One of the New Men: Henry Peters

Henry Peters (ca. 1762–1827) was one of the more successful exemplars of the ‘new men’ who increasingly occupied Darking Hundred’s mansions in 1800. The son of a onetime governor of the Bank of England, Peters was born into the higher echelons of the merchant class. His brother was a successful linen merchant, and Henry maintained an interest in that business, but on the strength of his father’s success he was able to obtain a gentleman’s education, initially at Lincoln’s Inn but afterwards at St John’s College, Cambridge. There he was a contemporary of Sir Henry Paulet-St John-Mildmay, the person on whom the character of Sir Nugent is based; Sir Henry it was who sold Betchworth Castle and its surrounding property, including Box Hill, to Mr Peters in 1798.

     Peters appears to have been adept at playing the London money-and-power game, in which so many Darking residents made their mark. By 1790, when still in his twenties, he was already a partner in a bank, Masterman & Co., and had been made a director of the South Sea Company. (Contrary to its name, the South Sea Company—best known for its perpetration of a massive Ponzi scheme in 1720—at this point in its chequered history risked very little of its capital in actual trading ventures, but seems to have existed principally as a vehicle for managing government debt.)