James Townsend (British politician)

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James Townsend was baptised on 8 February 1737 at the church of St. Christopher-le-Stocks in London.Ancestry.com. England, Select Births and Christenings, 1538–1975 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, 2014. He was the son of London merchant (and later MP) Chauncy Townsend and his wife Bridget Phipps. He attended Hertford College, Oxford in 1756.

In politics James Townsend was closely linked from the 1760s with the Whig grandee William Petty, 2nd Earl of Shelburne. Supported by Shelburne, he entered Parliament as Member for West Looe at a by-election in 1767, holding the seat until 1774.

In 1769, Townsend was elected alderman of the City of London for Bishopsgate ward and Sheriff of the City of London, becoming one of the leaders of the Whig party in London. In 1771 Townsend followed John Horne Tooke in breaking away from the Society of Gentlemen Supporters of the Bill of Rights, which had been created to support John Wilkes after his expulsion from the House of Commons, and of which Townsend was a co-founder. He turned from a friend of Wilkes's to one of his fiercest opponents.[http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/64140 Thomas, P. D. G. (2006): "Townsend, James (bap.1737, d.1787), politician'. Oxford Dictionary of National Biography]

Townsend was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1772. Wilkes had come first in the polls but Sheriff Richard Oliver{{Cite web|url=http://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1754-1790/member/oliver-richard-1735-84|title=OLIVER, Richard (1735-84), of Fenchurch St., London | History of Parliament Online|website=www.historyofparliamentonline.org|access-date=16 July 2020}} manipulated the voting process to prevent the election of Wilkes.{{Cite book|title=John Wilkes: The Scandalous Father of Civil Liberty|last=Cash|first=Arthur H.|publisher=Yale University Press|year=2006|isbn=0-300-10871-0|pages=[https://archive.org/details/johnwilkes00arth_0/page/302 302–303]|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/johnwilkes00arth_0/page/302}} This created political turmoil in the City and a mob incensed by Townsend's coup rioted outside Guildhall during the ball on Lord Mayor's Day.{{Cite book|title=Modern History of the City of London|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028043887|last=Welch|first=Charles|publisher=Blades, East & Blades|year=1896|location=London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924028043887/page/n62 41]}} Townsend's arms were erased from the church of St Helen's Bishopsgate.{{Cite book|title=The Annals of St. Helen's, Bishopsgate, London|url=https://archive.org/details/cu31924028066755|last=Cox|first=John Edmund|authorlink=John Edmund Cox|publisher=Tinsley Brothers|year=1876|location=London|pages=[https://archive.org/details/cu31924028066755/page/n237 192]}} John Wilkes was eventually elected Lord Mayor in 1774.

In 1781, Townsend presented a petition for electoral reform from the Tiverton activist Martin Dunsford.{{ODNBweb|id=64839|title=Dunford, Martin|first=R. H.|last=Sweet}} Townsend ran unsuccessfully for Parliament for the City of London in the general election of 1780, and in April 1782, Shelburne arranged for Townsend's election to Parliament for the pocket borough of Calne. As a member he backed some calls for reform, but mainly supported William Pitt the Younger. Shortly before his death in office he had opposed the impeachment of Warren Hastings.

Townsend died at his estate, Bruce Castle in Tottenham, on 1 July 1787. He was buried nearby at Old Church Tottenham in the mausoleum of his wife's family, the Coleraines.{{Cite book|url=http://www.british-history.ac.uk/old-new-london/vol5/pp548-569#h2-0001|title=Old and New London, Vol. 5|last=Walford|first=Edward|publisher=Cassell, Petter & Galpin|year=1878|location=London|pages=Chapter XLV: Tottenham}} Her inheritance had made him a wealthy man.

