Rowland Stephenson (19 May 1782 – 2 July 1856)[1] was a British banker and politician who precipitated the collapse of a bank and took refuge in America.
[2] The son of a banker and a great nephew of his namesake, MP for Carlisle (1787–1790), he had been born at sea when his family returned from Florida when their business failed after the American War of Independence.
In 1776, John became a member of the King's Council in Pensacola, Florida—under British control since 1763—where he worked as a merchant and provisioning agent.
[1] His eldest son, Rowland Macdonald Stephenson (1808–1895), became a civil engineer and managing director of the East India Railway Company, for which he was knighted in October 1856.
The case achieved great notoriety: for example, his escape via Clovelly was included in a book of illustrations,[5] and the American writer James Fenimore Cooper wrote of being asked in various places about why Stephenson had been allowed to remain in America after landing in Savannah, Georgia, being taken by bounty hunters to New York, but granted habeas corpus rather being returned England to stand trial.