Josiah Child

Sir Josiah Child
Portrait, oil on canvas attributed to John Riley (1646-1691), National Gallery Collections.

Sir Josiah Child, 1st Baronet (1630 – 22 June 1699) was an English merchant and politician. He was an economist proponent of mercantilism and governor of the East India Company.

Child was born in about 1630 and baptised in 1631, the second son of Richard Child, a merchant of Fleet Street (buried 1639 at Hackney), and Elizabeth Roycroft of Weston Wick, Shropshire. After serving his apprenticeship in the family business, to which after much struggle he succeeded, when about twenty-five he started on his own account at Portsmouth as victualler to the navy under the Commonwealth; he is also described as "agent to the Navy Treasurer". He amassed a comfortable fortune, and became a considerable stock-holder in the East India Company. In 1659, he was elected Member of Parliament for Petersfield in the Third Protectorate Parliament. He was elected MP for Dartmouth in 1673 in a by-election to the Cavalier Parliament.

Child purchased Wanstead House in Essex in 1673 from the executors of Sir Robert Brooke and spent much money on laying out the grounds. The diarist John Evelyn made the following characteristically waspish entry for 16 March 1683

"I went to see Sir Josiah Child's prodigious cost in planting of walnut trees about his seat and making fishponds many miles in circuit in Epping Forest in a barren spot as commonly these overgrown and suddenly monied men for the most part seat themselves. He from an ordinary merchant's apprentice & management of the East India Company's common stock being arrived to an estate ('tis said) of £200,000 and lately married his daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, late Marquis of Worcester, with £30,000 (some versions £50,000) portion at present, & various expectations. This merchant most sordidly avaricious etc."

According to Daniel Defoe Child "added innumerable rows of trees, avenues and vistas to the house, all leading up to the place where the old house stood, as to a centre".