SOLDIERS, SAINTS AND SCALLYWAGS stirring tales from family history Front Cover Pictures (clockwise from top left): William Mayne of the Bengal Cavalry (‘ Death on the Pale Horse’ ); ); John Thomas Mayne, lawyer of Teffont Manor, Wiltshire ( A Mild Deception); Deception); Saint Cuthbert and the scaffold in Cornwall (...the (... the Road to Launceston Launceston); ); Ayub Khan, Governor of Herat, Afghanistan ( My God – Maiwand Maiwand !) !) MA Biddulph (The Rifles Museum, Salisbury)
“Afghanistan” - A sketch of Girishk, overlooking the Helmand river, drawn in 1880 when British B ritish soldiers were again fighting there. See “ Death on the Pale Horse” Horse” 1842 and “ My God – Maiwand!” Maiwand!” 1880 First published in 2009: ISBN 978 0 9530 9123.2 Copyright © David Gore 2009 Reissued for electronic distribution in 2014 Copyright © David Gore 2014 eBook formatting by www.bluewavepublishing.co.uk British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
For Nicholas, Emily, Emily, Toby, Madeleine, Madeleine, William, William, Callum, Thomas, Edward, Scarlett, Henry, Anna, Charlie, Charlie, Joe, Oliver Oliver and Finnley Finnley and for my grandmother Mary grandmother Mary Emily Emily Mayne, Mayne, born Caldwell , who inspired these stories I never met her, but I came to know a great deal about my maternal grandmother and her family. We shared a sort of common bond in that she died at her home in the Palani Hills of South India the same year that I was born at the other end of the country in what is now Pakistan. In time, her influence flowed down to me through the papers papers she left, letters, several several lengthy pedigrees pedigrees written out in her large scrawling hand, lists of family heirlooms, keepsakes, and other possessions. possessions. Then I heard vivid stories of her, of her saintly father, a Scottish missionary in India (see the story “ Faith and Family in South India”), and of her husband Bobby Mayne’s turbulent Irish ancestors (“ An Irish Murder ”). ”). I also discovered that my grandmother had been deeply spiritual and overtly psychic – the seventh child of a seventh child. She could trace her female descent back to Oliver Cromwell, the scourge of the monarchy monarchy – and, incidentally, of the Irish. In her forties she became a London suffragette and, in her sixties, this daughter of an Anglican bishop returned to her home in India alone, and converted to Catholicism.
SOLDIERS, SAINTS AND SCALLYWAGS
PREFACE This is a diverse collection of historical tales, written in the wake of a broad study of the ‘Mayne’ surname and associated families. All the stories here arose in the course of that work. They centre on controversial or otherwise unusual characters, generally at critical moments in their lives. Soldiers, sailors, missionaries, lawyers, an artist, a saint and a public servant are all represented – some were ...”, some highly eccentric – Policeman’s Lot ... upright citizens - “ A Policeman’s Mayne...” – and a couple were just ‘scallywags’ - “ A “ Robert Blair Mayne... Mild Deception”. They lived in a variety of times and places – every century from the 16 th to the 20th. Much of the action is in conflict situations, some with a strong religious component, such as the first story which is of Christian Cuthbert…”. Then compare strife in Elizabethan England - “ Saint Cuthbert… this quiet Saint with a modern example of the power of conscience in Cornishman”. war - “ A Shy Cornishman Stories are included from both sides in the English Civil War - “ The Forgotten Cavalier ” and “ Simon Mayne…”. During periodic rebellions that have plagued Ireland come “ The Mystery of Plot 118”, from the hazards of life in colonial Virginia - “The House that Byrd Built ”, ”, and from naval warfare against the French - “ Graduates of the Sea”. Finally, from the two Afghan Wars of the 19 th century come “ Death on the Pale Horse” and “ My God – Maiwand !”. !”. In this last story, on now familiar territory, the ignominious defeat of British/Indian forces by an Afghan army in Helmand in 1880 is examined in some detail using dramatic first-hand accounts.
CONTENTS Preface Christian Conflict in 16th & 17th Century England St Cuthbert and the Road to Launceston The Forgotten Cavalier Simon Mayne and the Dissenters of Aylesbury
Scottish Adventurers and their Colonial Cousins ‘Death on the Pale Horse’ A Portrait of Sarah The House that Byrd Built
The Englishmen: A Deceitful Lawyer, Intrepid Sea Dogs, an Artist and Hidden History A Mild Deception Graduates of the Sea A Shy Cornishman HORSMONDEN – What’s in a name?
The Ulstermen: Soldiers, Public Servants and Eccentrics An Irish Murder The Mystery of Plot 118 A Policeman’s Lot … Robert Blair Mayne, DSO*
India: Mission and Massacre Massacre Faith and Family in South India My God – Maiwand! Notes on the British Defeat at Maiwand
BY THE SAME AUTHOR Kindle A Cornish Inheritance – the Harveys of Chacewater (2014) On Kentish Chalk – a farming family of the North Downs (2015)
Scribd Library MAYNE: a partial study of the surname in Ireland, England & Scotland http://www.scribd.com/collections/3524517/MAYNEOne-name-Study : Archived at the Society of Genealogists, London Claughton Pellew 1890-1966: an artist of the 1920s working in the aftermath of the Great War http://www.scribd.com/doc/117326171/ Kechie Tennent 1888-1968: An instinct for art and motherhood http://www.scribd.com/doc/193108438/ Walter Praetorious: son of Clan MacThomas and dance-master to the Wehrmacht! http://www.scribd.com/doc/185783787/ Ardnamona Wood and its Gardeners: an ancient woodland beside Lough Eske in Donegal, Ireland http://www.scribd.com/doc/142203861/ “Paint on my fingers”: a Gallery of Stella’s Irish landscapes http://www.scribd.com/doc/133600823/
British Empire Gladys’ Story – A Leap Day shipwreck off India http://www.britishempire http://www.briti shempire.co.uk/ar .co.uk/article/gladysstor ticle/gladysstory.htm y.htm
CHRISTIAN CONFLICT IN 16 th & 17th CENTURY ENGLAND #################
St Cuthbert and the Road to Launceston The story of Cuthbert Mayne, the first seminary priest to be martyred, shows that Cornish rivalries were much to blame for his demise. "Launceston still remembers the Devon man who came to Cornwall for his conscience sake, and died in ignominy for his creed"
It was St Andrew's eve in Elizabethan England. The November mists swirled around the little wooden houses of Launceston, its church towers and along the walls of the great castle. In the market square stood the props of the theatre that was to be played out next day, the wooden block, the steps beside the gibbet, the tall ladder and the great iron cauldron. It was to be the final act in the life of the prisoner who prayed and waited in his cell beneath beneath the castle for the end of his last night on earth. And who was this man who was to die so hideously, hanged until he was half dead, disembowelled, beheaded, and his body cut into four parts? Each would be hung up on chains at Tregony, Tregony, Wadebridge, Wadebridge, Bodmin and Barnstable, where they would swing in the wind as a warning to others. Surely he was not just a thief or footpad? Only some murderer, a serial killer or regicide perhaps, would be given such cruel treatment. No, the prisoner was just a devout man with a conscience and a belief from which he could not be dissuaded.
Cuthbert Mayne, the Catholic priest martyred at Launceston in November 1577 "as a terror to the Papists", was declared a Saint in 1970. This portrait, provided by the Catholic church, has two scenes of his martyrdom at Launceston in the background. His portrait is based on an 18th century mezzotint of him shown later in this story.
