Humphry Morice (1671 - 1731)

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Biography

Humphry Morice was a British merchant, MP, Governor of the Bank of England, and has been named "the foremost London slave merchant of his time" by the 1985 gathering of Atlantic Slave Trade Scholars at the University of Nantes.

He was born in 1671, the son of Humphry Morice and Alice Trollope. He lost his mother while still a boy and was brought up at Werrington with his cousin, Sir Nicholas Morice. At about the age of 18 he succeeded to his father’s business, carrying on an extensive trade with Africa, America, Holland and Russia. About the year 1700 he set up business as a merchant in Nicholas Lane, London.

In 1720, Humphrey Morice had eight slave ships, all named after his wife or daughters. Some of Morice’s vessels were constant traders. The Judith snow made her first voyage in 1721 and her seventh in 1730; the Katharine galley made her first voyage in 1724 and her sixth in 1730, setting a pattern of an annual voyage, and the Portugall galley left on her sixth voyage in 1729. Morice tended to use the same captains, the most famous of whom was William Snelgrave.

After the death of his first wife, Judith Sandes, who was the daughter of a prosperous London merchant and by whom he had five daughters, he moved to a house in Mincing Lane, London. In 1722 he married again, this time to Katharine who bore him two sons.

His cousin, Sir Nicholas Morice, was influential in helping him to secure a Parliamentary seat for Newport, Cornwall in 1713. He held the seat until 1722 when he was elected as MP for Grampound. He held this seat until his death in 1731. He was elected as Director of the Bank of England in 1716, served as Deputy Governor from 1725 to 1727 and as Governor from 1727 to 1729. He died suddenly in 1731, probably as a result of gout, but there are suspicions that he committed suicide.

Sources

• Dictionary of National Biography: Vol. 39, Page 44
• Morice, Humphrey. Humphrey Morice Papers from the Bank of England. microform. Marlboro, Wiltshire: Adam Mathews. 1998.
• Eltis, David. Atlas of the TransAtlantic Slave Trade. New Haven: Yale, 2010. Ref1 G2446.E625 E48 2010
• Rawley, James: London, Metropolis of the Slave Trade, 2003. Page 40
• History of Parliament online: MORICE, Humphry (c.1671-1731), of the Grove, Chiswick, Mdx