Fonds WJ - Papers of Sir William Jones and Lady Anna Maria (Shipley) Jones

Lady Anna Maria Jones was born on 5th December, 1748, the second child of Anna Maria Mordaunt and Jonathan Shipley, Dean of Winchester and later bishop of St. Asaph. Her father taught Anna both classical and modern languages. She married William, aged 35, and sailed with him to Calcutta. Alongside her husband, she became interested in botany and also wrote poetry. After much illness she sailed for England in 1793.

In England, she lived in Worting House, near Basingstoke, and in 1806 adopted her sister's children. She edited her husband's works which were published in 1799 by G. G. & J. Robinson as The Works of Sir William Jones. She also gathered together the material for a memoir of Jones written by the family friend, John Shore, Lord Teignmouth. Anna Maria Jones died on 7th July 1829.

Sir Joseph Banks was born on 15th February 1743 in London into a wealthy land-owning family. He was educated at Harrow School and Eton College, where he became interested in botany. Between 1760 and 1763, Banks studied at Christ Church, Oxford, inheriting a considerable fortune after the death of his father in 1761. This wealth funded his travel to collect botanical specimens.

In 1772, Banks became Director of the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew. He was a Fellow of the Royal Society from 1766 and its president from 1778 until his death in 1820. He was created a baronet in 1781 and appointed to the Order of the Bath in 1795. He died on 19th June 1820 in London.

Samuel Davis was born in the West Indies where his father was Commissary General. After his father died he returned to England with his mother and siblings. He became an East India cadet in 1778, and sailed for India aboard the Earl of Oxford, arriving in Madras in 1780. In 1783 Warren Hastings assigned him as Draftsman and Surveyor on Samuel Turner's Mission to Bhutan and Tibet, but unable to enter Tibet he remained in Bhutan for the duration of the Mission.
On his return he was appointed Assistant to the Collector of Bhagalpur and Registrar of its Adalat Court. There he met William Jones and they became good friends, Davis also becoming a member of the Asiatic Society founded by Jones. He subsequently became Collector of Burdwan, a town in the Bengal Presidency, and from 1795-1800 was Magistrate of the district and city court in Benares. He continued in civil posts in India until his retirement in 1806 when he returned to England via St. Helena. He was elected as a Director of the East India Company on his return.
While in Burdwan, Davis married Henrietta Boileau and they had four sons and seven daughters. The eldest son, John Francis Davis, became the second Governor of Hong Kong. Davis died on 16 June 1819 at Birdhurst Lodge near Croyden in Surrey.

John Shore, Lord Teignmouth was born in St James Street, Piccadilly, on 5th October 1751 but was brought up in Romford. In 1769 he went to work in Bengal where he was one of the first to learn some of the languages. In January 1785 Shore returned to England in the company of Warren Hastings. While in England, on 14th February 1786, he married Charlotte, the only daughter of James Cornish, a medical practitioner at Teignmouth. He returned to India in 1787as a member of the government of Bengal. However he journey back to England in 1790 to be a witness at the trial of Warren Hastings. Shore was appointed Governor-General of India in succession to Cornwallis on 19th September 1792, and was created a baronet, succeeding to the government in 1793 after Cornwallis' departure. He served as Governor-General until 1798.

On his return to England he was created Baron Teignmouth in the peerage of Ireland. He settled in Clapham and became the first President of the British and Foreign Bible Society. He was involved with the Clapham Sect and their anti-slavery campaign. In 1808 he moved to 4 Portman Square where he died on the 14th February, 1834

Teignmouth was a close friend of William Jones and succeeded him as the President of the Asiatic Society after Jones' death. He edited the "Memoirs of the Life, Writings and Correspondence, of Sir William Jones". An 1807 edition is held in the RAS Collections.

Sir William Jones, was born on 28th September 1746, in London, the third child of William Jones, F.R.S., an able mathematician. His father died in 1749 and he was raised by his mother Maria Jones (née Nix). Jones attended Harrow School from 1753 where he taught himself Hebrew and was seen to be an able poet, keen chess-player and to have a prodigious memory. After school he went to University College, Oxford, where alongside the usual studies he learnt Arabic and Persian.

In 1766 Jones became tutor to Lord Althorp (later Earl Spencer) and with the Spencer family travelled to Europe, learning German. In 1770 he translated the Persian history of Nadir Shah into French at the request of King Christian VII of Denmark. Other publications followed including the Grammar of the Persian Language in 1771, a volume of poetry in 1772 and the Commentaries on Asiatic Poetry in 1774. Jones was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1772.

Jones was admitted to the Temple in 1770 to read law, being appointed in 1776 as one of sixty Commissioners of Bankruptcy. In 1783, he was appointed to the India Bench in Calcutta, the hope of which had precipitated his proposal in October 1782, to Anna Maria Shipley, whom he had known for several years. The appointment also brought him a knighthood. William and Anna were married by special licence on April 6th 1783 and four days later sailed from Portsmouth on the frigate Crocodile.

Besides serving on the bench William Jones set up the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1784, becoming its President until his death. He also studied Sanskrit and during an illness both he, and Lady Anna, became interested in Indian botany. Despite frequent bouts of illness, Jones continued to write publications and aimed to compile a complete digest of Hindu and Mohammedan laws. In the end it was Henry Colebrooke who finished this task. Jones also undertook the editorship of the Researches of the Asiatic Society, the first volume being published in 1789.

Lady Jones also suffered from ill-health, and in 1793, William persuaded her to sail for England promising to follow her as soon as he was able. However in 1794 he became ill with 'inflammation of the liver' and died on 27th April, 1794.