Cuthbert Mayne's journey that led to the gallows at Launceston on St Andrew's day of 1577 began east of the Tamar thirty-three years before. before. He was baptised into the t he Church of England England at Shirwell near
Bideford, the fourth of six sons of a poor shepherd. Fortunately for the young Cuthbert he came under the influence of an uncle, a local Rector, who sponsored his education at Barnstaple Grammar School and, at the age of seventeen, got him the living of nearby Huntshaw parish. His induction committed Cuthbert Cuthbert to the "church "church by law established" and gave him some security and the prospect of a good income once he was ordained. But this was the England of ‘the Reformation’, a country in which it could be dangerous to belong to other than the established Protestant church. Cuthbert's generation was the first to be brought up in the reformed church; he was just five when the Edward VI Prayer Book in English replaced the Latin Mass. There was a minor rebellion in the West Country (known as 'The Commotion') against the new forms of service and the harsh way they were enforced. The revolt started in Cornwall where Crown Commissioner Body was killed by an angry crowd while he was in Helston church removing statues for destruction. It spread through much of Cornwall and Devon but was soon put down with the usual severity. Cuthbert was fourteen the year Queen Elizabeth replaced her reactionary sister, Mary Tudor, on the throne. Mary had been a fanatical Catholic who in her brief reign had married her Spanish cousin, burnt Archbishop Cranmer and three hundred Protestants at the stake and succeeded only in turning the country against Catholicism. With Elizabeth came the age of expansion and commerce with ‘the Reformation’ firmly re-established by the 1559 Act of Uniformity. In England the Pope became anathema, Spain a detested rival in the new world and later an enemy; in Cornwall the old Catholic (recusant) families, such as the Arundells of Lanherne and the Tremaynes, were isolated in their illegal religious practices. When in 1567 the Pope excommunicated Elizabeth, Catholics found themselves having to choose between loyalty to the old faith and loyalty to the Queen. Their attempts under pressure to reconcile such a conflict could end only in failure.
Sir Richard Grenville (1541-91), the 'hammer' of Cornish Catholics. Both he and Cuthbert Mayne, whose downfall he contrived, died heroically. [ National National Maritime Museum Museum]
The two other principal actors in the drama that led to the scaffold at Launceston were Richard Grenville and Francis Tregian, both Cornishmen: their rivalry was to seal Cuthbert's fate. The Grenvilles of Stowe House at Kilkhampton on the north-west Cornish coast, were a family of the old aristocracy who were used to exercising authority. In contrast the Tregians were new landed gentry whose considerable fortune had been made by Francis' father trading in the cargoes of the little ships out of St Ives where they lived. On the way to their wealth the Tregians greatly increased their social standing by
marrying into the Wolverden, Edgecombe and Arundell families; the Tregian lands at Tregony and the beautiful little manor at Golden which Francis made his home came to them as a Wolverden bride's dowry. The rising antipathy of the old Grenville family towards the upstart Tregians was further fuelled when, in the course of these marriage stakes, a Grenville was rejected by an Arundell daughter in favour of a Tregian. Richard Grenville had suffered first the loss of his father when he was three, drowned on the Mary the Mary Rose during Rose during the war against France, and then the death of his elderly grandparents, his guardians, at the hands of recusant rebels in 'the Commotion' of 1549. Little wonder that the young man grew up with a hearty detestation of Catholicism, its archaic superstitions, its foreign influences and especially of the Catholic party of Cornwall and its intrigues. Richard was also very ambitious, given to jealousy and by nature intemperate and arrogant, a highly combustible mixture. In the year that Cuthbert left home and went up to St Albans Hall at Oxford, Richard Grenville, then a student at the Inner Temple, stabbed a man to death in a brawl near the Strand. He eventually obtained a pardon, but the Queen had no place at court for this hot-headed hot-headed young Cornishman and, with his hopes of advancement in London dashed, he returned home where he married Mary St Leger. By coincidence Francis Tregian, a quiet and pious Catholic closely related to the most powerful Catholic family in Cornwall, the Arundells of Lanherne, was also then in conflict with the Queen and her court. Rumour was that he had rejected Elizabeth's amorous advances. This scorned woman, it was said, declared him a Catholic traitor and sent her cousin, Sir George Carey, down to Cornwall to make the charge stick; as a result Francis went into exile and it was not until the mid 1570s that he was allowed to return to his Cornish estates.
Francis Tregian 1548-1608 who suffered 26 years imprisonment and the confiscation of his hi s Cornish properties, including his home at Golden Manor where he had illegally i llegally harboured Cuthbert, the Catholic priest. [ Raymond Raymond Francis Trudgian]
Meanwhile Cuthbert Mayne, the would-be Anglican clergyman, found on his arrival at Oxford that there the conflicts in religious belief and practice were not just an academic academic problem but a major issue of life. Sooner or later the Oath of Loyalty had to be accepted or rejected by him and every one of his companions. The Warden of Merton College which adjoined his Hall was then in prison where he later died for his refusal to subscribe to the Oath. But most acquiesced, like the Cornishman John Lenall, the sporting Archdeacon of Oxford, who said to one victim of a divided conscience: "Surely you are not so foolish as to sacrifice all your livings?" Whatever his reservations, Cuthbert was not prepared to repay his family's support by rejecting the Anglican church: he
accepted the Oath, was ordained and awarded the chaplaincy of St John's College. Now with a congenial congenial appointment appointment at Oxford and a comfortable comfortable foothold at home in Devon, Cuthbert was to all appearances content. But this mild-mannered priest had an unquiet conscience and it began to trouble trouble him when when he came under under the influence of two young young Fellows of St John's, Gregory Martin (translator of the Douai Bible into English) and the charismatic and eloquent Edmund Campion (a Jesuit, martyred in 1581). News which reached Oxford of the work of Dr. William Allen of Oriel with the Benedictines in Louvain, and his plans for the education of the Catholic priesthood "for the conversion of England", had its effect. Their Catholic sympathies drove both Martin and Campion to give up their academic careers and go abroad to Allen's Seminary which opened at Douai in 1568. Although Cuthbert was moved by the passionate sincerity of his Catholic friends he was not yet ready to follow them. It took him nearly three years of wrestling with his soul before he committed himself. The decision taken, he withdrew to the West Country, where he cut his family ties, visited recusant communities in Cornwall and took ship for France and Douai. He was ordained there three years later and in March 1576 returned to Cornwall to live like a spy with the ever present fear of arrest and shameful death. He was sent to Golden Manor where he was to live with the Tregian family, ostensibly as a steward administering Francis Tregian's estates as a cover for his mission to bring new life to the hard pressed Catholic families of mid Cornwall. That first summer Cuthbert became a familiar figure on Tregian's widespread acres, at Sir John Arundell's house in the Vale of Lanherne and in the countryside around St Columb and west of Bodmin.
Cuthbert Mayne. An 18th century mezzotint by Daniel Fournier. The likeness is said to be from a contemporary portrait at one time hanging in Bodmin Priory. [ Hope Hope Collection, Collection, Ashmolean Museum, Museum, Oxford ]
In November 1576 the enlightened but compliant George Kekewich was replaced as Sheriff of Cornwall by a resentful and frustrated Richard Grenville, a change which, had they but realised it, was aimed straight at Cornish recusants. Grenville was still smarting from being censured censured over his buccaneering buccaneering exploits and from the
preferment preferment of Francis Francis Drake to lead the great expedition to Australasia that Richard himself had originally planned. Here was this man of action, thwarted at every turn, who at last had the means of justifying himself before the Queen and her Council by the comprehensive round-up of Catholics and the destruction of papacy in Cornwall. It was a form of religion he saw as un-English and disloyal especially in the face of the Spanish threat. His first target was the upstart Francis Tregian and the priest he knew he was harbouring; other 'nests of popery' would follow. The new Sheriff and his friends did their work well. No inkling of what was to befall them reached the spiritually-minded recusants who, it must be said, lacked something in worldly prudence. Richard Grenville was in no mood to be denied. The pretext he found to invade Tregian's private estate was a routine search for an escaped prisoner. prisoner. It was the thinnest pretence: pretence: there was nothing to connect connect the prisoner with Tregony, and the sudden arrival at the gates of Golden Manor of the Sheriff, several Justices and the Chancellor of the Bishop of Exeter, with a hundred armed men to search for an escaped convict looked excessive.
The front of the Manor House at Golden near Probus, the home of Francis Tregian, which still has many of its Tudor features including
the original entrance and stone mullioned windows. Here Cuthbert Mayne and his host were arrested by Richard Grenville, the Sheriff of Cornwall
Events moved rapidly. No attempt had been made to conceal Cuthbert Mayne at Golden and he and his host, Francis Tregian, were arrested without resistance. In Launceston at the autumn Assize they and some twenty other recusants were indicted. Not a family among the Catholic gentry in Cornwall had escaped interrogation. Efforts failed to make Cuthbert, isolated in his dark verminous cell for five months, recant his faith. Elizabethan rough justice saw to it that he and the other principals in the dock were found guilty.
