Family and Education

Of Scots origin. m. 3da.

Offices Held

Commr. Exchequer Loan office 1829-30, dir. Alliance Life and Fire Assurance Co. 1824-d., London Dock Co. 1829-d.

Capt. 6 Loyal London vols. 1803.

Biography

Innes’s obituary in the Gentleman’s Magazine records only that he was ‘father of Mrs Grey, widow of the late bishop of Hereford’. When the bishop died in debt, Innes informed Lord Grey that he had done ‘more than all his noble relations put together’ for the bishop’s family, and that he had long opposed his daughter’s marriage on account of differences in rank, and because she was taking on a large young family from the bishop’s two previous marriages.1 For many years he was a partner in the East Indian agency of Fairlie, Bonham & Co. (from 1833 styled Fairlie, Clark and Innes, and after Innes’s death, Fairlie & Co.) at 9 Broad Street Buildings, London, though at the time of his death his business address was 3 Lombard Street, and he referred in his will dated 13 Nov. 18382 to ‘the late firm of Messrs Fairlie Clark Innes & Co. in which I was a partner’ and to estate held by him as trustee for the firm. He was an East India Company stockholder by 1806.

In 1818, after it had been predicted that he would contest Hythe,3 and in 1820, he was successful in expensive contests at Grampound. He apparently never spoke in the House and on 29 Mar. and 18 May 1819 voted with administration, though on 14 June he appeared in the minority on the cash payments bill. On 22 June he was in the minority against the extension of the franchise at Penryn. He supported ministers on the seditious libel bill, 23 Dec. 1819. The disfranchisement of Grampound left him without a seat, and he did not find another. He died 24 Nov. 1838.4

His wife evidently predeceased him and, apart from his daughter Eliza who married Bishop Grey, he had two other daughters, Sarah, and Matilda Maxwell Innes who married in 1828 Rev. William Scott Robinson, son of (Sir) George Abercrombie Robinson, 1st Bt.* The latter named his fifth son (born in 1811) Edward Innes Robinson, which probably indicated a prior association. A John Innes was a member of the Pitt Club in 1814 and a John Innes sent Saunders Dundas information on Asian affairs in 1808 and 1810:5 possibly the same John Innes who was described by David Scott I* a few years earlier as his confidential friend, and who had in 1793 obtained leave to return to Bengal on private business.

Ref Volumes: 1790-1820

Author: R. G. Thorne

Notes

• 1. Gent. Mag. (1839), i. 105; Grey mss, Innes to Grey, 10, 15 Apr. 1838. His daughter Eliza m. in 1831 as his 3rd wife the Hon. Edward Grey (1782-1837), Gent. Mag. (1837), ii. 311. The supposition in N. & Q., cliii. 159 appears to be unfounded.
• 2. PCC 763 Nicholl.
• 3. Kentish Chron. 12, 16 June 1818.
• 4. The Times, 26 Nov. 1838.
• 5. SRO GD51/3/287, 292.