Barclays Bank History Series IV

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART IV -- THE BEVANS

Barclays Bank Transitions 

 

In 1865, ten years after Charles Barclay died, Barclay, Bevan, Tritton and Co. merged with Spooner, Attwood, and Twells, taking on the new name of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Twells, and Co. Partners of the firm were then:

·         Henry Tritton.

·         Joseph Gurney Barclay.

·         Joseph Tritton.

·         Francis Augustus Bevan.

·         Philip Twells.

·         Henry John Tritton.

·         Robert Barclay.

·         Joseph Herbert Tritton.

Another merger occurred a generation later, in 1888, according to the previously cited Handbook of London Bankers. The previous partners of the banking business at 54 Lombard amalgamated with Ransom Bouverie, and Co., of Pall Mall East, under the style of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., and business continued at 54 Lombard Street and at 56 Pall Mall East, the office of the newly merged partners. This newly acquired firm had a history described as follows:

Pleydell-Bouverie castle of Earl of Radnor

Ransom, Bouverie, and Co. This well-known West End banking firm was founded by Mr. Ransom, who took into partnership Sir F. B. Morland and Mr. Hammersley, under the style of Ransom, Morland, and Hammersley, who established themselves about 1786 at 57, Pall Mall. That continued to be the style of the firm until 1796, when Mr. Hammersley left them to start a new bank, which he set up at 76, Pall Mall.

From that date to 1814 the firm was known as Ransom, Morland, and Co., carrying on business at 56, Pall Mall. In 1819 Sir F. B. Morland left the firm to establish a bank of his own under the style of Morland and Co.

Debrett's Illustrated House of Commons etc.

In the following year the Directory shows that Ransom and Co. moved to No. 34, Pall and in 1823 to 1, Pall Mall East, at which house the bank is still located. At the death of Mr. Ransom, the Hon. Douglas Kinnaird (fourth son of the seventh Lord Kinnaird, by Elizabeth, daughter of Gaffin Ransom, Esq.) became head partner. He was the uncle of the late head partner, the Honourable Arthur Kinnaird ; and it was he who built the premises Nos. 1 and 2, Pall Mall East, as a banking-house.

The style of the firm was Ransom and Co. until Messrs. Bouverie, Murdoch, Bouverie, and James, of 11, Haymarket, amalgamated with them in 1856; since which time the style of the firm has been Messrs. Ransom, Bouverie, and Co. In 1876 the firm consisted of the following partners:

The County Families of the United Kingdom

The Hon. Arthur Kinnaird, M.P. (afterwards Lord Kinnaird). James Gordon Murdoch. Philip  Pleydell Bouverie. Charles Townshend Murdoch. Arthur Fitzgerald Kinnaird. Henry Hales Pleydell Bouverie.

It was announced in the Times of June 25, 1888, that Messrs. Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, and Co. had entered into partnership with Messrs. Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., to take effect from July 2, under the style of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton, Ransom, Bouverie, and Co., and that the business would be conducted, as heretofore, in Lombard Street and Pall Mall East;
the partners being :

• Messrs. Robert C. L. Bevan,
• J. Gurney Barclay,
• Francis A. Bevan,
• Charles T. Murdoch, M.P.,
• Robert Barclay,
• J. Herbert Tritton,
• Lord Kinnaird,
• Henry H. P. Bouverie,
• Wilfrid Arthur Bevan, and 
• Edward H. Barclay.

Messrs. Seymour Pleydell Bouverie and Roland Yorke Bevan hold the signature of the firm. 

We can clearly see that in 1890 Barclays Bank was being run by three Barclays, three Bevans, one Tritton, from the original bank, to whom had been added, as a result of the merger, one Murdoch, one Bouverie and a Kinnaird. A lawsuit involving Bouverie which was being litigated at the time of the merger indicated, not only was his income mortgaged to the hilt, but his trustee was in the habit of lying to other potential lenders to Bouverie about the status of his trust--possibly the reason for the Barclays buyout of the Ransom Bouverie bankers.

With these changes in mind, we continue by detailing how marriages in the Bevan family changed the face of the bank.

Marriages between Barclay and Bevan 

Timothy Bevan

David Barclay and his first wife Anne Taylor, besides the two sons we mentioned in Part II, also had a daughter named Elizabeth, who married Timothy Bevan, a son of Sylvanus the Quaker apothecary.  To this marriage another Sylvanus Bevan was born. 

