Andrew Arcedeckne

MP and absentee slave-owner in Jamaica.

1. Son of Chaloner (1743-1809, MP) and Catherine Arcedeckne, and MP for Dunwich 1826-1831. Chaloner was born in Jamaica and educated at Eton 1752-1759, and was the owner of the Golden Grove plantation and MP Wallingford 1780-1784, Westbury 1784-1786. The source includes reference to Jamaican correspondence.

2. Andrew Arcedeckne was baptised 10/02/1780 St Marylebone. Married (his cousin) Anne Harriet Beckford of All Saints Southampton at St George Hanover Square 1816. Death registered Q1 1849 St George Hanover Square. Will of Andrew Arcedeckne of Glevering Hall Suffolk proved 24/03/1849.

3. NB will of Chaloner Arcedeckne of Harley Street (Andrew's father) proved 12/02/1810. Also will of Chaloner Arcedeckne of Inner Temple (the son of Chaloner Arcedeckne MP and brother of Andrew) proved 25/02/1812. A third Chaloner Arcedeckne of Grosvenor Square was buried as an infant at St George Hanover 23/03/1824.

4. NB also the developer of Llanelli, Sir John Cowell Stepney, the grandson of Benjamin Cowell (q.v., who m. Ann Arcedeckne and had business links, specifically insurance,  with his brother-in-law Chaloner Arcedeckne) and son of General Andrew Cowell (c. 1762-1821).  Benjamin Cowell bequeathed enslaved in his will to his wife (d. 1823) and then his son. Death of General Andrew Cowell registered 06/10/1821. It is not clear what happened to the enslaved. One of the streets developed on the Stepney estate in Llanelli was called Glevering Hall. Francis Love Beckford senior, and junior, are shown as trustees of Chaloner Arcedekne for Golden Grove under St Thomas-in-the-East No. 117.

5. Arcedeckne was named after his grandfather (d. 1763), a Galway landowner’s son and successful lawyer (who was also the first of his family to relinquish Catholicism). Revenues from the Golden Grove sugar plantation, acquired while attorney-general of Jamaica, financed purchase of family seat of Glevering Hall, Suffolk. His son Chaloner Arcedeckne (1743-1809), an absentee planter who bought his way into Parliament, bequeathed Glevering to Andrew Arcedeckne intact and the Jamaican properties in trust for him, his brother and two sisters. Legal difficulties and inability to realize their Jamaican revenues, already reduced by war and the need to appoint three new colonial agents 1813-1817, led to litigation against the trustees, Beeston Long and the Rev. George Turner. Long died 1820; 508 of the 742 slaves at Golden Grove, registered as the property of the trustees and worth an estimated £45 apiece in 1812, conveyed to Arcedeckne for registration in his name in London under the 1819 Act, with his 142 slaves at Bachelors Pen. Corresponded regularly with his Jamaican agent Thomas McCormack, lived mainly in London and kept abreast through Turner with developments in Suffolk. In Suffolk he was a magistrate, deputy lieutenant and sheriff; standing enhanced by marriage of his sister Frances Catherine (d. 1815) to Joshua Vanneck, afterwards 2nd Baron Huntingfield, of Heveningham Hall. His own marriage increased the family’s stake in the Leigh estates in Hampshire.

6. His son, also called Andrew (1822-1871), was defeated (as a Liberal) at Harwich, 1857. He was a subscriber to the Eyre Defence Committee in 1866, and reportedly the model for Henry Foker in Thackeray's Pendennis. Walter Arcedeckne, the brother of Andrew (1780-1849) and uncle of Andrew (1822-1871) died in 1865 of Lewis [sic] Crescent Brighton and 10 Lower Grosvenor Street leaving £70,000.

1. See the family tree (of the Vanneck - and Arcedeckne - family): Vanneck - and Arcedeckne - family tree [accessed 24/09/2012].

2. Ancestry.com, London, England, Baptisms, Marriages and Burials, 1538-1812 [database online]; Pallots Marriage Index 1780-1837; FreeUKGen, England and Wales Free BMD Database, Deaths, 1837-1983 [database online]; PROB 11/2089.

3. PROB 11/1508; PROB 11/1539; Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online].

4. Dr J David Davies, Llanelli and the Slave Trade (accessed 04/04/2011); Ancestry.com, London, England, Deaths and Burials, 1813-1980 [database online]. Will of Ann Cowell widow of Wigmore Street proved 19/09/1823 PROB 11/1675.

5. D. R. Fisher (ed.), The House of Commons 1820-1832 (7 vols., Cambridge, Cambridge University Press for the History of Parliament Trust, 2009) , vol. 4.

6. The Eyre Defence and Aid Fund (London, 1866), p. 25; Nick Kingsley, 'Arcedeckne of Glevering Hall', https://landedfamilies.blogspot.com/2015/04/162-arcedeckne-of-glevering-hall.html [accessed 09/12/2019]; National Probate Calendar 1865.