John Estridge of Bridehead Dorset

Absentee slave-owner on St Kitts, the son and heir of John Estridge of Brislington (q.v.). William Manning (q.v.) claimed unsuccessfully for the compensation as the trustee of John Estridge deceased for an estate called Estridge's in the slave compensation process. Although given as 'of Bridehead' in his will, John Estridge made no provision for leaving a house, and Bridehead House is know to have been in the ownership of others in the 1790s, suggesting Estridge was renting at the time of his death.

1. Will of John Estridge of Bridehead Dorset proved 16/08/1794. Under the will he appointed trustees including William Manning of Billiter Square to hold his estates in St Kitts, described as 'situate and being at St George's Hill in the parish of Christ Church Nicola Town in the said island of St Christopher and all that other my estate or plantation adjoining to the beforementioned estates and which John Estridge Esq., my late father purchased from the co-heiress of the late John Hutchinson Esq.'. From the income of the estates, the trustees were to pay John Estridge's wife Elizabeth £500 p.a. in addition to the £500 p.a. already settled on her, £500 p.a. to his brother Aretas Estridge (provided he renounced any claim under their father's will and against John's own estate) and whatever amounts the trustees deemed fit for the maintenance of John Estridge's daughter Eliza until she was 21, when the trustees were to convey the estates to her and her heirs. He further left monetary legacies of £500 to his wife, £1000 each to his half-brothers Edward Estridge and Joseph Estridge, £50 each to his 4 trustees and executors (John James Seaton, Jedediah Kerie, William Manning, and Thomas Pitt of the Middle Temple), £200 to the Rev. William England clerk of West Stafford Dorset, £100 to the Hon. Edward Bouverie of Berkeley Square, £500 to Mr Japhet Taine [sp?] now on the estate on St Kitts, and £200 to his godson Thomas Thomas the eldest son of his cousin John Warner Thomas; he also left an annuity of £30 p.a. to his cousin 'Sarah Crook or Steenbergen.'

1. PROB 11/1248/246