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I shall have to make at least the following correction, which unfortunately the online History of Parliament no longer confirms, but I THINK it’s still the case. James Hayes of Holyport, MP for Downton was a (by marriage, through his mother, an Aldworth) cousin of the Aldworth/Neville/Griffith who succeeded to the Braybrooke title. One of his assets was the Patent for the Provost Marshalcy of Jamaica, which the National Archives insists was held by Braybrooke from 1762. From my various attempts to make some sort of sense of Lewis Cuthbert I am under the possibly mistaken impression that the future reversion of the patent was fixed well in advance of any practical transfer of title which might enable the patentee actually to draw income from the office, (such mentions as are apparent in the National Archive catalogue seem to confirm this, though the Archives don’t want to know), and that 1762 is the date on which the future reversion was approved. But BECAUSE Hayes and Aldworth/Neville/Griffith were kinsmen ( and Namier confirms in Structure of Politics that they tended to work closely together in other matters) I’m inclined to accept the mention by, as far as I can remember, Robarts which is somewhere in the documentation of the multiplepoinding which followed Lewis Cuthbert’s death, that in fact Hayes much earlier (presumably for a quid pro quo I can’t track down) transferred the emoluments of the office to the patentee directly to his cousin, Neville/Aldworth/Griffith, later Lord Braybrooke, in effect transferring everything except title. This view is strengthened by the indication that when Hayes, by then Chief Justice of Anglesey (which Namier thinks had been a major aim in his life) died in 1800, and the news reached Jamaica, an almost immediate hole appears in Lewis Cuthbert’s finances (some of his Jamaica accounts for that period happen to survive in the Highland archives) which can only be because the then Governor of Jamaica concluded that Lewis’s lease, which presumably names Hayes as the Patentee, rather than Braybrooke, had thereby expired, and refused to recognise him as office holder. They must have sorted this out fairly quickly, because Lady Nugent’s diary shows her later on good terms with Lewis, but the Jamaica Assembly later still holds an enquiry into the working of the office – which they did not control, and resented.

Jim Brennan
Date: Thu, 31 Jan 2019

I’ve attempted to put  some stuff into the Lewis Timeline which
fortunately turns out to be very elastic, which I think is more or
less right, but one or two bits might have to be revised again, and
anyway I found myself summarising from memory.  Don’t take it as
gospel necessarily, but if you think something needs hard evidence let
me know and I might be able to provide it/.    I tried to get Lyon’s
office to admit to a role in providing a Scots noble ancestry for
Jean-Baptiste Colbert’s sons – I can’t believe that James Duke of York
(aka James VII and II) didn’t have a hand in the business, but they
denied the existence of any documentation at all for the process by
which the Cuthbert bore-brieve emerged.   I can’t believe it can all
have been arranged by direct contact with the Cuthbert of Drakies who
was Provost and Delegate to the Scots Parliament in 1681.   There is a
bundle of documents in Kew from the Braybrookes about the Jamaica
Provost-marshalcy general which I don’t think I’m ever going to get a
look at – at least not over the period of time it will need – but
Lewis also worked for the Harewoods as an attorney in Jamaica – their
London bean-counters engineered his sacking, but not the payment of
monies due to him, so that by the time of his death he was in
financial deep water, although within sight of shore.    But he’s
fairly ruthless about money, particularly with his cousin and one time
clerk, Thomas Alves, in Jamaica – he sold off Alves’s inheritance,
Shipland, when Alves failed – even though Alves’s family had prevented
that happening to Castlehill – they worked closely with the abbe
Alexander.   Thomas had two kinsmen, Alexander and William, originally
in St Vincent and latterly involved in Guyana who were associated with
George Baillie, and two others of his kin had been given jobs in
Lewis’s Provost Marshalcy in the 1790s and did a little better than
Thomas the heir.   Inverness Royal Academy was still drawing interest
on the loan of a huge chunk of Lewi’s Jamaica subs from his estate
well into the late 1820s. All the same, Lewis paid Seignelay’s sub to
Inverness Royal Academy -two years at least, i think, after he had
promised it, and when they were beginning to get a bit worried about
it.   After Lewis’s death, when officially in exile, he seems to have
been welcomed in Inverness as a distinguished native son – though I
don’t remember coming across the accounts of any civic reception for
him.

Jim Brennan
Date: Wed, 30 Jan 2019

more information on Lewis can be found on these websites:

http://www.jjhc.info/CuthbertLewis1802.htm

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/2146650219/#relationships