George Amyand

Sir George Amyand, 1st Baronet (26 September 1720 – 16 August 1766) was a British Whig politician, physician and merchant.

He was the second son of Claudius Amyand, Surgeon-in-Ordinary to King George II, by his wife Mary Rabache, and was baptised at the fashionable St James's Church, Piccadilly. Claudius's father was a Huguenot who had quitted France following the Revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685.

Amyand was Army Contractor during the Seven Years' War, an assistant to the Russia Company in March 1756 and a director of the East India Company in 1762. In that year, he bought the manor of Frilsham, Berkshire from Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon. Between 1754 and 1766, Amyand sat as Member of Parliament (MP) for Barnstaple, in North Devon. On 9 August 1764, he was created a baronet, of Moccas Court, in the County of Hereford.

In 1748 he married Anna Maria Korteen (d. 1767), daughter of John Abraham Korteen (alias Kerton), a German merchant of Hamburg, by whom he had two sons and two daughters:

• Sir George Cornewall, 2nd Baronet (1748–1819), eldest son and heir, who changed his surname and arms to Cornewall following his marriage to the heiress of that family.
• John Amyand (1751–1780 ), MP for Camelford.
• Anna-Maria Amyand (1752–1829), married Gilbert Elliot, 1st Earl of Minto.
• Harriet Maria Amyand (1761–1830), married James Harris, 1st Earl of Malmesbury

Amyand died on 16 August 1766, aged 45, from unknown causes, and was buried at Carshalton a week later.

In the outer south aisle of All Saints Church, Carshalton is a white marble urn, with an inscription in his memory.

He donated the present organ in St Peter's Church, Barnstaple, one of the largest in Devon, made by John Crang in 1764. It is decorated with his armorials: Vert, a chevron between three garbs or with an inescutcheon of unidentified arms.