 

Export of drugs to America in 1758

Timothy and Sylvanus Bevan had worked with Timothy's brother-in-law, David Barclay, to put together the financing to buy the Southwark brewery. Meanwhile, the other Bevans' primary interest was in building up their pharmaceutical inventory and operating an export business for such goods.  

 

The Bevans remained silent partners in Barclay & Perkins while selling their own products abroad until Timothy's death in 1786. Thereafter, Sylvanus joined the pharmacy full time, while his brother, Joseph Gurney Bevan, worked as a partner in the bank.

 

Timothy Bevan's father-in-law David Barclay (1682-1769) had a second set of children after his marriage to Priscilla Freame, including two more sons--John and David. John Barclay married Susanna Willett and moved to Clapham, near Anchor Brewery, to help Robert with the business, which exported quite a lot of beer to American ports. 

In previous posts we indicated that the Anchor had been previously owned by a family named Child, then by one Edmund Halsey. Since publishing that, we did additional research, which indicates how the change in owners transpired:

Ralph Thrale born in 1672 was left an orphan at nine years old, and went to Offley to live with his mother, who had remarried. His uncle Edmund Halsey, who was to become proprietor of the Anchor Brewery in Southwark and M.P. for Southwark, befriended the boy. Ralph went to London and eventually succeeded Halsey as owner of the Brewery. Ralph was the father of Henry Thrale. 

At that same website, we also read:

In 1692 Halsey [Ralph Thrale's uncle] was receiving £1.00 a week - half the salary of his master [his father-in-law, James Child] and within 20 months had become a partner. There is no evidence that he purchased his partnership and, as the partnership deed was drawn up on the 6th November 1693, only ten days before his marriage to one of James Child’s daughters - Anne. It might well have been his wife’s dowry.

From the date of the partnership, Halsey ran the business efficiently, as the cash bulletin for the years 1693 to 1702 shows regular sums of up to £100 per week, large amounts in those days, were paid in excise duty; and in May, 1695, both he and Child drew £400 each in profits....

Sir Josiah Child, EIC

James Child died on 22 February 1696, at the age of 66. He was buried in St. Dunstan-in-the-East Church in London. By his will, directed that his estate be equally divided into three, one-third being left to his widow Anne Child née Minnie, and the remaining two-thirds to his daughters under the age of 21 years…His widow retained her husband’s interest in the brewhouse, Halsey paying her a weekly sum until her death in 1701.

When we match up the dates, what we learn is that Sir Josiah Child, the 1st Baronet, was born in 1630, and he was the brother of James, who owned the Anchor. Josiah at Portsmouth was appointed "victualler to the Navy," and accumulated a significant fortune which he invested in a joint stock company called The East India Company. Josiah became a director of the East India Company in 1677,  according to one website, and was

"elected governor of the East India Company in 1681, serving in that post for most of the decade. For a time he was virtually the sole decision maker for the company, directing policy as if it were his private business. He was often openly accused of using the company to aggrandize his social, economic, and political position. He received his baronetcy in 1678."

Sir Josiah Child died in 1699, leaving a son, Josiah II (c.1668-1704),  succeeding as "2nd Baronet, his father’s will left him no more than had been settled upon him at the time of his marriage in 1691. His sister Mary, who had married against their father’s wishes, was similarly treated, being left only £5. It was Josiah’s younger half-brother, Richard (1680-1750), who had been made their father’s principal heir, and it was he who came into possession of the Wanstead estate."

Josiah II was married to Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Thomas Cooke, one of his father’s East India Company associates, who also served as Member of Parliament for Wareham between 1702 and 1704. As Sir Josiah Child II had no children, Richard succeeded him as 3rd baronet. He also inherited the £4,000 per annum which had been settled upon Josiah for life, bringing his own annual income to some £10,000. 

He did not maintain his father’s active connection with the East India Company. Richard Child was a Member of Parliament and described as demonstrating “a certain political flexibility,” which enabled him to make a smooth transition between the Stuart and Hanoverian regimes. In 1715 he completed the family’s journey from its mercantile origins by purchasing his ennoblement via George I’s mistress the Duchess of Munster (afterwards Kendal). Richard Child later Tylney, 1st Earl Tylney, 1st Viscount Castlemaine and Baron Newtown of Newtown, 3rd Baronet (1680–1750) He and his sons took the name of Tylney in place of that of Child by Act of Parliament in 1734 when his wife inherited the estates of that family. We will continue researching this family alongside the bankers.

