Biographical note on Stratford Canning

Biographical Note for Stratford Canning 1744 - 1787

Born in 1744, probably in Co Londonderry, Ireland
Died at Brighton on May 22, 1787
Buried at Putney
Married at Somerville, Dublin, Ireland in August 1773 to Mehatabel Patrick

Stratford Canning 1744 – 1787 was both the youngest son and the father of a namesake, so care is needed to be sure of which Stratford Canning is under discussion. As a further caveat, Stratford’s nephew became prime minister. One son would die as Wellington’s Adc at Waterloo and another would be a controversial diplomat. This became a very politically active family and certain subsequent writing seems to have been designed to discredit or celebrate the Cannings rather than to report facts.

The father was a successful Dublin based merchant who married money and built a fine country mansion at Garvagh in Co. Londonderry. His youngest son, having initially obtained advancement through the recommendation of the Foreign Secretary, his cousin George Canning, would become a notable diplomat.

Stratford Canning 1744 – 1787 started his career, following in his father’s footsteps, as a merchant. Letters to his father from a European tour, undertaken in order to establish connections and gain experience, disclose a dutiful son, terrified of displeasing the man who seems to have been an exceptionally ferocious father.

Stratford initially complied with his father’s determination that he should not marry Mehatabel Patrick, daughter of a neighboring Dublin family, superficially similar in station to the Cannings. Suspicions that the father’s disapproval centred on the smallness of any likely dowry are probably well founded. Ultimately Stratford Canning did marry Mehatabel, and though in later life she hinted that she had made the running during their lengthy courtship, the marriage was probably a very happy one. The reward for marrying against his father’s wishes was disinheritance, a fate he shared with his eldest brother, George Canning ?1736 – 1771, whose own son, Stratford’s nephew, would fetch up as a British Prime Minister.

Disinherited by his father, from May 1770 Stratford Canning made his way as a merchant banker based in London and in partnership with an elder man named George Borrowes (variously spelled). The enterprise was more mercantile than banking. Then as now, however, English bank charges tended to be seen as unjustifiable high, especially where the business activity in question – in this instance buying and selling merchandise to and from foreigners – was deemed risky. For many trading companies, therefore, it made sense to act as their own bankers and this could evolve to include the provision of relevant banking services to associates. Stratford Canning seems to have been a shrewd but honourable operator.

With his wife, Stratford Canning 1744 - 1787 had four sons and one daughter. All four sons had careers which in retrospect can be seen as distinguished, though in retrospect it is the youngest son, Stratford Canning 1787 – 1880, who has best retained his fame. The daughter, Bessie, married the banker George Henry Barnett 1780 – 1871, and despite as a young woman being identified as alarmingly delicate, she lived long enough to give birth to eight children, herself dying six weeks short of her 63^rd birthday.

Also growing up in the family was George Canning 1770 – 1827, son of Stratford’s elder brother, George "Sr"., who had died a year after his son’s birth. The boy’s mother worked as an actress, and though political enemies subsequently seem to have reversed the chronology of her marriage and misfortune, it remains apparent that after her husband died, she evidently choose her men badly. Young George stayed with her, probably financially supported by Uncle Stratford, till at the age of six a consensus formed that he would be better off in his uncle’s home. Thereafter young George seems to have been treated as a fully integrated member of his uncle’s nuclear family, though he would always concern himself with the career of his own increasingly ‘unsuitable’ mother.

Stratford’s health broke down rather suddenly in his early forties, and he died in Brighton which he had evidently visited for the health giving properties of the sea air. The body was returned to the malodorous metropolis, and he was buried in Putney, the family’s home parish. His widow who would survive him for over forty four years was initially active in preserving the family business, which nonetheless ultimately ran into serious difficulties blamed on increasingly poor judgement by the surviving partner, George Borrowes, to the great disadvantage of Stratford’s eldest son, Henry, whose early adult life was spent working in the failing business and who only really seems to have found professional and personal fulfilment after moving to Hamburg where for many year he was H M Government’s Consul General.

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Updated at 19:17 on 02 April 2004