Launceston Castle where Sir Richard Grenville's elderly grandfather died at the hands of Catholic rebels during 'The Commotion' of 1549, and where Cuthbert Mayne was imprisoned with other Cornish recusants, and tried and executed in 1577 [Skyscan Balloon Photography]
Thus it was that on St Andrew's Day Cuthbert, without complaint or cry for mercy, had his life cut short with violent and brutal display in Launceston market square. His patron, Francis Tregian, escaped death for what seems a worse punishment: he forfeited all his
property property and spent the next next 26 years in gaol. gaol. On the Queen's Queen's death death he went into exile and died in Lisbon. Sir John Arundell too was imprisoned briefly, and the influence of his family in Cornwall was lost for ever.
The Manor House, Lanherne at St Mawgan, was the 16th century home of Sir John Arundell and the main seat of recusancy in Cornwall, many times visited by Cuthbert Mayne. In 1794 the Arundells gave it as a convent for Carmelite nuns. Currently an enclosed community of Franciscan Sisters are here guarding St Cuthbert's relics. See http://www.friendsoflanherne.org/p/the-siste http://www.fri endsoflanherne.org/p/the-sisters-at-lanhern rs-at-lanherne.html e.html
Cuthbert Mayne had been the key to defeating Richard Grenville's real quarry, 'the odious Tregian' and the other 'treacherous' recusants at whose hands Richard's family had suffered. He had given the Catholic cause in Cornwall its death blow. It bought him a measure of acceptance at Court and the Queen relented sufficiently to give this stubborn headstrong Cornishman a knighthood. In 1591 he became the popular hero whose gallant death in The Revenge fighting alone against 53 Spanish galleons is commemorated in Tennyson's poem:-
“Sink me the ship, Master Gunner – sink her, split her in twain. Fall into the hands of God, not into the hands of Spain! Spain!””
Cuthbert, the first seminary priest to be martyred, was declared a Saint in 1970. After four centuries, despite all Sir Richard Grenville's fame and heroic death, it is the traitor he brought to justice, St Cuthbert, the devout man with a conscience and a belief from which he could not be dissuaded, who is now celebrated in Cornwall and throughout the Christian world.
(Left) The gated entrance to Doomsdale dungeon at the North Gate of Launceston Castle where Cuthbert Mayne was imprisoned. (Right) The single barred window behind which Cuthbert waited for his execution. executio n. Above is the plaque over that window.
“We have just enough religion to make us hate, but not enough to make us love one another” Dean Jonathan Swift 1711, Anglo-Irish poet and satirist
“Sensible men are all of the same religion”. “And pray what is that?” “Sensible men never tell” Benjamin Disraeli (Endymion) 1880
The Forgotten Cavalier The story of a distinguished soldier of the English Civil War 1641-51 and his steadfast loyalty to his King; it so impressed the parishioners of Linton that they recently raised £12,000 for the conservation of a memorial to his family that has stood in their church for nearly four centuries. Motorists barely notice the peaceful little village of Linton as they speed south on the A229 from Maidstone towards the coast. There seems nothing to detain them. It's a good road, the village shops and its school have long since closed; they might admire the smartly quartered village sign, the five neat alms houses and the imposingly large parish church; and then they are away down the escarpment with a magnificent view across the Weald of Kent towards the sea.
The village of Linton’s smartly quartered sign. Right are three of the five almshouses which were endowed by the Mayne family. Behind them stands St Nicholas’ large church c.1280 [Mary Price]
But Linton's glory lies in its long, sometimes turbulent, history, much of it hidden behind the 19th century facade of St Nicholas' church. There among its finest memorials are some to the family of a distinguished soldier, a great champion and benefactor of the royalist cause during the Civil War. Sir John Mayne, whose home was at
Linton, was among the most dedicated and selfless in the support he gave to his King throughout the long struggle against "a " a disloyal and seditious parliament ", ", and against what he saw as the bigotry and cheerless austerity of the puritans. J. Barcock
A modern sketch of Sir John Mayne who was so often wounded in the service of his King. He is shown here bearing bearing the scar from a skirmish near Daventry in 1645 when he was cut from mouth to ear
He was an able and experienced soldier who had fought at Edgehill, led a Brigade at the battle of Marston Moor and been active in the campaigns in the North of England and later in Wales and the West Country between 1642-46. At a time when there was little cheerful cheerful news for the King, it was Sir John's Brigade that raised the sieges at Carlisle and Pontefract " pursuing the enemy 16 miles, killing 500 of them and taking six colours" colours" (a bit of exaggeration in these figures).
Back in Kent on his home ground, it was he who commanded the Royalists in their gallant defence of Maidstone on 1st June 1648 facing General Fairfax's "whole " whole strength". strength". Heavily outnumbered and unsupported by the main Royalist force which was held back until too late, Sir John Mayne's troops put up a fierce defence of the town. After fighting desperately street by street late into the night, they were finally overrun. Parliamentarian Parliamentari an accounts of the battle describe it as "one "one of the most murderous conflicts of the war" and and "scarce any action ... was more bravely fought than this ". At the end, Sir John was badly wounded and counted among the dead but managed to slip away in the darkness, reaching London disguised as a rough countryman "with "with a hare at his back ". ". He was clearly a hardy and resourceful man. In a colourful career, Sir John was frequently wounded. At Pontefract (1644), he was shot through the thigh, and in a skirmish at Daventry (1645) he was cut from mouth to ear. On numerous occasions he was taken prisoner and the stories of his escapes rival those of Houdini. Early in the war, his estate at Linton was plundered by Cromwell's Roundheads. Despite spending all his effort effort and fortune in the Stuart cause, he received no recompense after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660. Sadly, this most most loyal Cavalier died in 1676 in poverty and obscurity and is now almost forgotten by history. history. His demise also meant the end of what had been one of the most powerful powerful and wealthy Kent families of the Middle Ages, Ages, said to have grown rich in the broadcloth industry (See “ Horsmon “ Horsmonden.. den..”). ”). By the time of Sir John's death, the great estates in the county which had been held by his forbears, some of them since the 14th century, were dispersed. Of this once illustrious family there remain today only the memorials and some handsome effigies of Sir John's ancestors. These can be seen not only in Linton church but also at Staplehurst and at Biddenden where the manor houses in which they lived still stand. There also remains evidence of their patronage in the almshouses that the family endowed at Linton and in the school they founded at Biddenden in 1522, now the John Mayne Primary School.
The latter has a 16 th century glass window etched with the Mayne family arms (illustrated near the end of this story).
Spilsill Court at Staplehurst today. This Manor, among many owned by the Maynes of Kent, was held by the family for nearly three centuries
Many were the families that were divided by the Civil War. The final irony of Sir John Mayne's eventful life was that, while he was risking and losing everything in the support of his King, his kinsman, Simon Mayne, was one of the regicide judges who signed that King's death warrant (see “Simon “Simon Mayne and the Dissenters of Aylesbury”). Aylesbury ”). Today in a country where political loyalties have become blurred it is perhaps perhaps more useful to divide people, as in the Civil Civil War, into Cavaliers and Roundheads. They are easily recognised: Cavaliers are inspired by the romantic vision, animated by a generosity of spirit, a reverence for the past, a broad tolerance and a sense of humour. On the other hand, there are the Roundheads, narrow, austere, radical, armoured in theory and girded with self-righteousness. They should remember that their 17th century counterparts who banned the maypole, closed the playhouses, desecrated the churches (Linton among them) and outlawed the Christmas pudding, did not survive. King Charles II came to restore "Merrie England". Sadly in the
process process he could not save the ancient family of Sir John Mayne of Linton from extinction.
