Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Morier, Isaac

1338097Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900, Volume 39 — Morier, Isaac1894Stanley Lane-Poole

MORIER, ISAAC (1750–1817), consul-general of the Levant Company at Constantinople, belonged to a Huguenot family, which on the revocation of the edict of Nantes migrated to Château d'Oex, in the valley of the Sarine, east of Montreux in Switzerland, where the name is still preserved. Some of the Moriers engaged in commerce at Smyrna, where Isaac was born 12 Aug. 1750, and where he married, in 1775, Clara van Lennep, daughter of the Dutch consul-general and president of the Dutch Levant Company. One of her sisters was married to Admiral Waldegrave, afterwards first Baron Radstock [q. v.], and another to the Marquis de Chabannes de la Palice, whose sons became as distinguished in France as their Morier cousins in England. The three sisters were all celebrated for their beauty, and Romney painted portraits of each of them. Isaac Morier was naturalised in England, but, losing his fortune in 1803, was obliged to seek employment in the East, and in 1804 was appointed the first consul-general of the Levant Company at Constantinople, a post which, on the dissolution of the company in 1806, was converted into that of his Britannic majesty's consul. To this Isaac Morier joined the functions of agent to the East India Company, and held these appointments till his death, of the plague, at Constantinople, in 1817. Four of his sons—David Richard, James Justinian, John Philip, and William—are noticed separately.

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