Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet

He was born at Larkbeare House near Exeter, son of Johann Baring (1697–1748), a German cloth merchant who had settled in England, by his English wife Elizabeth Vowler (1702–1766), daughter of a prosperous Exeter dry goods wholesaler (at that time called a grocer).

Baring's father emigrated from Bremen, Germany, in 1717 and settled at Exeter, where he became a leading wool manufacturer and textile merchant. His premature death in 1748 resulted in Francis, aged eight, being brought up and strongly influenced by his mother, Elizabeth. Her sound business head nearly doubled the family's worth by the time of her death in 1766.

In the early 1750s, Francis was sent to London for education at Mr Fargue's French school at Hoxton and then at Mr Fuller's academy in Lothbury. Samuel Touchet, one of the leading Manchester and West Indian merchants in London, accepted him in 1755 for a seven-year apprenticeship, charging his mother £800. Upon his release on Christmas Day 1762, he joined his two surviving brothers in the interlocking partnerships of John and Francis Baring & Co. of London and John and Charles Baring & Co. of Exeter. Francis led the London concern and Charles the Exeter one, while John, a leading Exeter citizen and a Member of Parliament from 1776, was mainly a silent partner, although nominally senior partner of both firms.

By 1807 the brothers had evolved the business into Baring Brothers & Co. Despite being partially deaf from an early age, Francis did very well and, by the mid-1790s, had the full confidence of the British Parliament.

Network

Early on Baring's business profits were derived mostly from international trade, especially between Britain, the western European coast, the Iberian peninsula, Italy, the West Indies, and, from the 1770s, North America. They arose from trading on sole account or, more often, on joint account with other merchants; from acting as London agent for overseas merchants, buying and selling consignments, making and collecting payments, and arranging shipping and warehousing; and, in due course, from trade finance through making advances or, more frequently, accepting bills of exchange.

In the West Indies, Baring had major financial interests in sugar and slavery. It is said he made his fortune from the slave trade while only 16 years old. With the income he generated from these ventures, Baring bought Manor House in 1796.

The success of this work was greatly influenced by the establishment of a powerful network of corresponding houses in the main international trading centres. These alliances with leading European and North American merchants were the keys to his success.

Hope & Co. of Amsterdam, the most powerful merchant bank in Europe's leading financial centre, was Baring's most valuable connection. Their association is said to have begun in the 1760s, when Henry Hope passed Baring some bills to negotiate and ended up "exceedingly struck with the transaction which bespoke not only great zeal and activity, but what was still more important... either good credit or great resources... From that day Baring became one of their principal friends". The link was consolidated in other ways, in particular through the marriage in 1796 of Pierre César Labouchère [see under Hope family], a leading figure at Hopes, to Baring's third daughter, Dorothy.

Vital connections were also established on the other side of the Atlantic. Baring was quicker than most to see the commercial potential of Britain's North American colonies, and his finance house quickly emerged as the European hub of a network of North America's most powerful merchants. In 1774 his first American customer was the leading Philadelphia merchant, Willing, Morris & Co.; its influential partners included Robert Morris, a future financial architect of American independence from Britain, and Thomas Willing, a future president of the Bank of the United States. Through them Baring was introduced to Senator William Bingham, one of America's wealthiest men, a connection which gave rise to several lucrative transactions.

Private wealth

Baring's accumulation of great wealth allowed him to diversify his pursuits in gentlemanly living. In 1790 he began to acquire property at Beddington in Surrey, based around Camden House, and in 1796 he bought Manor House, Lee, a relatively modest country house about six miles (10 km) south-east of central London, from his old friend Joseph Paice, acting as trustee for Thomas Lucas, for £20,000. Land in Buckinghamshire was soon added at a cost of £16,000 and by 1800 his total investment in country estates exceeded £60,000. Yet more ambitious plans for life as a country landowner were fertilized; from 1801 he acquired from the Duke of Bedford land and a great house, Stratton Park, at Stratton in Hampshire to create "the Kingdom of Stratton". By 1803 his expenditure had reached £150,000, partly funded through the sale of his Buckinghamshire land. In 1802 he transferred his London home from above his business in Devonshire Square to Hill Street in the West End.

The architect George Dance the Younger was commissioned to remodel the house at Stratton, which was then filled with the finest furniture and best Old Masters. Baring's picture purchases had begun in 1795, when about £1500 was spent, and his expenditure grew apace after 1800; by 1808 he valued his acquisitions at £15,000. Dutch 17th-century masters were his particular passion but by 1804 he had "done with all except the very superior"; now only works by Rembrandt, Rubens, or Van Dyck "tempt me", but "the first must not be too dark, nor the second indecent". He was a patron of Sir Thomas Lawrence, whom he summoned to Stratton in 1806 to paint a magisterial triple portrait of Baring with his two senior partners as a memorial to his business achievement.

Otherwise, Baring's distractions from business were few. As chairman from 1803 to 1810 of the Patriotic Fund administered by Lloyd's of London, he worked for the welfare of Britons wounded or bereaved during the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. The mercantile community sought his help as referee in settling disputes, and as a trustee he gave distinguished service in settling the affairs of the leading London merchants, Boyd, Benfield & Co., which had crashed in 1799. He held the presidency of the London Institution from 1805 until his death. As a pamphleteer his output was modest, with works on the Commutation Act in 1786, on the Bank of England in 1797, and on the affairs of Walter Boyd in 1801.

In the 25 years from 1777, Baring had transformed his firm into one of London's most powerful merchant banking houses; by about 1786 he reckoned that it was "in a very flourishing situation, totally divested of moonshine". By 1800 a network of influential correspondents stretched across Europe; agencies were held for leading Boston and Philadelphia merchants; leadership in marketing British government debt was undisputed; Baring was a respected adviser to senior politicians; his leadership in the East India Company had provided influence in trade east of Africa; and, not least, important commissions had been won from foreign governments. Francis Baring was Barings, and he dominated management, provided most of the capital, and received the lion's share of the profits.