Townsend's mother Bridget (died 1762), who clandestinely married Chauncy Townsend in the Fleet Prison in 1730,London, England, Clandestine Marriage and Baptism Registers, 1667–1754. Provo UT: Ancestry.com was the daughter of James Phipps, who came from a prominent family of clothiers in Westbury, Wiltshire.{{Cite journal|last=VandeWetering|first=Richard|date=2016|title=From Wiltshire to the Gold Coast and Back|journal=Journal of the Wiltshire Family History Society|volume=3 pts, vols 142-144}} At the age of sixteen, James Phipps entered the service of the Royal African Company (RAC) which traded slaves across the Atlantic between 1660 and 1752. Phipps lived on the Gold Coast for twenty years and died at Cape Coast Castle, the African headquarters of the RAC, in 1723. He became the highest-ranking RAC official in Africa before being removed from his post among accusations of embezzlement and abuse of power.{{Cite journal|last=Henige|first=David|date=1980|title='Companies Are Always Ungrateful': James Phipps of Cape Coast, a Victim of the African Trade|journal=African Economic History|volume=9|issue=9|pages=27–47|doi=10.2307/3601386|jstor=3601386}}

At Cape Coast James Phipps married Catherine, the daughter of an African woman and a European soldier in the service of the Dutch West India Company. In spite of being generously provided for in her husband's will,Will of James Phipps, Captain General for the Royal African Company of England of Cabo Corso Castle on the Coast of Guinea, West Africa. The National Archives, PROB 11/607/92. Catherine Phipps refused to move to England and died at Cape Coast in 1738. James and Catherine's children, including James Townsend's mother Bridget, were all of mixed race, so James Townsend, having one-eighth African ancestry, has been claimed as Britain's first black member of parliament and as the first black Lord Mayor of London.{{Cite journal|last=Latsch|first=Wolfram|date=December 2016|title=A Black Lord Mayor of London in the Eighteenth Century?|journal=Notes & Queries|volume=261 | issue = 4 |pages=615–617}} It does not appear that this aspect of Townsend's family history was known at the time.

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In 1763 James Townsend married Henrietta Rosa Peregrina du Plessis (1745–1785), the illegitimate daughter of Henry Hare, 3rd Baron Coleraine, and Rose du Plessis.{{Cite book|title=The History and Antiquities of the Parish of Tottenham, in the County of Middlesex (Volume 1)|last=Robinson|first=William|publisher=Nicholls & Son|year=1840|location=London|pages=45}} Henrietta Rosa was her father's heiress, but the estate escheated to the Crown because she was an alien. By means of his father's influence with Henry Fox, Townsend had the estate restored to him by private Act of Parliament. Bruce Castle, Townsend's house in Tottenham, was part of his wife's inheritance, and he redesigned parts of the building.

They had one son, Henry Hare, and one daughter, Henrietta Jemima. Henry Hare Townsend (1766–1827) married Charlotte Winter Lake, daughter of Sir James Lake, Bart.{{cite book|author=Philological Society (Great Britain)|title=The European magazine, and London review|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=Y2vgAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA77|access-date=21 March 2012|year=1790|publisher=Philological Society of London|pages=77–}} and sister of Admiral Sir Willoughby Lake. Their son was the poet and writer Chauncy Hare Townshend (who spelt his surname thus) to whom Dickens dedicated Great Expectations.{{cite web |title=Charles Dickens, Writer of Great expectations |url=http://www.wisbechmuseum.org.uk/GreatExpectationsandWisbech.htm |website=Wisbech and Fenland Museum |language=en}} Henrietta Jemima Townsend (1764–1848) married Nicholas Owen Smythe Owen (1769–1804) of Condover Hall, Shropshire. They had no issue.{{Cite book|title=The Berkeley Manuscripts|url=https://archive.org/details/berkeleymanuscri03smyt|last=Smyth|first=John|publisher=J. Bellows|year=1883|location=Berkeley Hundred|pages=Smyth family tree, front matter}}

James Townsend's brother was the physician, scientist, and economist Joseph Townsend, who made important contributions to population studies and geology.{{Cite journal|last=Morris|first=A.D.|date=May 1969|title=The Reverend Joseph Townsend MA MGS (1739–1816) physician and geologist – "Colossus of Roads".|pmc=1811030|journal=Proc R Soc Med |volume=62 |issue=5 |pages=471–477 |pmid=4890357}}

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Category:1737 births

Category:1787 deaths

Category:Alumni of Hertford College, Oxford

Category:British MPs 1761–1768

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Category:British MPs 1780–1784

Category:British MPs 1784–1790

Category:Sheriffs of the City of London

Category:18th-century lord mayors of London

Category:Black British politicians

Category:Black British MPs

Category:Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for West Looe

Category:Members of the Parliament of Great Britain for Calne