Bryan Edwards was a West Indian planter born in Westbury in 1743. He returned to England in 1792 and settled in Southampton where he became a very successful trader with the Caribbean islands and founded a bank. Politically he was particularly active in the pro-slavery movement. He failed to get elected to parliament for the town in 1795, but in 1796 was successful for the Cornish borough of Grampound. He lived in a house at the Polygon, presumably one of those built as part of the ambitious but unfinished Polygon scheme conceived by Isaac Mallortie and John Carnac in 1768-1773. He died in 1800. In the 1803 street directory a Hume Edwards is listed in the Polygon, but whether he was a relative or not is unclear.
Further reading:
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 2004, Volume 17
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