“The Cavaliers (Wrong but Wromantic) and the Roundheads (Right but Repulsive)” Sellar and Yeatman (1066 and all that) 1930
Thus, no memorial was ever erected to Sir John. Nevertheless in Linton church there still stands the beautiful alabaster effigies of his grandparents. They have knelt opposite each other in prayer for nearly four hundred years, with the damage caused by the swords of Roundhead soldiers still visible. With the passage of the centuries this fine monument has had to be propped up by girders and unsightly iron ties to prevent its disintegration. Happily, thanks to the benevolent benevolent efforts efforts of those in Linton parish who are interested in their local history, sufficient funds were raised for the conservation of the memorial which is now complete. For generations to come it will stand as a reminder of the loyalty, fighting qualities and wholehearted generosity of Sir John Mayne, that forgotten Cavalier, and of his ancient and devout family who for several centuries held sway across the Weald of Kent.
Conservation work has now saved the Mayne memorial (left) from disintegration. At its heart are these fine effigies of Sir John Mayne’s grandparents, who have been kneeling in prayer in Linton church for nearly four centuries. The damage to the statues visible here (including to her hands and his fingers) was caused by Roundhead swords. The Arms of MAYNE of Linton, Biddenden, Staplehurst, Kent (right) has the motto “Courage et Esperance” [Be brave and hope]
“They plucked communion tables down And broke our painted glasses; glasses; They threw our altars to the ground And tumbled down the crosses. crosses. They set up Cromwell and his heir – The Lord and Lady Claypole – Because they hated hated Common Prayer, Prayer, The organ and the maypole” Thomas Jordan (“How the War Began”) 1664, English poet and playwright
Simon Mayne and the Dissenters of Aylesbury “At the outbreak of the English Civil War in 1641-2, Aylesbury was notorious in the land for its disloyalty. disloyalty.” ” So wrote wrote the historian GF Kerr, referring referring to the town’s disloyalty to the King who seven years later was done to death with the signatures of several prominent Aylesbury Aylesbury citizens on on the death warrant – Simon Mayne Mayne among them. For the first two years of the war, the town was the Parliamentary headquarters facing the Royalists at Oxford and was in the forefront of the conflict. Although Aylesbury itself was always held by Parliament, outlying villages, particularly those on the turnpike road to Oxford such as Stone, Dinton and Haddenham, suffered greatly. Do the citizens of Aylesbury today have any vestiges of the republican spirit that so fired the inhabitants of nearly four centuries ago? Perhaps some are proud of their dissenting traditions of which there are still many reminders to be seen today.
The statue of John Hampden 1594-1643 by Henry Fehr.
A bronze statue of John Hampden, then the foremost of Buckinghamshire’s parliamentarians, stands in Aylesbury Market Square. At Honor End, near his home at Great Hampden, is another memorial which commemorates his refusal to pay Ship Money. It is inscribed:
“ For these lands in Stoke Mandeville Mandeville John Hampden was assessed assessed in twenty shillings ship money levied by command of the King without authority of law, 4 th August 1635. By resisting this claim of the King in legal strife, he upheld the right of the people under the law and became entitled to grateful remembrance.” remembrance. ” It was a tragedy for King Charles that he should alienate such a man whose integrity, tolerance and moderating influence might have prevented prevented the later struggles struggles becoming becoming so brutal and unprincipled. unprincipled. Sadly John Hampden died of his wounds in a skirmish in 1643 at Chalgrove where a large obelisk now stands in his memory. Thereafter the republican cause in Buckinghamshire seems to have been in the hands of lesser lesser men - for the most most part non-combatan non-combatants ts in the war, committee men who, on the Restoration of the Monarchy had not the courage to face up to their accusers and tried to shift the blame for their their actions onto onto others. others. One of the prime movers was the lawyer Simon Mayne of Dinton who together with his near neighbours “Honest Dick” Ingoldsby of Waldridge Manor, the Serjeants of Aston Mullins, Arthur Goodwyn the MP for Aylesbury, and Thomas Scott, were the county’s leading anti-monarchists. anti-monarchist s. Mayne, Ingoldsby and Scott were among the signatories to the King’s death warrant. This parchment, kept today in the library of the House of Lords, added a spurious legality to the beheading beheading of the King at Whitehall in 1649 which had neither the sanction of law nor of public opinion. By any measure it was a mean and barbarous act against one to whom, whatever his faults, they had sworn allegiance. Words, which were written on the back of this infamous document in a 17th century hand, seem appropriate - “ The bloody warrant for murdering the King.” King. ” When the regicides came to be tried for High Treason at the Old Bailey, there was littl littlee consistency of sentence. Thomas Scott was executed, Sir Richard Ingoldsby was given a full pardon claiming that he had always been a royalist at heart but had been led astray by others, while Simon Mayne had gone into hiding and could not be found.
The Lawyer/Judge and his King. Left is Simon Mayne (1612-61) of Dinton, one of the leading Parliamentarians in Buckinghamshire who sat as a judge to procure the execution of the King (right). At Mayne’s trial he blamed others for his predicament. predicament. He was found guilty of High Treason and sent to the Tower of London where he fell sick and died. In Mayne’s portrait, discovered at Teffont in Wiltshire, his head has been painted on another man’s body wearing clothes of a different time!
Mayne finally surrendered himself to the Serjeant-at-Arms, and at his trial lied ineffectually. He pleaded that he was ill at the time; that he had been unhappily drawn into the business at his wife’s instigation; that he too had acted under coercion. “ A gentleman gentleman plucked me down by the coat; saith he, you will rather lose your estate than take away the King’s life? I leave it to you!” you! ” But Simon Mayne, one of the Grand Jury for the county, Burgess for Aylesbury in the Long Parliament and friend of Cromwell, had sat there in the Painted Chamber at Westminster to try the King. He was aptly aptly referred to as as “a great Committee man wherein he licked his fingers; one of his Prince’s Prince’s cruel judges, judges, and a constant rumper to the last ”, ”, and was duly found guilty and sent to the Tower where six months later he fell sick and died. The hidden retreats and secret passages, which have been discovered in the district where Simon Mayne and his Roundhead friends lived,
remind us of the fear in which they went after the Restoration in 1660. Part of an underground passage was recently excavated in woods near Lower Cadsden - possibly a bolt hole used by John Bigg, the hermit, who had once been clerk to both Mayne and “Honest Dick” Ingoldsby. At Mayne’s home, Dinton Hall, 19th century builders found a secret room, soundproofed with tapestries and carpets, up under the gables of the roof with access through hinged stairs and a narrow passage. It must have been been here that he hid before he was brought to trial. His secret room no longer exists but the great Hall still stands - a late medieval red brick mansion that was remodelled by the Tudors. The house, which was home to four generations of Maynes since Simon’s father arrived from Warwickshire in 1604, has a commanding view over the meadows of the ancient Manor towards the Chilterns. It was in this peaceful and privileged place place that Simon Mayne and the other Aylesbury dissenters plotted the downfall of the monarchy. On Mayne’s conviction for high treason, “his estates were forfeited to the Crown”. However, his son, who had obtained various minor government appointments after the Restoration, became an MP in 1688 and was able to recover Dinton manor. It was finally sold by the family in 1727, but the house still contains a few relics of those dangerous and exciting years. Among them is the sword given to Simon Mayne by Cromwell when he stayed there - possibly in 1642 after the battle of Edgehill, although accounts vary.
Dinton Hall, where in 1660 Simon Mayne, the regicide, hid in a secret room under the roof gables to escape trial. He died in the Tower
Cromwell (by Samuel Cooper) and his sword and scabbard given to his friend Simon Mayne when he stayed at Dinton Hall.
The dissentions and conspiracies of the Civil War often cut across family lines. While Simon Mayne was sentencing the King to death, his kinsman, Sir John Mayne of Linton, was fighting and eventually lost everything in that King’s cause (see “The “ The Forgotten Cavalier ”). ”). Even closer to his home, Simon Mayne’s uncle, the poet and soldier Richard Lovelace, was a leading ‘cavalier’ who, in 1642, presented Kent County’s royalist petition to parliament for which he served the first of several terms of imprisonment. During his confinement he wrote poems to various ladies, still quoted today: “Stone “Stone walls do not
a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage…” cage… ” (“To Althea from Prison” 1642) and: I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour more.” more.” (“To Lucaster, Going to the Wars” 1649). I know of only the one portrait of Simon Mayne, the regicide which we show here. At least I am assured that the head is his, but it has been painted onto another man’s body wearing the clothes of a different period. In a way it seems appropriate that his head, like that of his King, has been detached from his own shoulders.
