William Collins of New Sarum

Purchaser of the equity of redemption of the Bagatelle estate with 117 enslaved people in St Vincent from Thomas Bradshaw (q.v.) in 1784 for £630 sterling. The Collins family were connected with 'West Indians': William Collins' father had an annuity on estates on Montserrat, while his sister or half-sister Jane was married to George Leonard Staunton (q.v.). The purchase of the equity of redemption might have been simply a speculative investment in the property of a neighbour (Thomas Bradshaw was of Wilbury, Wilts), but William Collins paid for it with a bill of exchange drawn on his father Benjamin Collins payable 18 months after his [William Collins'] arrival in St Vincent, while codicils to his father's will show William Collins as 'over the seas' c. 1785, implying that Williams Collins intended to visit the estate after his purchase, presumably to run it for at least a period. The will of William Collins of Salisbury proved 08/08/1810 is silent on slave-property, and shows monetary legacies of around three thousand pounds with his residuary estate in trust for his grandson Christopher Gerard Rigby.

EAP 688 1785 Deed Book, British Library, EAP688/1/1/1, https://eap.bl.uk/archive-file/EAP688-1-1-1, pp. 251-271; PROB 11/1514/116.