Sir John Taylor, 1st Baronet

Sir John Taylor FRS (1745 – 8 May 1786) was a fellow of the Royal Society who was created a baronet of Lysson Hall in Jamaica. He lived in London but he died in Jamaica.

Venus with a Satyr and Cupids by Annibale CarracciRaphael, Madonna della Sedia (Madonna of the Chair), c.1514Guido Reni, Charity, 1607Raphael, St John the BaptistReni, MadonnaMadonna della seggiolaCorreggio, Madonna and ChildJustus Sustermans, GalileoRaphael, Madonna of the GoldfinchFranciabigio - Madonna of the WellGuido Reni, Cleopatra, 1635–40Holy Family, then attributed to PeruginoRubens, Justus Lipsius with his Pupils, c.1615Portrait of Leo X with two Cardinals by RaphaelTribute Money? by Carravagio?Rubens, Justus Lipsius with his Pupils, c.1615Raphael, Pope Leo X with Cardinals Giulio de’ Medici and Luigi de’ Rossi, 1518Niccolini-Cowper Madonna by RaphaelLarge central paintingHolbein, Sir Richard Southwell, 1536Cristofano Allori, Miracle of St JulianHoly Family, attributed to Niccolò Soggiummm Raphael, Niccolini-Cowper Madonna, 1508, then in Lord Cowper’s possession, having bought it from Zoffany, now National Gallery of Art, Washington, DCTitian, Venus of Urbino, 1538Cupid and Psyche, Roman copy of a Greek original of the 1st or 2nd century BCThe ‘Arrotino’ (Knife-Grinder), a Pergamene original of 2nd or 3rd century BCDancing Faun, marble replica of a bronze of the circle of Praxiteles, 4th century BCThe Infant Hercules Strangling the SerpentsThe Wrestlers, marble copy of a bronze Permamene original, 2nd or 3rd century BCChimera - Etruscan art8 Oil lampsEgyptian ptahmose, 18th dynastyGreek bronze torsoBust of Julius CaeserRoman silver shieldHead of AntinousSouth Italian craterEtruscan jugOctagonal table with pietra dura top made for the Tribuna, designed by Jacopo Ligozzi and Bernardino Poccetti.Charles Loraine Smith (1751–1835)Richard Edgcumbe, later 2nd Earl of Mount Edgcumbe (1764–1839)George, 3rd Earl Cowper (1738–89)Sir John Dick (1720–1804), British Consul at LeghornOther Windsor, 6th Earl of Plymouth (1751–99)George Legge, Lord Lewisham, later 3rd Earl of Dartmouth (1755–1810)unknown young manMr GordonHon. Felton Hervey (1712–73)Thomas Patch (1725-82), PainterSir Horace Mann (1706–86), British Consul in FlorenceGeorge Finch, 9th Earl of Winchilseaprob. Roger Wilbraham (1743-1829)Mr WattsMr Doughty, travelling with Charles Loraine SmithProbably Thomas Wilbraham (b. 1751), brother of RogerThe Medici Venus, Roman copy of a Greek original of the 2nd century BCJames Bruce (1730–94), African explorer
Tribuna of the Uffizi by Johann Zoffany. Place cursor over artworks or persons to identify them.
John Taylor
Born1745
Jamaica
Died8 May 1786
NationalityBritish

Background

Taylor was born in the Colony of Jamaica in 1745 to Patrick and Martha Taylor. His Scottish father had been born with the surname Tailzour in Borrowfield, but he Anglicised his name to Taylor when they married.[1][2]

Relationship with his brother

John's eldest brother, Simon Taylor (sugar planter), used their father's inheritance to purchase a number of sugar plantations, bought slaves, and increased the family wealth. He also became a Jamaican attorney who represented a large number of absentee plantation owners. Simon became reputedly the richest person in Jamaica, and possibly the British empire, becoming a member of the House of Assembly of Jamaica in the process. Simon's wealth derived from slave plantations funded John's extravagant lifestyle in Britain and Europe.[3]

John Taylor became a baronet on 1 September 1778. In the same year he married an heiress, Elizabeth Goddin Haughton only daughter of Philip Haughton and Mary Brissett, owners of slave plantations Orange, Venture and Unity in Hanover Parish, in western Jamaica. They eventually had six children.[4]

While Simon carefully built up his wealthy sugar and slave plantations in Jamaica, he was often critical of his younger brother's extravagant lifestyle.[5]

John Taylor's death

Simon persuaded his brother John to return to Jamaica to take control of his estates in Hanover, which were not failing without his close attention. However, within a year of arriving in Jamaica, John Taylor died in 1786 during a visit to Simon's Lyssons plantation in the eastern end of the island. His title was taken by his son, Simon.[6]

Simon's inheritance

The elder Simon Taylor died in 1813 and left most of his estates to John's son, Sir Simon Richard Brissett Taylor, 2nd baronet. However, Simon the elder also made some provisions for his mixed-race family.[7] John Taylor's son lived only until 1815 which meant the end of the baronetcy.[8] The fortune was inherited by John Taylor's daughter, Anna Susannah, who had married George Watson, who then added her surname to his.[1]

Legacy

John Taylor was captured in a painting by Johann Zoffany of the Tribuna of the Uffizi in Florence in the 1770s. He appears to the right of the painting with Thomas Patch and Sir Horace Mann, 1st Baronet.[9]

The year before he died, John Taylor and his family were sketched in pastels by Daniel Gardner. The group consisted of Taylor, his wife Elizabeth, his brother Simon Taylor, and four of his children; Simon Richard Brisset, Anna Susanna, Elizabeth and Maria. Simon became the second and last baronet of Lysson Hall.[10]

In addition to the paintings, Taylor is also a key figure in correspondence that is now preserved as a record of life in Jamaica.[1] The letters are from Simon to John and they record world events, the state of the plantations and complaints from Simon that he is doing all the work and John is spending all the money.[11]

References
  1. Taylor family of Jamaica (1770–1835) Archived 2003-05-01[Date mismatch] at the Wayback Machine, Casbah.ac.uk, retrieved 23 October 2014
  2. Christer Petley, White Fury: A Jamaican Slaveholder and the Age of Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018), p. 19.
  3. Petley, White Fury pp. 35-6, 81-2.
  4. Petley, White Fury, pp. 83-6.
  5. Petley, White Fury, pp. 82-6.
  6. Petley, White Fury pp. 86-7.
  7. [http://www.palgrave.com/gp/book/9781137465863 "'Washing the Blackamoor White’: Interracial Intimacy and Coloured Women’s Agency in Jamaica", Meleisa Ono-George in Will Jackson and Emily Manktelow (eds), Subverting Empire: Deviance and Disorder in the British Colonial World (Palgrave, 2015), pp.42-60; http://www.ijsl.stir.ac.uk/issue4/livesay.htm Extended Families: Mixed-Race Children and Scottish Experience, 1770–1820], Daniel Livesay, International Journal of Scottish Literature, Spring/Summer 2008
  8. A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage. p. 211. Retrieved 25 October 2014.
  9. A key to the people shown, oneonta.edu, retrieved 17 October 2014
  10. "Plantation Life in the Caribbean Part 1". Adam Matthew Publications. Retrieved 23 October 2014.
  11. Simon Taylors papers, retrieved 25 October 2014
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