MAYNE of Buckinghamshire
SCOTTISH ADVENTURERS AND THEIR COLONIAL COUSINS
William Mayne (1818-55) of the Bengal Cavalry (aka "Death on the Pale Horse"), who made his name in the defence of Jalalabad during the First Afghan War (1838-42). He was one of many from his Scottish family who served as soldiers, sailors and administrators in British India between 1761 and 1947
‘Death on the Pale Horse’ Some seventy years after the British left India, the courage and eccentricities of a Scottish family that served there across two centuries, are remembered. Just west of the Khyber Pass on the hot dusty road to Kabul in Afghanistan lies the town of Jalalabad. There the great fort was for centuries 'vital ground' in the bloody campaigns and skirmishes of British and Indian troops who protected the North-West Frontier of India. The Pathans [Pashtuns], those warlike Muslim tribesmen of the border region, make a troublesome enemy – as they still do today. They are wild mountain men, prone to blood-feuds; but in a fight they give no quarter, take no prisoners and horribly mutilate the infidels they kill. It was into this inhospitable environment that a young Scotsman, Lieutenant William Mayne, arrived to join Jalalabad garrison during the First Afghan War 170 years ago. William led the Bengal Cavalry at Jalalabad and was himself a fine horseman. He always rode out on a handsome grey charger charger (a white Arab), a distinctive distinctive figure to the enemy watching from the hills. In time they came to know know him only too well. He had a huntsman's eye for country and used his cavalrymen to such good effect that on daily foraging expeditions he was often able to surprise the enemy with the speed and ferocity of his attacks. The Pathans with some respect came to refer to him, roughly translated, as 'Death on the Pale Horse'. Young William Mayne distinguished himself in the bloody but successful defence of his garrison in that war, and he was there to see the grim disaster that ended it. On 13 th January 1842 a lone Scotsman, Dr William Brydon, wounded, exhausted and on a failing horse, was brought into Jalalabad fort by William (picture next page). page). Brydon was one of the few survivors from the garrison at Kabul of 4,500 British and Indian troops and their 12,000 camp followers who had been assured assured of ‘safe passage’ passage’ but were slaughtered slaughtered by the Afghans Afghans or had frozen to death death in the deadly cold of the mountain passes. For many days, anxious eyes continued to scan the horizon from the
walls of Jalalabad, on which by night fires were built and bugles sounded. No other survivor came.
"The Remnants of an Army", the famous painting by Elizabeth Butler showing Jalalabad in 1842 when Lieutenant William Mayne on his 'pale horse' came out to meet the lone survivor from the Kabul garrison, most of whom had been massacred by the Afghans.
Such was William's grisly introduction to warfare on the North-West Frontier. It was the start of a dangerous career during which four major wars and many subsidiary campaigns were fought on the Indian sub-continent. William was in the thick of it and was many times mentioned in despatches. It is said he had his his horse killed under him eleven times, yet he survived in India unmarked for sixteen years until, on his way to the Crimea to organise the Turkish cavalry, he died in Cairo. The inscription inscripti on on his tomb reads: " Fever and dysentery have too surely effected that which the bullets of the enemy were never able to achieve and his gallant spirit is at last laid low". low". William was one of many members of the Mayne family in India whose courage and panache brought them recognition - and sometimes a quick death.
Rupert Mayne Jameson
William Mayne, CB ADC, of the Bengal Cavalry, commanding the Hyderabad Contingent, riding his grey at the height of his fame c.1853
The name Mayne, Main or Maign in Scotland is of great antiquity and thought to be of Norman origin. William's William 's branch of the Maynes had come from Lochwood in Lanarkshire and been settled near Stirling Stirli ng since the 15th century. They were farmers and fighters both. both. Maynes had fought and fallen at Flodden in 1513 and had been in every Scottish battle since. William's William 's great grandfather, also a William, was born near Alloa in 1672. He was a farmer who became the progenitor of a large family. By his three wives he had no less than 22 children and it is said that in his house the cradle rocked for fifty years! As if this were not fortune enough for him, William the elder became through his bachelor brother, Edward, the beneficiary of a thriving family business that had been established by an uncle in Lisbon and at Sanlucar near Cadiz in Spain. This allowed allowed William in his late fifties to purchase the great estates of Powis and Logie, north-east of Stirling in Scotland, and move his still growing family there from their home at nearby Cambus. His new lands lay in a favoured
position on the southern southern slopes of the Ochil Hills overlooking overlooking the River Forth and were described as " set amid well-watered well-watered fields, comfortable and well-stored farmsteads and cottages". cottages ". A fortunate man indeed was William the elder, founder of a Mayne dynasty.
Powis House, Stirling, was built in 1746/47 by the son of the great progenitor and founder of a large Mayne family, William Mayne, who by his three wives had 22 children. See http://www.powishouse.co.uk/
By his second marriage he had two sons upon whom fate also smiled. The younger, Robert, was admitted as an Honorary Burgess of the Royal Burgh of Stirling in 1744 when he was sixteen (always a popular occasion for the Magistrates Magistrates who enjoyed a night out at the new Burgesses' expense). Despite this reminder of their Scottish roots, Robert and his elder brother William both left Scotland. William, who joined the family business in Portugal, was one of very few to escape when the whole of Lisbon was reduced to ruins in the earthquake of 1755. Both he and Robert succeeded in marrying wealthy heiresses and went into London politics. For a Member of Parliament in London, these were momentous years during which occurred that little local difficulty with the American colonies, which led to their loss. William does not not seem to have suffered from this debacle as he was elevated to the House of Lords as Baron Newhaven. On the other hand, Robert’s wealthy wife died
and he then married Sarah Otway, nearly thirty years his junior. When Sarah died bearing their fourth son when she was still only 23, Robert was inconsolable inconsolabl e and and went into a decline. To this day their descendants continue to bear the middle name 'Otway' after her. Robert and Sarah had 28 grandchildren and, in the tradition of his prolific father, father, the family has continued to multiply (See also “ A Portrait of Sarah” Sarah” where there are portraits of William, his brother Robert, and Robert’s wife, Sarah) Like William Mayne at Jalalabad, many of those grandchildren went out to serve in India. There, over nearly two centuries, Mayne son followed father, and nephew followed uncle in the service of the Empire. Rupert Mayne, Robert's 3xgreat grandson, records that " the Maynes Maynes flocked into India from 1761 onwards, onwards, leaving two graves graves in Darjeeling, two in Allahabad, Allahabad, one in Saharastra, Saharastra, one in Meerut, one in Bangalore, one in Akola and another in Lucknow". Lucknow ". The grave at Lucknow is of Robert's grandson, young Augustus Otway Mayne of the Bengal Horse Artillery. He was was killed at the Relief of Lucknow in 1857, and Lieut Frederick Roberts (later Lord Roberts of Kandahar), on finding his body, "took " took his dear friend Mayne out at early dawn and dug his grave and buried buried him in his blue frock-coat and long boots, and, as they laid him there, leant down and fixed his eyeglass into his eye as he always wore it in the heat of the fray. His grave now lies on the seventh fairway at Lucknow Golf Golf Course, Course, a cause of great frustration to golfers golfers". ".
Augustus Mayne (1829-57) and his grave on Lucknow golf course, 2005
The eldest of his brothers, Major Henry Mayne of the Madras Cavalry, at the height of the Indian Mutiny raised and led a regiment of irregular but loyal cavalrymen against the mutineers. The regiment still exists as a tank unit in the modern Indian Army named the Central India Horse, but is also still referred to as "Mayne's Horse". Henry now lies in a grave near his brother Francis at Allahabad. But there is also a memorial to him at Westminster Abbey - appropriately it's in a cloister called Fighting Green.
