Sir Henry Charles Blake 4th Bart.

Son of Sir James Henry Blake (d. 1832) of Langham Hall in Suffolk and nephew of Sir Patrick Blake 2nd bart. (d. 1818).

1. Patrick Blake of Montserrat (1st bart., and MP for Sudbury), son of Andrew Blake of St Kitts, after his father's death in 1760 laid out a fortune in the purchase of the manor of Langham, Suffolk.  

2. Sir Patrick Blake (2nd bart.) lived at Bury St Edmunds, where he and his wife (the daughter and heiress of James Phipps of St Kitts) were neighbours of Benjamin Greene (q.v.). Langham Hall was let from 1805. Sir Patrick was in St Kitts in the 1780s and 1790s. Patrick and his brother James were tenants for life of the entailed West India estates, which carried debt of £17,500 in 1792. Benjamin Greene in 1817 was made a trustee of Sir Patrick and Lady Blake's marriage settlement of 1792. When Sir Patrick died in July 1818 he left £18,000, and his wife was entitled to an annuity of £1,500 p.a. (his brother was then entitled to charge the estates with a similar amount for his own wife and £15,000 for the benefit of his younger children); when Sir Patrick's wife died in 1823 she left Benjamin Greene a half share in her properties, an estate at St Nicola Town in St Kitts and a smaller property in Montserrat. Sir James Blake, having succeeded to his brother's property, faced both running charges of £4,170 p.a., and debt owed to the assignees of the consignee James Wildman. He raised a further £21,800 on mortgage (presumably to consolidate his debts, and embracing the land in Suffolk, and 3 estates on St Kitts - Sandy Point, Penels and Diamond Point - and one on Montserrat), and wrote off his family claims. Three trustees were appointed: Benjamin Greene, John Gage of Roegate Sussex and Henry Adeane of Babraham in Cambridgeshire.

3. Will of Sir Charles Henry Blake of Ashfield Lodge Suffolk who died 22/01/1880 proved 01/03/1880 by Dame Louisa Blake relict and son William Gage Blake of Newton Suffolk, personal estate under £4000. The baronetcy passed to Sir Patrick James Graham Blake 5th bart., the son of Sir Charles Henry Blake's eldest son the Rev. Henry Bunbury Blake, who predeceased him in 1873. The title became extinct on the death of the 6th bart., in 1975.

1. John Habakkuk, Marriage, debt and the estate system (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1994) p. 456.

2. Richard G Wilson, Greene King: a business and family history (London, The Bodley Head & Jonathan Cape, 1983) pp. 33-35.

3. National Probate Calendar 1880; G.E. Cokayne, The Complete Baronetage (c. 1900) Vol V p. 156, [accessed via www.peerage.com 16/05/2011].