Alexander was educated at Repton and Hertford College, Oxford, where he was in receipt of a scholarship for descendants of Sir Francis Baring.
Sir Francis Baring, chairman of the East India Company, was quick to see the danger.
Other founding Governors included George Legge, 3rd Earl of Dartmouth as President, the Marquess of Stafford, Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet, William Holwell Carr, John Julius Angerstein, Sir Abraham Hume, 2nd Baronet, Sir Thomas Bernard, 3rd Baronet, and others.
Suffield was the eldest son of Charles Harbord, 5th Baron Suffield, and his first wife Cecilia Annetta, daughter of Henry Baring, third son of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet.
A member of the influential Baring family, he was the son of Lieutenant-General Charles Baring, son of Henry Bingham Baring, son of Henry Baring, third son of Sir Francis Baring, 1st Baronet.
She was a descendent of the famous Sir Francis Baring of the 18th Century English Baring banking family that had rescued the British Royal Family in challenging times.
In 1774 his first American customer was the leading Philadelphia merchant, Willing, Morris & Co.; its influential partners included Robert Morris, a future financial architect of American independence from Britain, and Thomas Willing, a future president of the Bank of the United States.
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Thomas Willing, William Bingham's father-in-law and Barings' client at Philadelphia since 1774, was the bank's president and so its use of Baring's firm in making London payments, undertaking exchange transactions, and providing credits was seemingly inevitable.
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Dutch 17th-century masters were his particular passion but by 1804 he had ‘done with all except the very superior’; now only works by Rembrandt, Rubens, or Van Dyck ‘tempt me’ but ‘the first must not be too dark, nor the second indecent’ (Barings archives, Northbrook MSS, A4.3).
In 1800 Henry Hope became influential together with his London friend Francis Baring in financing the Louisiana Purchase.
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