Colonel Francis Brinley (c. 1690 – November 27, 1765) was an English-born landowner, philanthropist and militia officer best known for being the subject of a John Smibert portrait which is currently owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Though he was born and died in England, Brinley spent most of his life in the British Province of Massachusetts Bay as a prosperous landholder who became involved with several colonization projects throughout the colony.

In 1719, his grandfather died and left his estate to Brinley, who settled down in Massachusetts and constructed a large colonial mansion for himself known as Datchet House in the Boston neighborhood of Roxbury.

Over the following decades, Brinley established himself as a prominent member of the American gentry, acquiring landholdings and slaves along with sponsoring charitable organizations.

In addition to owning an equivalent amount of wealth as her husband, Deborah maintained connections with aristocratic circles in England, which allowed her to emulate the most recent cultural trends and fashions in Europe, a comparative rarity in North America.

[5] Over the next decades, Brinley established himself as a prominent member of the Massachusetts elite, acquiring extensive landholdings in Suffolk County, including several large hayfields.

[8] The next year, Brinley commissioned Scottish-born painter John Smibert, who had accompanied Berkeley to North America, to paint portraits of both himself and his wife and child.

In 1732, the General Court of Massachusetts issued a land grant consisting of six square miles to a colonist named Christopher Jacob Lawton from Suffield, Connecticut for a sum of money, in line with a boundary agreement negotiated in 1713.

[10] In November 1747, an attempt by Royal Navy officer Charles Knowles to impress a group of sailors into his squadron led to the eruption of a riot in Boston.

[1] When the French and Indian War between the American colonies of Great Britain and France broke out in 1754, Brinley was promoted to the rank of colonel and appointed as the commander of the Roxbury regiment, a unit of the provincial militia.

[2] Brinley also engaged in several philanthropic ventures over the course of his life; according to Unitarian clergyman Henry Wilder Foote, he "was of a liberal and hospital nature".

[17][18] He also frequently made large donations to King's Chapel, an independent Christian Unitarian church built in 1754, which like Datchet House was also constructed in the neoclassical style.