Henry Drax

Henry Drax (c. 1693–1755) of Ellerton Abbey, Yorkshire, and Charborough, near Wareham, Dorset, was a British Whig politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1718 and 1755.

He is also a grandson of James Drax, a wealthy planter in Barbados, who pioneered the cultivation of sugar with the use of African slave labour.

This was a common practice among the heirs of wealthy planters in the British Caribbean, and was usually a clause that needed to be fulfilled in order to inherit their slave plantations in the West Indies.

[5] Drax was returned as a Whig Member of Parliament (MP) for Wareham at a by-election on 28 March 1718, after General Thomas Erle, his wife's grandfather, vacated the seat.

At the 1747 British general election, breaking the compromise, he was returned for Wareham with his eldest son, Thomas Erle Drax, against John Pitt, but they were both unseated on petition on 26 January 1748.