Simon Watson Taylor (landowner)

Simon Watson-Taylor (1811 – 25 December 1902) was an English landowner in Wiltshire and Jamaica who briefly served as a Liberal Member of Parliament for Devizes between the 1857 election and that of 1859.[1][2]

Early life

Watson-Taylor was the son of George Watson-Taylor, a Member of Parliament, and his wife Anna, a daughter of Sir John Taylor, 1st Baronet. The family estates were in Wiltshire at Erlestoke and nearby parishes and included Baynton House, Coulston, and Urchfont.[3]

Jamaican interests

The Taylor family – and Watson-Taylor's father, through his marriage – derived its wealth from sugar and slavery in the Colony of Jamaica. In 1852, Simon Watson-Taylor inherited Jamaican estates from his mother Anna. However, the vast majority of the wealth created by her great-uncle Simon Taylor had been largely squandered by George Watson-Taylor.[4] Watson-Taylor maintained a strong interest in the affairs of Jamaica and offered public support to Governor Edward John Eyre, after he brutally suppressed the Morant Bay rebellion of 1865. Watson-Taylor helped to found the Eyre Defence Fund, which aimed to vindicate the former governor as an imperial hero.[5]

Family

On 30 June 1843 Watson-Taylor married Lady Hannah Charlotte Hay (1818–1887), one of the eight daughters of Field Marshal George Hay, 8th Marquess of Tweeddale (1787–1876), thus becoming a brother-in-law of the Duke of Wellington, the Marquess of Dalhousie, the Marquess of Tweeddale, George Hay, Earl of Gifford, Admiral of the Fleet Lord John Hay, General Sir Richard Taylor, and Sir Robert Peel, 3rd Baronet. There were four sons and seven daughters from their marriage.[6]

Watson-Taylor lived at Urchfont Manor from about 1850 to 1862.[7]

References
  1. Leigh Rayment's Historical List of MPs – Constituencies beginning with "D" (part 2)
  2. Craig, F. W. S. (1989) [1977]. British parliamentary election results 1832–1885 (2nd ed.). Chichester: Parliamentary Research Services. pp. 107–8. ISBN 0-900178-26-4.
  3. "Victoria County History: Wiltshire: Vol 8 pp234-239 – East Coulston". British History Online. University of London. 1965. Retrieved 16 December 2016.
  4. Christer Petley, White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), pp. 214-5.
  5. Petley, White Fury, p. 215
  6. Burke's Peerage, Baronetage and Knightage, 107th edition, vol. 3, ed. Charles Mosley, Burke's Peerage Ltd, 2003, p. 3964
  7. Baggs, A.P.; Crowley, D.A.; Pugh, Ralph B.; Stevenson, Janet H.; Tomlinson, Margaret (1975). Crittall, Elizabeth (ed.). "Victoria County History: Wiltshire: Vol 10 pp173-190 – Parishes: Urchfont". British History Online. University of London. Retrieved 27 September 2020.
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
John Gladstone and
George Heneage		 Member of Parliament for Devizes
1857–1859
With: Christopher Darby Griffith		 Succeeded by
Christopher Darby Griffith and
John Gladstone


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