Henry Mayne (1819-61). Left: as an Ensign in the Madras Cavalry on arrival in India. Right: as an irregular during the Indian Mutiny during which he raised r aised and led “Mayne’s Horse”
The wife and five young children of Henry's brother Frederic, a chaplain at Simla, were only saved from death at the hands of the mutineers by hiding for many hours in her husband's church. She was fortunate. A contemporary description of the aftermath of the first massacre at Meerut reads, "What " What a spectacle of terror met the eye almost simultaneously with the return of day. The lifeless lifel ess and mutilated corpses of men, women and children were to be seen, some of them so frightfully disfigured and so shamefully dishonoured in death that the very recollection of such a sight chills the blood ". blood ".
Left: Mosley Mayne (1845-1910), Capt 3rd Bombay Cavalry, a survivor of Maiwand. Right: his grandson Rupert Mayne (1910-2001) as an Intelligence Officer in India during World War II
Rupert Mayne, of the present generation, was in India when the British left in 1947, almost two hundred years since the first member of his family arrived there. Rupert tells of his grandfather, Mosley Mayne, who was a Captain in the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry. In July 1880 they were part of a British/Indian force of about 2,700 men on the North-West Frontier. They found themselves near Maiwand, an Afghan village on a desiccated dusty open plain with shade temperatures approaching 120 degrees. Facing them with evil intent was a vastly superior force of 10,000 Afghan regulars and 15,000 tribesmen. A gallant effort was made to disengage and withdraw before before being enveloped enveloped by this army, army, but it was only partially partially successful and the British/Indian losses were great. The battle is examined in detail in “ My God – Maiwand! Maiwand!”. ”. Mosley survived the battle of Maiwand but on behalf of his fallen comrades he published an anonymous article criticising the handling of the whole operation. It was traced to him and he was forced to leave his regiment - a sad end to a career, but part of the pattern of achievement and eccentricity with which the Maynes and many families like them have enlivened the history of the British in India.
"Saving the Guns" – by RC Woodville. A scene from the battle of Maiwand 1880, Afghanistan, which is described in the last two chapters
On Rupert's last visit to India he met a pensioner from Mayne's Horse, a very old man who proceeded to bury his white beard on Rupert's chest and sobbed. Eventually the old man recovered and pulled up his trousers to show a very badly wounded wounded knee. He explained that in a charge in Mesopotamia he had been hit by a Turkish bullet, had fallen off his horse and that Rupert's uncle, Ashton Mayne, had dismounted and carried him off the field. As memories begin to fade and the memorials to such men crumble, the traditions of service and loyalty between British and Indian soldiers built up over two centuries deserve deservess to be remembere remembered. d.
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“First comes one Englishman, as a traveller or for shikar [hunting]; [hunting]; then come two and make a map; then comes an army and takes the country. Therefore it is better to kill the first Englishman” Pashtun (Pathan) Proverb from the Tribal Areas of the North-West Frontier of India with Afghanistan
“There is probably no sign sign [of approaching Pathans] until the burst of fire, and then the swift rush with knives, the stripping of the dead, and the unhurried mutilation of the infidels” Andrew Skeen (Tribal Fighting on the North-West Frontier) 1932
“The Pashtun is never at peace, except when he is at war” Pashtun (Pathan) Proverb
Arms of MAYNE of Powis
“Virtuti Fortuna Comes”
Philip Mould
Sarah Mayne née Otway (1756-80). Portrait painted c.1775 by Sir Joshua Reynolds and restored by ‘Historical Portraits’. It had been hidden away for two centuries, having been mistaken for a ‘sketch’ in the deceased artist’s studio sale, sold for £31 and suffered over-painting. It was recently on sale for £250,000 and went to a buyer in Maryland.
A Portrait of Sarah Sarah Mayne and her husband, despite family tragedy, founded a Scottish dynasty that made its mark on the history of the British in India across across two centuries. centuries. Sarah Mayne sat for this fine portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds soon after her marriage in 1775. The picture, which until recently has remained hidden beneath layers of Victorian over-paint, now springs out at us with all the freshness of a butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. Philip Mould, the founder of ‘Historical Portraits’, Portraits ’, currently a presenter on BBC TV’s Antiques Antiques Road Show Show, and author of “Sleuth: the amazing quest for lost art treasures ” (2009), describes it as “one of the most spontaneous and successful of Reynolds’ portrayals of society glamour”. Yet behind the fine features, the eager thrust of the head and the firm expectant expression of this young girl of nearly twenty, there is a poignancy born of the tragedy that that was soon to overwhelm overwhelm her and and her family. family. The Otways are an old Kent family: Sarah was the second of eight Otway sisters living with their mother on Sevenoaks Common at Ash Grove (today the Ash Grove estate is known as West Heath, the name of the school that Lady Diana Spencer attended. It was bought in 1998 by Mohamed Fayed as a memorial to Diana and his son and is now a school for children with behavioural problems). problems) . Sarah Otway’s father had been dead a year and she was just 19 when she married Robert Mayne of Powis and Logie in Clackmannanshire, Scotland. Robert, a widower nearly nearly thirty years her senior, came from a large family whose land “lay in a favoured position on the southern slopes of the Ochil Hills overlooking the River Forth”. Forth”. An honorary Burgess of Stirling, he had nevertheless left home to join his elder brother William in London where they opened a banking partnership. partnership. William, who had spent his early years with the family business in Lisbon, soon found his feet in the City, becoming a director of one of only two insurance companies that were competing successfully with private firms operating out of Lloyd’s coffee house.
(Right) Robert Mayne MP (1728-82), banker of Jermyn Street, who married Sarah Otway in 1775. He was a friend of Sir Joshua Reynolds who painted the portrait of his wife Sarah - for which he never paid. Robert went bankrupt seven years later. (Left) William Mayne PC MP Baron Newhaven (1725-94), the elder brother of Robert. He was in parliament during the momentous years when the American colonies were lost. This portrait is believed to be by Allan Ramsay.
Their business continued to flourish and by 1775, the year of Robert’s marriage to Sarah, the brothers were both in parliament and living handsomely on two neighbouring estates at Gatton in Surrey. Gatton was conveniently a ‘Rotten Borough’ represented by two MPs of which Robert was one! A year later William, for his loyalty to Lord North’s precarious administration, was raised to the peerage as Baron Newhaven, and the fortunes of the Scottish family that Sarah had joined looked to be riding high. Sarah gave birth to four boys in the next five years; but sadly she died as a result of the last confinement and poor Robert was left desolated to mourn mourn his young wife and comfort comfort his sons. Further misfortune was to follow two years later when, despite William having obtained lucrative government contracts to victual British troops fighting in America, the family bank run by Robert went bankrupt. bankrupt. Robert, still grieving for Sarah and now faced faced with the
anger of his many influential creditors, among whom was a hostile and revengeful Bishop, committed suicide. Behind him he left four little orphaned boys aged two, three, four and six, together with the handsome portrait of Sarah for which he had been unable to pay his friend Joshua Reynolds. His sons were taken t aken in and brought up by Sarah’s mother and those of Sarah’s seven sisters still at home. As for the picture, it remained in the artist’s artist’s possession possession until his death ten years later, after which it went into his studio sale described as a “sketch” and was bought for £31. Early in the next century the sketch was, so to speak, “completed” by some heavy over-painting covering two thirds of the picture surface. It has been rescued rescued by the removal of this embellishment embellishment during conservation, revealing this pristinely preserved study, which was valued by Philip Mould at £250,000.
Ash Grove and its mansion (now known as West Heath) on Sevenoaks Common, as it was in the late 18th century when the four orphaned Mayne boys were taken in by their Otway grandmother
Despite the inauspicious start, Sarah’s four sons had successful careers. The eldest fought in the Peninsular Peninsul ar War and and at Waterloo and became a General, and of his brothers, one was a Rector for 34 years and the other two were sailors, the youngest becoming a Captain in the Maritime Service of the East India Company.
The two elder sons of Sarah: (Left) General William Mayne 1776-1843 (aka “Waterloo Bill”), and (Right) Rev. Robert Mayne MA 1778-1841, Rector of Limpsfield, Limpsfield, Surrey.
