Sir William Young, 2nd Baronet

Sir William Young, 2nd Baronet, FRS, FSA (December 1749 – 10 January 1815) was a British colonial governor, politician and sugar plantation owner. He was the governor of Tobago from 1807 – January 1815, and Member of Parliament for St Mawes, 19 June 1784 – 3 November 1806, and Buckingham, 5 November 1806 – 23 March 1807.

Young was born in Charlton, then in Kent, now Greater London, in December 1749, the eldest son of Sir William Young, 1st Baronet (1724/5–1788), governor of Dominica, and his second wife, Elizabeth (1729–1801), the daughter of the mathematician Brook Taylor. His siblings included Sarah Elizabeth, Portia, Elizabeth, Mary, Henry, John, and Olivia. As a child, he and ten other family members were featured in the oil on canvas painting, The Family of Sir William Young, Baronet (ca.1766) by Johan Zoffany. He enrolled at Clare College, Cambridge in 1767 but transferred to University College, Oxford, on 26 November 1768. After graduating he travelled France and Italy and documented his travels. In 1777, he published The spirit of Athens, an acclaimed insight into the political and philosophical history of Greece.

In 1782, Young he was appointed by the proprietors of the colony of Tobago to represent them in the French court to settle territorial disputes. He returned to England in 1784 where he settled and became an MP for St Mawes, Cornwall from 19 June, a seat which he held until 3 November 1806, when he was elected for Buckingham. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society in 1786 and a fellow of the Society of Antiquaries in 1791. In 1788, his father died and passed on four sugar plantations to his son—one in Antigua, two in St Vincent, and one in Tobago—and a total of 896 African slaves. His father had also been seriously in debt and left a sum of around £110,000 (£12,518,996 in 2017 pounds) for his son to pay off. A secretary to the Association for Promoting the Discovery of the Interior Parts of Africa, Young spoke regular in parliament on poor-law reform, income tax, the slave trade, union with Ireland, foreign and colonial policy, and parliamentary reform.

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