Martha Baker (c. 1747-1809)

​The daughter of John Baker of Chichester, Solicitor-General for the Leeward Islands, and owner of estates on St Kitts, St Croix and St Vincent. Martha married Henry Swinburne, of Hamsterley Hall, co Durham. They embarked on a Grand Tour of Europe, befriending local literati, English travellers, and royalty - Maria Theresa of Austria and her daughter Marie Antoinette. Martha inherited her father’s estate in St. Vincent, alongside her brothers, but by 1783 the property had been ‘devastated and utterly laid waste by the French and Caribs’.  Through the influence of Marie-Antoinette, Louis XVI granted Martha all the uncultivated lands on the island of St Vincent owned by the French crown in compensation. When the island was ceded to the British, the Swinburnes were forced to sell their property, at less than its value, to the British Government.  Martha continued to appeal the decision to her dying day. Martha was living at Versailles in 1789 during the early days of the French Revolution, from where she made a dramatic last-minute escape.  In 1801 Henry accepted the lucrative post of auctioneer (including overseeing the sale of enslaved people) in Trinidad.  His time in office there coincided with the brutal regime of Governor Thomas Picton, hero of Waterloo, who is the only Welshman buried in St Paul’s Cathedral