Anna Eliza Brydges, Duchess of Chandos

Anna Eliza Brydges (née Gamon, formerly Elletson) was an English aristocrat and plantation owner. She married James Brydges, the third Duke of Chandos.

Early life

Anna came from Datchworth, Hertfordshire. She was the daughter of Richard Gamon and his wife, Elizabeth (née Grace). She had a younger brother, Sir Richard Grace Gamon, who became MP for Winchester.

First marriage and the Hope Plantation

Her first husband was Roger Hope Elletson (1723-1775), an Old Etonian who grew sugar on Jamaica and who also served as Lieutenant Governor of the island.[1]

Elletson died in England in 1775, leaving Anna the Hope Plantation near Kingston and the enslaved people who worked it.[1] She was an absentee manager of the plantation into the 1780s,[2][3] by which time she was joint owner with her second husband. The property passed to Anne, Anna's daughter by her second marriage and still belonged to the family in 1833 when slavery was abolished. The "Chandos inheritance" received by Anna's grandson Richard included £6,630 compensation for the loss of the slaves on the estate. This was awarded to the trustees of his marriage settlement.[4]

Later life

She married the 3rd Duke of Chandos in 1777. This was a second marriage for both parties. They had one child who survived to adulthood, Lady Anne Elizabeth Brydges (born 1779).1

In 1789, the Duke died from injuries received when his wife inadvertently moved the chair he was about to sit in. In 1791, Anna was declared a lunatic and confined to her London home, Chandos House.[5]

A lengthy lawsuit in the Irish courts over the management of her property ended dramatically in 1794 with the suicide of the judge Richard Power, accountant-general of the Court of Chancery, who was accused of misappropriation of funds connected with the suit.

Media interest

In 2015, Anna's ownership of a sugar plantation was discussed in a television programme, Britain's Forgotten Slave-owners, broadcast by the BBC. The programme was presented by the historian David Olusoga who was filmed at Chandos House. It won a BAFTA award and the Royal Historical Society Public History Prize Winner for Broadcasting.[2][6]

Notes
1.^ Anne Elizabeth married Richard Temple-Grenville, 1st Duke of Buckingham and Chandos. They were the parents of Richard Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.

References
  1. "Roger Hope Elletson, Legacies of British Slave-ownership database". ucl.ac.uk., UCL Department of History 2020.
  2. Profit and Loss: Britain's forgotten slave owners (BBC television programme). 2015.
  3. Olusoga, David (2015). "David Olusoga: "Thousands of Britons opposed abolition – because they owned slaves"". HistoryExtra.
  4. "Richard Plantagenet Temple-Nugent-Brydges-Chandos-Grenville, 2nd Duke of Buckingham and Chandos". University College London. Retrieved on 15 September 2021.
  5. "Duchess of Chandos". Legacies of British Slave-ownership database. Retrieved 28 March 2021.
  6. "Britain's forgotten slave-owners: BBC TV broadcast". ucl.ac.uk. Retrieved 2 July 2020.


This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.