John Sneyd

John Sneyd (1734–1809) was an English landowner, at Bishton Hall near Colwich, and Belmont Hall near Ipstones, Staffordshire, and High Sheriff of Staffordshire in 1763. He was a prominent citizen of Lichfield. He was known also as a botanist, agriculturist and tree-planter.^[1]

Life

 

Bishton Hall, 1818 engraving

John Sneyd was the second son of William Sneyd (died 1745) of Bishton and his wife Susanna Edmonds or Edmunds, a daughter of William Hedges.^[2] William Palmer (c.1732–1772) of Ladbroke Hall was a schoolfellow: where is not clear, and Hervey suggested Westminster School.^[3] (That is not supported by The Record of Old Westminsters, but his brother apparently was there.^[4])

Sneyd entered the Middle Temple in 1747.^[5] He matriculated in 1752 at Brasenose College, Oxford, graduating B.A. in 1756.^[6] His elder brother William Hedges Sneyd died in 1757, without issue, and John Sneyd was his heir.^[7]

In 1768, Sneyd accompanied Joseph Banks on a visit to George Anson at Shugborough Hall, and the area of the River Trent. When, later that year, Banks went on the first voyage of James Cook, he left his herbarium with Sneyd.^[1]

Sneyd sold his Bishton estate, to John Sparrow, to concentrate on development of his land at Onecote. In 1776, Sneyd sold Hodnell, a manor and deserted medieval village in Warwickshire south of Ladbroke, to Robert Ladbroke of Idlicott. It had come into the family from his mother's marriage settlement.^[3][8] There was an enclosure act for Ipstones, south-west of Onecote, passed in 1777.^[9] At Belmont, on enclosed moorlands, Sneyd created extensive plantations of trees, for which he was awarded medals by the Society of Arts.^[10] He was reckoned to have planted 13,000 larches in 1784–6, and published a paper in the Society's Transactions for 1798, On Planting Larch.^[11][12]

A friend of Erasmus Darwin, Sneyd was a founder member of the Derby Philosophical Society in 1783.^[1] He delivered in 1792 an abolitionist petition, signed by, among others, members of the Society including Darwin and Robert Bage, to the High Sheriff of Staffordshire.^[13]

Sneyd died at Belmont Hall, on 9 December 1809.^[14]

Interests

Sneyd made extensive annotations to A General View of the Agriculture of the County of Stafford, with Observations on the Means of its Improvement (1794), by William Pitt (1749–1823).^[10][15] He also contributed substantially to An Arrangement of British Plants (1796) by William Withering.^[1]

Family

Sneyd was married three times, firstly to Penelope Kynnersley, eldest daughter of Thomas Kynnersley of Loxley Park, with whom he had ten children.^[10] Her brother Clement willed property to their son Thomas, who became Thomas Sneyd-Kynnersley.^[16] He was the grandfather of Thomas Kynnersley.

Mary Adey (1742–1830), a friend of Samuel Johnson, became Sneyd's third wife in 1794.^[17]

Notes

1. Chambers, Neil (17 December 2021). The Indian and Pacific Correspondence of Sir Joseph Banks, 1768–1820, Volume 5. Routledge. p. 216. ISBN 978-1-315-47596-7.
2. Cruickshanks, Eveline (1970). "Sneyd, William (c.1693-1745), of Bishton, Staffs". The History of Parliament.
3. Hervey, Sydenham Henry Augustus (1914). Ladbroke and its Owners. Bury St. Edmunds: Paul & Mathew. p. 205.
4. London, St Peters College; England), Westminster School (London (1928). The Record of Old Westminsters: A Biographical List of All Those who are Known to Have Been Educated at Westminster School from the Earliest Times to 1927. Vol. II. Printed at the Chiswick Press. p. 584.
5. Middle Temple (1949). Register of Admissions to the Honourable Society of the Middle Temple, from the Fifteenth Century to the Year 1944. London: Honourable Society of the Middle Temple. p. 338.
6. Foster, Joseph (1888–1892). "Sneyd, John (1)" . Alumni Oxonienses: the Members of the University of Oxford, 1715–1886. Oxford: Parker and Co – via Wikisource.
7. Hervey, Sydenham Henry Augustus (1914). Ladbroke and its Owners. Bury St. Edmunds: Paul & Mathew. p. 395.
8. "Parishes: Hodnell, British History Online". www.british-history.ac.uk.
9. Overton, Mark (18 April 1996). Agricultural Revolution in England: The Transformation of the Agrarian Economy 1500-1850. Cambridge University Press. p. 177. ISBN 978-0-521-56859-3.
10. The Admission Register of the Manchester School. Vol. II. BoD – Books on Demand. 23 September 2020. pp. 31–32. ISBN 978-3-7525-1020-1.
11. Miller, Philip (1807). The Gardener and Botanist's Dictionary: Containing the Best and Newest Methods of Cultivating and Improving the Kitchen, Fruit and Flower Garden ... F.C. and J. Rivington. p. 669.
12. The Monthly Review. 1798. p. 51.
13. "A RADICAL NOVELIST IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY ENGLAND: ROBERT BAGE ON POVERTY, SLAVERY AND WOMEN" (PDF). etheses.bham.ac.uk. University of Birmingham. 2011. p. 101.
14. The Gentleman's Magazine (1177 ed.). E. Cave. 1809.
15. Baker, Anne Pimlott. "Pitt, William (1749–1823)". Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online ed.). Oxford University Press. doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/22339. (Subscription or UK public library membership required.)
16. Burke, Bernard (1871). A Genealogical and Heraldic History of the Landed Gentry of Great Britain & Ireland. Harrison. p. 745.
17. Rogers, Pat (1996). The Samuel Johnson Encyclopedia. Greenwood Publishing Group. p. 4. ISBN 978-0-313-29411-2.