Rt Hon. Francis Greville Earl Brooke of Warwick Castle, 1st Earl of Warwick

The Earls of Warwick's connection with slave-ownership has not been fully clarified by LBS, but it appears that the family lent money against, and then took a mortgage over, an estate and enslaved people in Tobago c. 1771. Vere Langford Oliver records a deed between Rt. Hon. George Greville, Earl Brooke, of Warwick Castle and Earl of Warwick, administrator of his late father Earl of Warwick and Charles Belliard of Pall Mall and others, related to a plantation lot no. 53, 'negroes and other slaves, men, women and children' in the island of Tobago, 300 acres, dated 1775: this deed flowed from an earlier indenture between John Robley, John Thompson Bull, Thomas Fairholme, Geo. Earl Brooke and Hon George Greville dated 2 and 3rd December 1771 by which Courland lot No. 4 and 53 enslaved people were conveyed to George now Earl of Warwick to secure £5000 due to him. In 1773, in another indenture to which 'Francs Earl Brooke' was party, given the need for more capital by Thomas Fairholme, Charles Belliard, a jeweller of London, advanced a further £2000 in exchange for an annuity of £200 p.a. for which Geo. Earl Brooke gave a bond for £4000 as security. This was presumably the same estate shown as subject to a lease and release between 'Francis, Earl of Warwick' and Barclay Farquharson and others in 1799. The will of the Rt. Hon Francis or George Earl Brooke of Warwick Castle Earl of Warwick proved 23/07/1773 sheds no light on his connection with Tobago. A website concerning the portraits of Warwick Castle, by Adam Buziakiewicz, says that 'we know that the Grevilles owned slaves in Tobago later in the eighteenth century' and refers to several documents relating to a mortgage that list enslaved people 'owned by the 1st and 2nd Earls' in Tobago in the Warwickshire County Record Office dated 1770-1.

Caribbeana Vol. I p. 19 and Vol. III p. 294; National Library of Scotland, 'Legal documents relating to properties in the West Indies belonging to Alexander Ellice and his descendants', Ch. 12680 and 12681, 10 and 11 November 1799; PROB 11/990/123; 'Oranges and Lemons: Greville Gardens and Portraits, https://www.ourwarwickshire.org.uk/content/article/oranges-lemons-greville-gardens-portraits-part-two [accessed 31/05/2018], which footnotes 'Warwickshire County Record Office reference CR1886/BB825/Boxes 446-8.'