The Bevan Marriages

David Barclay Bevan

Sylvanus Bevan's first wife died in 1769, only a month or two after they were married. Four years later he married outside the Quaker community, and thereby lost his standing within it. There were no children from the Quaker marriage. All the children would be born to his second wife, Louisa Kendall. When he had assisted David and Robert Barclay in their purchase of the Thrale brewery in Southwark in 1781, Sylvanus's eldest son, David Barclay Bevan, was then a lad of seven years old. 

Sylvanus left his Quaker community after being ousted in 1773 and located to Winchmore Hill, north of London, where he and Louisa reared seven sons--including David and the youngest son, being named Richard Bevan--who eventually became partners in the bank. 

David turned 17 in 1791, and it was decided that he should be trained in the workings of the bank since his grandfather, Timothy Bevan, had died a few years earlier, leaving a gaping hole that needed to be filled. David Bevan went to work at the bank on Lombard Street, and, after six years of hard work, he met his future wife, 17-year-old Favell Bourke Lee, a recent orphan with an intriguing background. 

 

David Bevan's Marriage to Favell Bourke Lee 

Favell Bourke Lee

In 1798 David married Favell Bourke Lee, daughter of  Robert Cooper Lee and his wife, Jamaican-born Priscilla Kelly, an illegitimate daughter of Judge Denis Kelly. Lee had been Crown Solicitor-General of Jamaica and had four mixed-race children born out of wedlock there before he returned to live in England, where he married Priscilla before Favell was born in 1780. 

 

Favell's father, Robert Cooper Lee, was born in Ireland, but like many others besieged by Cromwell's anti-Catholic policies had fled to Jamaica in 1749 when he was only 13. At first he sold ribbons to support his family in Ireland, but rose to be Crown Solicitor in Jamaica, working under the Chief Justice, another Irishman, Denis Kelly. Kelly had married a former Jamaican slave, the mother of Priscilla Kelly, future wife of Robert Cooper Lee.

 

Lee left Jamaica for England and worked as a barrister in Bedford Square. There he filed a lawsuit to legitimize children born to him in Jamaica before his marriage to Priscilla. One source relates:

Robert Cooper Lee who had four mixed-race children born illegitimate in Jamaica, and was responsible as a trustee and guardian for his illegitimate mixed-race nephews, made such an application in December, 1776, in an Act “to authorize and enable Robert Cooper Lee, late of the Island of Jamaica, but now of the kingdom of Great Britain, esquire, to settle and dispose of his estates, both real and personal in this island, by deed or will as he shall think proper, notwithstanding an Act of the Governor, Council and Assembly of this island, instituted, an Act to prevent inconveniences arising from exorbitant grants and devises made by white persons and the issue of negroes and to restrain and limit such grants and devises.” [Source: Anne Powers (17 December 2011). "Blocking Legacies to Negroes and Mulattoes," A Parcel of Ribons: Eighteenth century Jamaica viewed through family stories and documents. 

Trent Park mansion of R.C.L. Bevan

David and Favell married in 1798 and soon had sons to help make up the next generation of the bank. Their second son was Robert Cooper Lee Bevan, named for Favell's late father, and was described as:

An excellent man of business, Robert [Cooper Lee] Bevan spent fifty years in the City, and with justifiable pride witnessed and assisted in the expansion of Barclay, Bevan, Tritton & Co. into one of the leading banking concerns in the kingdom. Little, however, did these shrewd bankers of a hundred years ago foresee the enormous proportions to which their business would attain, and great would be their surprise to-day if they could peruse the current balance sheets of Barclays Bank, Limited. In 1864 the cramped old premises at 54, Lombard Street were demolished, and a more modern building erected. [Source: Audrey Noble Gamble, A History of the Bevan Family (London: Headley Brothers, 1924] 

 

R.C.L. Bevan

Since Favell's father was a member of the Irish peerage, David Bevan's marriage took him into a whole new realm of non-Quaker acquaintances and set up his children, beginning with the eldest daughter, Louisa Priscilla Bevan, to marry into a somewhat "higher" social class. 

 

In 1825 Louisia married Augustus Henry Bosanquet of Marlebone, whose name would appear for many years as a director of the Imperial Fire Insurance Company, alongside the names of Louisa's brother, Robert Cooper Lee (R.C.L.) Bevan and a cousin, Thomas George Barclay, whose father, Charles Barclay, inherited the brewery from Robert, who had been installed there by David Barclay with help from Timothy and Sylvanus Bevan. Just in case you may have forgotten.

