigma?’ in Essays in Bristol and Gloucestershire History, ed. McGrath, Patrick and Cannon, John (Bristol, 1976), 25283Google Scholar. For an alternative view see Atkinson, B.J., ‘An Early Example of the Decline of the Industrial Spirit? Bristol Enterprise in the first half of the Nineteenth Century,’ Southern History, LX (1987), 71–89Google Scholar.