page_title: William Blake (economist)
section_title: Life
hierarchical_section_title: William Blake (economist) / Life
caption_attribution_description: English: Drawing for a villa, St John's Lodge, at Welwyn, Hertfordshire, England. The final design was modified, and the house later renamed to Danesbury House.
context_page_description: William Blake was an English classical economist who contributed to the early theory of purchasing power parity.
context_section_description: He was born in London on 31 January 1774, the son of William and Alicia Blake. He was educated at Charterhouse School, and entered Trinity College, Cambridge in 1789. He graduated B.A. in 1793 as 7th wrangler, became a Fellow of the college in 1795, and graduated M.A. in 1796. Giving up his fellowship in 1797, he entered Lincoln's Inn, and was called to the bar in 1799.
  Blake was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1807. He served as President of the Geological Society of London in 1815–6, which he had joined in 1812. He became a member of the Royal Geographical Society in 1830. He also belonged to the Political Economy Club, from 1831, and the King of Clubs dining club of Whigs.
  
  Blake leased St John's Lodge in Welwyn, Hertfordshire, with a park of 130 acres, from 1819. He purchased the property in 1824, changing the name to Danesbury. He was High Sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1836.
  According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at the University College London, Blake was awarded a payment as a slave trader in the aftermath of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 with the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The British Government took out a £15 million loan (worth £1.43 billion in 2020) with interest from Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Moses Montefiore which was subsequently paid off by the British taxpayers (ending in 2015). Blake was associated with ten different claims, he owned 1651 slaves in Tobago and Saint Vincent and the Grenadines and received a £34,301 17s 9d payment at the time (worth £3.28 million in 2020).
caption: St John's Lodge, original architectural drawing by Robert Adam; the actual design was somewhat modified.
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