Henry Hope

[2][3] In 1762, he accompanied his only sister, Henrietta Maria (aka Harriet), to Dutch Republic when she married the son of a Rotterdam merchant and business associate, John Goddard.

Henry went to work for his uncles, Thomas and Adrian, together with his cousin, Jan Hope (who at 26 opted to be baptized a second time as "John"), in the family business in Amsterdam.

The firm also specialized in loans to planters in the West Indies, taking payment in kind: sugar, coffee or tobacco, which the Hopes would then sell on the Amsterdam market.

In exchange for loans to the King of Portugal, Hope & Co received an exclusive concession to sell diamonds originating in the Portuguese colony of Brazil.

The Hopes would accept the diamonds and sell them on the Amsterdam market; then they used the proceeds to defray the interest and principal of the loans they had made to Portugal.

To that Gentleman I owe the most distinct, as well as liberal information, concerning a very interesting and important subject, the Bank of Amsterdam; of which no printed account had ever appeared to me satisfactory, or even intelligible.

The name of that Gentleman is so well known in Europe, the information which comes from him must do so much honour to whoever has been favoured with it, and my vanity is so much interested in making this acknowledgment, that I can no longer refuse myself the pleasure of prefixing this Advertisement to this new Edition of my Book.Hope & Co also became important for Russia.

During the 1780s, Catherine the Great offered Henry Hope a title, which he declined, feeling advancement to the nobility was incompatible with his position as a working merchant banker.

The execution of these ambitious plans did not seem to make a dent in his enormous wealth; in 1782, he purchased Hope Lodge (Fort Washington, Pennsylvania) as a wedding gift for the son of his American cousin, Maria Ellis.

Henry is said to have been influenced in his choice of the Neo-Classical style by the Hôtel de Salm in Paris, built in 1782 by Frederick III, Prince of Salm-Kyrburg.

[10] From the Earl of Hopetoun he bought a mansion at the corner of Harley Street/Cavendish Square and started a branch of Hope & Co. Henry became friendly with Francis Baring with whom he entered upon many large land deals with various royal names.

Along with Daniel Webster, he negotiated the treaty that resolved the disputes over Maine's northwest boundary (Henry had family in Nova Scotia).

Though he always hoped to return to Welgelegen, Henry died childless in London in 1811, leaving capital of 12 million guilders, an art collection, and several large properties.

The painting, by Benjamin West, shows a model of Welgelegen that sits atop a mahogany chest, probably designed by Thomas Hope.

Henry Hope in 1788 , mezzotint by Charles Howard Hodges after a now-lost painting by Sir Joshua Reynolds .
Offices of Hope & Co. for more than a century: Keizersgracht 444-446 Amsterdam (the white building on the right). The brown building on the left is 448, the private residence of Henry Hope. In the 1770s the bell gables of these three buildings were remodelled in the style of the times and crowned in the center with the Hope family shield. Rijksmonument status since 1970
Front of Villa Welgelegen on the Paviljoenslaan, Haarlem
Everhard Jabach and his family, owned by Henry Hope since 1792. [ 8 ]
John Williams Hope (1757–1813), ( Richard Cosway , 1796). [ 9 ]
Henry Hope's Family , in British exile in 1802, by Benjamin West . The adults, from left to right, are Henry Hope, his recently widowed sister Harriet Goddard (1735–1814), John Williams, and Ann Goddard Williams (b. 1763). The children of John and Ann Williams, left to right, are Henry (1785), Adrian (1788), Elizabeth (1794), Henrietta (1790), and William (1803). Henry points to the ashes of John Goddard (1737–1800), his brother-in-law and business associate; above his head rests a model of Welgelegen, which he had just made over to John Williams.