DICTIONARY
OF
NATIONAL BIOGRAPHY
ANNESLEY, ALEXANDER (d. 1813), legal and political writer, was a London solicitor and member of the Inner Temple. After many years' practice, by which he acquired a large fortune, he retired to Hyde Hall, Hertfordshire, and died there on 6 Dec. 1813. Annesley was a man of many accomplishments, paid repeated visits to the continent, and was an enthusiastic sportsman. In politics he followed Pitt. His works, which evince wide historical reading, are: 1. 'Strictures on the true Cause of the present alarming Scarcity of Grain and Provisions, and a Plan for permanent Relief,' 1800. The pamphlet was dedicated to Pitt, and attempted to trace the cause of the high prices of the time to 'the rage for accumulating wealth' which led the merchants to raise prices by arbitrarily restricting production. To meet the evil, Annesley proposed 'bounties on production rather than on importation, an excise on all grain, the establishment of public granaries and additional corn-mills.' He justly protested in behalf of the poor against the methods employed in enclosing common lands, and advocated a system of peasant proprietorship by colonising the common lands with superannuated soldiers and sailors, beginning as an experiment with the New Forest. 2. 'Observations on the Danger of a Premature Peace,' 1800. 3. 'A Compendium of the Law of Marine Insurance, Bottomry, Insurance on Lives, and of Insurance against Fire, in which the mode of calculating averages is defined and illustrated by example,' 1808, A brief history of English commerce and navigation forms the introduction to the treatise, and very full references are given to the leading law cases bearing on the subject. It is dedicated to John Julius Angerstein. Testimony to the usefulness of the book at the present time is borne by Mr. Cornelius Walford in his 'Insurance Cyclopædia' (i. 96) published in 1871. Annesley contributed largely to Tomlin's 'Law Dictionary,' and to the 'Edinburgh Encyclopædia.'
[Gent. Mag. lxx. 1270, lxxi. 58, lxxviii. 419-24, lxxxiv. 94, where a memoir may be found; Brit. Mus. Cat.; Annesley's Works.]
ANNESLEY, ARTHUR, first Earl of Anglesey (1614–1686), was born at Dublin on 10 July 1614. His father, Sir Francis Annesley [q .v.], better known as the Lord Mountnorris of Strafford's rule in Ireland, had held high office under James I and Charles I for forty years. His mother's name was Dorothy Phillips. In 1624 he was sent to England, and in 1630 to Magdalen College, Oxford, where he took his degree in 1634 (Wood's Ath. Oxon. iv. 18), and Happy Future State of England, p. 3). In the same year he joined Lincoln's Inn. Having made the grand tour, he returned to Ireland in 1640. It is stated (Collins's Peerage; Biographia Britannica) that he was then elected for Radnor county, but that he at once lost his seat upon petition, and that Charles Price, Esq., was elected in his place. This is a mistake. No such vote occurs in the Commons' Journals. Moreover it appears (Parl. Hist. ii. 629) that Charles Price was the first member elected, but that he was disabled, and that Annesley succeeded him, though it is uncertain when; and his admirer, Sir W. Pett, says nothing about his being a member until 1647 (Happy Future State of England, p. 5). It is affirmed also that Annesley sat in the king's parliament at Oxford in 1643, Not only, however, does his name not occur in the list, but that of Charles Price does (Parl. Hist. iii. 219). These mistakes have doubtless arisen from a careless misreading of the passage in
