Henry Lascelles, 2nd Earl of Harewood DL (25 December 1767 – 24 November 1841), known as Viscount Lascelles from 1814 to 1820, was a British peer, Tory politician, planter and art collector.
Harewood was the second son of Edward Lascelles, 1st Earl of Harewood, and Anne Chaloner. He was elected to the House of Commons for Yorkshire in 1796, a seat he held until the 1807 Yorkshire election and again from 1812 to 1818, and also represented Westbury from 1807 to 1812 and Northallerton from 1818 to 1820. The latter year he succeeded his father in the earldom and entered the House of Lords. Between 1819 and 1841 he also served as Lord Lieutenant of the West Riding of Yorkshire.
According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at University College London, Harewood was awarded remuneration as a former slave trader in the aftermath of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 via the Slave Compensation Act 1837. The British Government took out a £15 million loan (worth £ in) with interest from Nathan Mayer Rothschild and Moses Montefiore, which was subsequently paid off by British taxpayers (ending in 2015). Harewood was associated with six different claims; he enslaved roughly 1,277 people in Barbados and Jamaica and received a payment of £26,307 at the time (worth £ in).[1]
Lord Harewood married Henrietta Sebright (d. 15 February 1840), daughter of Sir John Sebright, 6th Baronet, on 3 September 1794. They had eleven children:
His wife is mentioned in Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen, in a letter from Mary Crawford to Fanny Price while Fanny is staying with her mother and father in Portsmouth: "I was there, two years ago, when Lady Lascelles had it, and I prefer it over any other house in London." (She is talking about a house in Wimpole Street.)