Charles Bosanquet

Bosanquet was born in Forest House, Essex to a Huguenot merchant. He was sent to attend school in Hackney where a number of prominent Whig families sent their sons. He was placed in a merchant’s house in Lyons aged 16 to 18. He entered the West Indian trade in partnership with John Proctor Anderdon, and then later also with William Manning. With them, he owned the plantation New Prospect, St Vincent, and was a mortgagee with them on Peruvian Vale and Henry’s Vale, St Vincent until the firm failed in 1831. In the lead up to the Napoleonic wars with increased fears of attacks from France, he was gazetted lieutenant of the London and Westminister light horse volunteers. Later, he served as Justice of the Peace and Deputy Lieutenant, and High Sheriff for Northumberland. Bosanquet held a number of powerful leadership roles in various companies and organisations. He was a member of Lloyds from 1809, as well as a commitee member of its patriotic fund. During his time as sub-governor of the South Sea Company, a company that was involved in the shipment of enslaved Africans to Spanish America, he donated money to the establishment of King’s College London. He was also director of the West India Company, chairman of the exchequer bill office, and governor of the Canadian Land Company. Bosanquet was also a writer, publishing four pamplets that related mostly to trade in sugar and rum in the British Caribbean and discussed his Anti-Bullionist position. He held stock in the Royal Exchange Assurance Company and recieved annuities from the South Sea Company. There are records of him as a trustee on three awards of compensation for plantations at St Kitts after the Slave Compensation Act; however, he renounced this role.