Henry Redhead Yorke

Henry Redhead Yorke, in early life Henry Redhead (1772– 28 January 1813) was an English writer and radical publicist.

Early life and education Henry Redhead was born in 1772 and brought up in Barbuda, in the eastern Caribbean, to a mother who was a freed slave from Barbuda and a father who was an Antiguan slave and plantation owner, an agent for the Codrington family, managing their slaveholding estates on the island. In 1771, Samuel Redhead (1704–1785) Henry had three full siblings, Jane, Joseph and Sarah Ann who lived in a house built by their father in Barbuda. His father's much earlier marriage to Anne Crump (d. 1742) had produced five children.

Henry was taken to England by his father in 1778, and raised at Little Eaton, in Derbyshire. He baulked at a clause in a proposed and defeated resolution of 11 January 1793, encouraging an English insurgency; and as a result was denounced by the economics writer Robert Rayment. Redhead was then the target of an arrest warrant made out by Jacques-Louis David, and left France. From this time, Redhead added Yorke to his name.

At the York spring assize of 1795, true bills were found against him for conspiracy, sedition, and libel. On 23 July 1795, Yorke was tried at York before Sir Giles Rooke for conspiracy, in the absence of his co-defendants, including Joseph Gales, who had absconded. Yorke advocated parliamentary reform, but declared himself opposed to violence and anarchy. On 27 November 1795 he was sentenced by the King's Bench to two years' imprisonment in Dorchester Castle, fined, and required to give sureties of good behaviour for seven years. a report on his trial, 1795; Thoughts on Civil Government, 1800; Annals of Political Economy, 1803; Letters from France, 1804; Mr Redhead Yorke's Political Review, 1805–11. Considered eccentric, the review admired Edmund Burke but was anti-Catholic.

Personal life Yorke married Jane Williams Andrews (1775–1857) on 26 November 1799 at St Martin-in-the-Fields, London. She was the daughter of George Andrews, keeper of Dorchester Castle and gaol, where Redhead York had been imprisoned. Her inheritances supported the family and her husband's work. The couple had four children, Blanche Elizabeth (1800–1811), Henry Galgacus (1802-1848), George Charilaus Camperdown (1805–1835), and Anne Jane (1810–1813).

Henry Redhead Yorke suffered periods of serious illness, and died at Chelsea in London, on 28 January 1813.