Between them, they fathered twenty-eight children, most of whom forsook the comforts of home to flock to India to be soldiers, sailors or administrators of the Raj. There for nearly two centuries, Mayne son followed father, and the stories of their courage, achievements and sacrifice have greatly enlivened the history of the British in India. (Some of the exploits of this family in India are recorded in the article “Death on the Pale Horse”) The young Sarah Mayne looking down from her portrait would be proud of the achievements achievements of the large Scottish dynasty dynasty that she founded. Restored to her original beauty by ‘Historical Portraits’, she had long been the centrepiece of their collection when she found an American admirer and has a new home in Maryland.
The House that Byrd Built
Colonel William Byrd II (1674-1744) Raised and educated in Essex by his uncle, Rev. Daniel Horsmanden, the Rector of Purleigh, and his grandfather Colonel Warham Horsmanden. William went to Virginia in 1705 where he became President of the Colonial Council and founded the City of Richmond. In 1736 he completed the building of a fine house on his Westover estate beside the James River. Traveller, scholar, writer, wit and genial host, he had influence on both sides of the Atlantic. In this old portrait is “Golden Rose”, the ship on which he so frequently crossed the North Atlantic. This painting c.1704 is attributed to Hans Hyssing and is in the collection of the Virginia Historical Society to whom the Byrd family donated it in 1973.
"The broad lawn that rolls down to the waters edge at Westover is shaded by huge trees t rees - the yew, planted by George Washington, Washington, the elms and sycamores, and the line of tulip poplars. poplars. They stand there before this great Georgian mansion which has withstood all the ravages caused by fire and wars ever since William Byrd II built it beside the James River 270 years ago". After William Penn in Pennsylvania came William Byrd in Virginia. Colonel William Byrd II, to give him his full title, was born on his father’s plantation in Virginia but brought up in Essex and remained in England for most of his early life [his cousin, Sarah Otway Mayne, is the subject of “ A Portrait of Sarah”]. Sarah”]. Aged thirty when his father died in 1704, William returned to Virginia to manage the family’s 26,000 acre estate and he later built a fine house there, which stands today. He became President of the Colonial Council (and thus honorary ‘Colonel’), on which he sat as a member for 35 years. In 1733 he established two towns, Richmond on the James River - now the capital - and Petersburg on the Appomattuck. He contributed greatly to the founding of the modern State of Virginia whose southern boundary he personally established. William was hardy and energetic and, like most Virginians of his time, often in the saddle. A great traveller, he was no ordinary pioneer: pioneer: this was a man of culture, wide accomplishments accomplishments and considerable charm, a genial host who had powerful friends on both sides of the Atlantic. He crossed crossed that ocean ocean ten times and "Golden Rose", the ship in which he often sailed, is in the background to Hans Hyssing's portrait of him. While William was growing up in Essex he lived with his uncle, Daniel Horsmanden, the Rector of Purleigh near Chelmsford where he met his maternal grandfather, the formidable Warham Horsmanden, who for twenty years had been a member of the ruling council in Virginia. William attended Felsted Grammar Grammar School near Braintree for nine years when Christopher Glasscock was its headmaster and then studied law at the Middle Temple in London.
He was called to the Bar in 1695, served a short apprenticeship in Holland and visited the Court of Louis XIV. In London, Willi William am was becoming known as a satirical writer and wit, and in 1696, through the good offices of his mentor Sir Robert Southwell, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. His influence grew and he was appointed Virginia's colonial agent in London and was thus at the heart of the conflict between Crown and Colony that was eventually to spark into into Revolution. No man had a better preparation for representing the old world in the new and vice versa.
Westover today from the south-east – on the James River side
The story of the great house that William Byrd built on his Westover estate reflects the early history not only of the Byrd family but also of the State of Virginia. The house was completed in about 1736 - a grand brick mansion admirably situated on the north bank of the James River 35 miles downstream from Richmond. Today it is said to be "one of the best examples of Georgian architecture in America". William spared no expense in materials and workmanship, importing many items from Europe and adding his own personal
embellishments. embellishm ents. At each approach to the property are elegant wrought-iron gates incorporating the Byrd family Arms. The main gates have WB WB woven into their classical design, while large eagles of lead stand on the stone columns on which they swing. swing. Beneath the house is a labyrinth of cellars where the claret and Madeira were stored. There are two secret rooms reached through a dry well, and a subterranean passage leading to the river - a reminder of the danger that once existed of attack by Indians and other raiders.
Westover main gates (left) and one of the elegant side gates
William's nickname was the Black Swan, Swan, which was perhaps an allusion to birds that he introduced at Westover. He was a lover of books and gathered gathered together in his new home one of the largest libraries in the colonies - over 3600 volumes - of which he was inordinately inordinatel y proud. It contained Bibles in Dutch, Hebrew, Greek and Latin all of which he could could read - a mark of his scholarship. The east wing in which it was housed was burnt down during the American Civil War but subsequently rebuilt. He also brought over from England many portraits of his family, his friends and men who he admired. One portrait by Charles Bridges was of the sad romantic figure of Evelyn Byrd, William's eldest child by his first wife, Lucy Parke. In England, Evelyn was much admired for her beauty and gentle disposition. disposition . When she was presented at Court, King George I remarked, "I have heard much of Virginia, but no one told me of its beautiful Byrds!" While there, Evelyn formed an attachment attachment to a Catholic gentleman - Charles Mordaunt. The Byrds were ardent
Protestants and her father broke off the match and brought her home to Westover. There the wistful Evelyn died a few years later still pining for her lost love. It is said that "the tap, tap of Evelyn's highheeled slippers continues to be heard in the corridors of the home from which, long ago, she faded broken-hearted to the grave".
Evelyn Byrd (1707-37), daughter of William Wi lliam Byrd II, who ‘died of unrequited love’
William was a hardy traveller. He led the surveyors surveyors who first traversed the Great Dismal Swamp while establishing the boundary line, 240 miles long, with North Carolina; and rode through the forests to Germanna to confront Governor Alexander Spotswood on behalf of the planters of the colony. He left witty satirical satirical accounts accounts of these and other expeditions - from which it seems he acquired a healthy respect for snakes and a distaste of fresh venison and bear. His manuscripts are among the few early colonial literary works in existence. Best known is his 'History of the Dividing Line' (1728). Other manuscripts such as 'A Progress to the Mines' (1732) and 'A Journey Journey to the Land of Eden' (1733) were not published until 1841, nearly a century after his death, which is an indication of their enduring quality. His cheerful entertaining entertaini ng discourse on Virginian
life can be read in his diaries and copious correspondence much of which has survived. Among these papers are three less literary but more revealing "secret" diaries written in shorthand and discovered only seventy years ago. Together they cover nine years in the period 1709-41 and in America have been described as "one of the most complete, entertaining and informative cultural documents about 18th century life in the Old and New Worlds that we have in the English language". The middle diary has even been compared with Pepys' famous journal.
Colonel Daniel Parke, 1669-1710, the profligate father-in-law of William Byrd II. Parke had been ADC to the Duke of Marlborough and brought the news of victory at Blenheim to Queen Anne
William's generous spirit caused him considerable distress in the last twenty years of his life. On the death of his father-in-law Colonel Daniel Parke, then Governor of the Leeward Islands, during a riot there (the result it is said of his own maladministration), William rashly stepped in to guarantee his debts. The amount proved to have been seriously underestimated underestimated and became a persistent persistent burden. William had to dispose of much of his own land, including in 1737 his Richmond property, and was almost forced to sell Westover itself and its fine tobacco plantation on which he had lavished so much
attention. attentio n. In the end the debt prevented him returning to England to spend his declining years among his friends as he had wanted. wanted. It was only the year before his death at the age of seventy that William finally succeeded in satisfying his father-in-law’s creditors in London. William was buried in the garden at Westover and succeeded by his elder son, William Byrd III (1728-77) who became a soldier - an appropriate profession for those troubled times. William’s three sons were all educated in England with the Otways of Ashgrove in Kent – more of them in “ A Portrait Portrait of Sarah”. Sarah”. A fire in 1749 damaged parts of Westover, but it was during the American Revolution, in which William Byrd III’s sympathies lay with George III, that it suffered most. Twice it was ravaged by that renegade Benedict Arnold, and once in 1781 by Cornwallis on his way to defeat at Yorktown. War returned again a century later when Westover was used as a headquarters during the American Civil War by General Pope and other Federal officers, and subsequently by McClellan on his retreat from Richmond. But by then the Byrds had lost much of their wealth and prestige, the estate passing out of the hands of the family who sold it in 1814. It was not until the 20th century that this old Virginian family again came to notice. Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888-1957) was a US naval pilot with an interest interest in polar polar exploration. exploration. In 1926 he became became the first first man to fly over the North Pole – this was three days before the Norwegian, Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, Amundsen, reached reached it in an airship. airship. Richard became a national hero and media celebrity, celebrity, was honoured honoured with a New York ticker-tape ticker-tape parade, parade, medals from President Coolidge, Coolidge, and the Navy made him a Rear Admiral. In 1986 the diary of the flight at Ohio State University was examined and it showed that the scallywag never reached the Pole – he had turned back 150 miles short.