 

Admiral J.S. Yorke

R.C.L. set his marriage sights on Lady Agnetta Elizabeth Yorke, a daughter of the late Admiral Joseph Sydney Yorke and great granddaughter of Philip Yorke, the 1st Earl of Hardwicke. The Yorke men rose in Parliament during the period of the Hanoverian Kings and were rewarded as a result to their attachment to them.

 

According to Romney R. Sedgwick: "In 1740 he [Philip Yorke] entered the territorial aristocracy by buying the estate of Wimpole in Cambridgeshire from the 2nd Lord Oxford," and in the same year "married his eldest son to the grand-daughter and heiress of the Duke of Kent, on whose death shortly afterwards she succeeded to Wrest in Bedfordshire, becoming a Marchioness in her own right."

 

Titles were everything. With them came landed estates. 

 

Lady Agnetta Yorke's brother, Charles Philip Yorke, was Postmaster-general in Lord Derby's cabinet, and also installed as the 4th Earl of Hardwicke. The Yorkes were a powerful force within Britain's government of that time, but her father was also tied to naval duties and never quite grasped the art of political prowess. He "was drowned off a yacht struck by lightning in the Hamble, 5 May 1831." 

In 1836 Robert Cooper Lee Bevan replaced Robert Barclay as Auditor for Imperial Fire Insurance Co., and R.C.L. Bevan would continue rising in his career at the bank, eventually replacing David Barclay Bevan, his father, as chairman.

 

 

 

Timothy Bevan's descendants. Click to enlarge.

 

 Spouse Families Brought into Barclays, Bevan and Co.--Yorke and Earls of Hardwicke  

Earl of Harwicke

R.C.L. Bevan, as Robert was often known, had lived a lustful life by his own description, before being converted a generation or more after his Quaker ancestors were kicked out of the sect. He then became determined to meet Agneta Yorke, sister of the Earl of Hardwicke. He proposed to her in 1836, and, in seeking her brother's consent, Robert admitted their unbalanced social status, saying: "I am quite aware of the difference in our Stations in Society, but I have reason to hope that will not be considered by you as an insuperable objection." 

After four years of marriage, RCL and Agneta rejoiced over the birth of their son--Francis Augustus Bevan--who would be educated at Harrow before joining Barclays Bank at the age of 19. 

Robert Cooper Lee

 

Lord C.J. Fox Russell 

Three years after he had gone to work for the bank Frank Bevan married Elizabeth Marianne Russell. Her father--Lord Charles James Fox Russell--was Sergeant at Arms of the House of Commons from 1848 until 1875. 

 

Because of the photos we have seen, he appears to have been the man who carried the Black Rod in the ceremony in which the Commons are summoned to the Lords. The ceremony is thought to have begun in its present form in the year 1642 and was intended to:

...emphasise that both the House of Commons and the City of London are independent corporations, with franchises or liberties of their own, and a royal messenger engaged on formal business needs the special leave of the corporation to enter it. 

I backed up and took the research more slowly the second time. When I had added Francis Augustus "Frank" Bevan's wife to the family tree, and added in her ancestors, something had clicked. It was as though someone behind the scenes had been at work to manipulate the marriages and births for at least a hundred years or more prior to that wedding. 

 

Georgina Gordon

Frank Bevan's father-in-law, as it turned out, was the son of Sir John Russell, the 6th Duke of Bedford. It was his wife, Georgiana Elizabeth Gordon, born in Scotland in 1781, who led us back to something that rang a familiar note. Her parents were named Alexander Gordon and Jane Maxwell. It certainly It was like deja vu, all over again, to quote Yogi Berra's well-hackneyed phrase. 

 

We traced our steps back to a prior Alexander Gordon. You may recall Alexander Gordon, the 12th Earl of Sutherland, who married Jean Gordon in 1573. It was their granddaughter, Katherine Gordon, the White Rose of Scotland, who married Col. David Barclay in 1647, leading up to numerous marriages we have already explored. This new Alexander, amazingly, appeared to be a descendant of the Barclays' Scottish family explored in Part One of this series. I say "appeared to be" because some have strongly contested that claim. 

 

See video.

But then I looked more closely at the name Sir John Russell as well and discovered his ancestor, William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford, born in 1710 at Streatham, was found guilty of treason and was beheaded in 1683, at the end of the Hanoverian era, five years before the Act of Settlement ushered in William and Mary as the new monarchs from the House of Orange. 

