Valentine Morris

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Valentine Morris (16 October 1727- 26 August 1789) was a British landowner born in Antigua in the West Indies, and later Governor of St. Vincent. He was the son of Colonel Valentine Morris (c 1678-1743), a sugar plantation owner and merchant who was descended from the Walter family of Monmouthshire in Wales and who, in 1740, bought Piercefield House near Chepstow.

On his father's death, the younger Valentine Morris inherited Piercefield, and began living there with his family in 1753. Morris added to the magnificent splendour of the estate and its setting, by landscaping the parkland, with the help of Richard Owen Cambridge^[1], in the fashionable style of Capability Brown. At a time when tourism in the Wye valley was starting to become popular, Piercefield was developed into a park of national reputation, as one of the earliest examples of Picturesque landscaping. Morris laid out walks through the woodland and included a grotto, druid’s temple, bathing house and giant’s cave. He also developed viewpoints along the clifftop above the River Wye, and opened the park up to visitors. One of the many tourists to marvel at this view was the poet Coleridge, who wrote: "Oh what a godly scene....The whole world seemed imaged in its vast circumference".^[2]

Morris was strongly in favour of road improvement, and promoted the first Turnpike Bill in Monmouthshire, enacted in 1755. He gave evidence to the House of Commons that there were no roads in Monmouthshire and, when asked how people travelled, replied "We travel in ditches"^[3]. As trustee of several turnpike trusts, he was responsible for maintaining and improving the roads from Chepstow to Raglan, Woolaston, and Beachley.

After failing to be elected as M.P. for Monmouthshire at the Parliamentary election of 1771, his gambling, business and political dealings bankrupted him, and he was forced to set sail for his estates in Antigua. He became Governor of the island of St. Vincent's (as it was then known). According to an 1801 memoir of Morris by Archdeacon Coxe, while there he "laboured with so much zeal and activity in promoting the cultivation of the island, that he almost made of it another Piercefield." He helped defend it at his own expense against the French, but, in 1779, negotiated its surrender to French forces. He later brought charges against the American-born military commander of the island, Lt. Colonel George Etherington, on the grounds of "neglect of duty and ... improper behaviour in the face of the enemy." However, recent research has suggested that Morris may have been motivated by vindictiveness against Etherington.^[4]

By now reduced to poverty, he returned to London. He was imprisoned for debt, and had to sell Piercefield in 1784. He died in London in 1789.

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