 

Then I noticed that Streatham also sounded familiar. What had I overlooked? Had I misunderstood the importance of the Anchor Brewery? 

 

Ownership of Streatham Manor 

 

Floundering around the search engines, I discovered the Thrales did not appear to have owned Streatham House where they lived and entertained Dr. Johnson, as we discussed in Parts II and III-A. Only a few years earlier, the Manor House at Streatham had been the venue for the marriage of 11-year-old Elizabeth Child and 14-year-old John Howland, as depicted in a portrait painted by Holland Tringham, according to the following:

Holland Tringham painting

Elizabeth Howland was a daughter of Sir Josiah Child, Chairman of the East India Company. The Howlands had been Lords of the Manor of Tooting Bec since 1599. Elizabeth married John Howland, and their daughter, also Elizabeth, was heir to her parent’s fortune and also to a considerable portion of Sir Josiah’s.

On 23rd May 1695, Elizabeth married the Marquess of Tavistock, later the 2nd Duke of Bedford, at the Manor House in Streatham. The Marquess became, by marriage, immensely wealthy, and in the same year King William III created him Baron Howland of Streatham. Both the bride and groom were just 14 years old. [According to some accounts at Ancestry.com, she was three years younger.] Their children later became the third and fourth Dukes of Bedford. The Marquess and Elizabeth both died of smallpox, he in 1711 and she in 1724.

Elizabeth had a brother named James Child, who was mentioned in a website called Thrale History, where I discovered that, in 1693 the King recommended James Child, "merchant of London, who has done faithful service in supplying the navy with beer, and has bought a brewhouse in Southwark to brew for the household and navy, for admission as a free brother of the same company, for the same fee as the late Timothy Alsop the King’s brewer paid."

King William III's reign encompassed the years 1689 until his death in 1702, and Timothy Alsop had been referred to several times in Samuel Pepys' Diary as "Brewer to the Royal Household." The Child family also popped up in the family tree I was making on the families who owned Barclays Bank--all of whom were intermarried. Only one genealogy covered all of them. 

Our interest in Anchor Brewery originally stemmed from the fact that it became the property of the Barclay family in 1780. Learning that its origins coincided with its connection to the British East India Company (BEIC) caused us to wonder whether the Barclay family's ultimate success in banking stemmed from the same connection as "victualers for the King."

King Charles II had created that position as early as "1660 and succeeded the earlier position of Clerk of the Navy" and Keeper of the King's Ports and Galleys. Sam Pepys himself held down the position until about 1690. As for the Child family:

We emphasize at this point in our research that Josiah Child's policies fell under the category called mercantilism. According to the Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica (Updated: June 27, 2025):

Mercantilism contained many interlocking principles. Precious metals, such as gold and silver, were deemed indispensable to a nation’s wealth. If a nation did not possess mines or have access to them, precious metals should be obtained by trade. It was believed that trade balances must be “favourable,” meaning an excess of exports over imports. 

Reading that definition in 2025, I was struck with how similar the idea was to what's happening today in Trump World, thanks to Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick. Forcing a trading partner to buy our goods is exactly the same belief about trade that led to the Opium Wars with China. Who planted that belief in the little educated, irrational mind of Donald Trump and Howard Lutnick? We can only wonder at this point.

 

Nevertheless, I was intrigued about how Josiah Child, famous mercantilist head of the East India Company, found his way into our Barclay banking families' genealogy, so I kept digging for any sort of information I could find. I learned that Child had been the author of a treatise with a long title some 18 years before his death: 

"A treatise wherein is demonstrated, I. That the East-India trade is the most national of all foreign trades, II. That the clamors, aspersions, and objections made against the present East-India company, are sinister, selfish, or groundless, III. That since the discovery of the East-Indies, the dominion of the sea depends much upon the wane or increase of that trade, and consequently the security of the liberty, property, and protestant religion of this kingdom, IV. That the trade of the East-Indies cannot be carried on to national advantage, in any other way than by a general joynt stock, V. That the East-India trade is more profitable and necessary to the kingdom of England, than to any other kingdom or nation in Europe by Philopatris." [London: Printed by T.F. for Robert Boulter,]

 

M. Kienholz had called John Howland of Streatham the "Earl of Berkeley," before stating that William Russell (Baron Howland) married a daughter of John Massingberd, the East India Co.'s treasurer. Elizabeth Massingberd, Countess of Berkeley, was born in 1627, so that was one place to start.