Richard Evelyn Byrd (1888-1957) and the triple-engined Fokker F.VII in which he claimed to have reached the North Pole on 10 May 1926
Westover today is still privately owned although the grounds are open to the public. Thus, visitors can now enjoy something of the beauty of this famous old house with its i ts riverside setting, and of the history of nearly three centuries that have passed since the Black Swan with Swan with all his energy and talent flew in from England.
THE ENGLISHMEN: A DECEITFUL LAWYER, INTREPID SEA DOGS, AN ARTIST AND HIDDEN HISTORY "There is nothing so bad or so good that you will not find Englishmen doing it; but you will never find an Englishman Englishman in the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on patriotic principles; principles; he robs you on business principles; principles; he enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly principles; principles; he supports his King on loyal principles, principles, and cuts off his King's head on republican principles" George Bernard Shaw 1856-1950, Irish playwright ##########
A Mild Deception "Never believe any man's account of his own family" - AC Fox-Davies (1871-1928), barrister and genealogist A handsome young Englishman was John Thomas Mayne - born more than two centuries ago. He was both rich and clever. Trained as a barrister at the Inner Temple, he was later elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. The descendant of a well-founded West Co Country untry family, he could trace seven generations of them back to a successful brewer brewer and Freeman Freeman of the City of Exeter in the 16th century. He was heir to a large estate beside the beautiful river Nadder, a peaceful peaceful part of Wiltshire where the family had moved 130 years before. before. His fine manor house was as full of portraits portraits of his ancestors as the Parish church was of monuments confirming their high standing in the society of their day.
John Thomas Mayne 1792-1843 of Teffont Manor, Wiltshire. He was a lawyer and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, yet he coveted and laid claim to a pedigree of greater antiquity than his own. In the process he assembled papers and spurious portraits in a vain attempt to deceive. The recent discovery of this scallywag’s obsession became an embarrassment to his descendants, while his ‘embellishments’ have been copied, and over the years have misled numerous researchers.
So John Thomas with all his advantages and with offspring, a young son and three daughters to inherit his wealth, was for some reason dissatisfied with his station in life. He went to great trouble to concoct a spurious family descent. I came across it in Burke's "History of the Landed Gentry 1838", well known to genealogy beginners, beginners, when I was researching researching one of the great families of the Middle Ages - the Maynes of Kent who died out as a result of the Civil War. John Thomas claimed a common origin with them back in the 12th century and thus was able to declare that his was the only surviving branch of the Maynes to be descended from “ the ancient barons who inherited the province of Maine in Normandy ”... whose descendant “accompanied descendant “accompanied William the Conqueror into England …” …” I read his sonorous phrases some years ago when I was naïve enough to think that printed sources from the 19 th century could be relied upon. Subsequently I discovered that many of the lineage statements in Burke's volumes are moonshine - sometimes embellished by John Burke himself who on this occasion as in the past will probably have colluded with John Thomas for money. But they had gone much further, claiming for instance that the family had " frequently distinguished themselves in the wars of York and Lancaster ". Lancaster ". That period, now five centuries ago, is surprisingly well documented documented but we found nowhere any reference to the Maynes. We began to search further. At the top of his detailed pedigree John Thomas had added two generations which it quickly became clear clear did not belong there. He included a couple of famous West Country clerics - clearly to impress. It was unfortunate for his credibilit credibility y that one of them, Cuthbert Mayne who was martyred in 1577, was made a saint by the Catholic Church in 1970 (see the first story in this book). In the process process St Cuthbert's Cuthbert's true family background background was revealed. revealed. Only a cursory look was necessary to show that the other priest, Jasper Mayne, one of the great Protestant preachers of the 17th century and born sixty years years after Cuthbert, Cuthbert, could not possibly possibly be his his nephew and and that neither belong among John Thomas Mayne's ancestors. We begin to touch firm ground in his pedigree pedigree only at the end of these two bogus generations when we reach Richard Mayne, born 1594,
the son of an Exeter brewer, who was John Thomas’ 4xgreat grandfather.
Teffont Manor House, the home of the Mayne family since they moved from Exeter in 1679 (now converted into flats)
A surprising aspect of this fairly mild case of pedigree manufacture is the lengths to which John Thomas went to provide himself with a longer and more glittering descent. We know from from his diaries that in 1818 and 1819 he spent many days copying out the Mayne wills and pedigrees pedigrees which he found at Doctor's Doctor's Commons [the College of Advocates Advocates & Doctors of Law in London that existed for three centuries until 1867]. The knowledge he gained of the Kent family in particular is reflected in the lineage statement published by Burke, and in some of the names included in the generations he invented. For five years before these visits, he had been adding to the portraits of his own ancestors those of unrelated Mayne families. One of these portraits was of the regicide, Simon Mayne of Dinton in Buckinghamshire, who does not appear in John Thomas’ pedigree (see “Simon “Simon Mayne...”). Mayne...”). Another is a fine Elizabethan portrait of a Walter de Mayne, painted in 1571 aged 29, who almost certainly came from the Kent family where the name Walter predominates. predominates. In
this portrait Walter is given a classical title, Legionis Legionis Tribunus, Tribunus, suggesting that he held a military rank or some office of state. The National Portrait Gallery believe believe the picture (below) is probably of Walter Mayne of Staplehurst, Kent who in 1570/71 was appointed Sheriff of that county. The sitter is certainly not the ‘Walter’ that John Thomas added to his pedigree, although they somehow share the same year of birth!
‘Walter de Mayne 1542-76 of Kent’, bought by John Thomas in Exeter in 1813
John Thomas' little deceptions are nothing by comparison with some that have been practised. I am told that the forging of entries entries in parish registers registers or of complete complete wills, and even the carving of false tombstones continue to this day. Some well known and respected genealogists and antiquaries of the past like TC Banks, Sir Edward Dering, Sir Egerton Brydges and the Marquis of Ruvigny all falsified their own pedigrees while while being critical of those of others. Self deception has always been been a strong element in genealogy. The damage from John Thomas' mild obsession is small, although inevitably some of his "embellishments" were copied into other books and documents. documents. The Mayne pedigree pedigree in Sir Richard Richard Colt Hoare's " History of Wiltshire Wiltshire"" was one that suffered in this way.
To go to such lengths to reinforce a minor deception suggests that John Thomas had some strong motive. I believe he first became aware of the ancient Maynes of Kent and of their great possessions at a time when he was trying to substantiate his own family's title to the Wiltshire estate. Could it have been just the desire to emulate this bygone family family that drove him to pretend pretend a common common heritage? heritage?
(Left) Sarah Mayne, wife of John Thomas, with their children in 1825. John (on the left) was their only son. (Right) Her husband’s epitaph.
The final irony is that, despite all his efforts to prove a past pedigree of greater antiquity and distinction than his own, it was he himself who became the last Mayne of the line. His only son, John Augustus, died unmarried in 1841 when just 21 years old - two years before his grieving father. But John Thomas’ efforts resulted in his accumulation of some magnificent family portraits. On my visit I counted twelve which all purported to be of his descent. These are now in the possession of descendants of his youngest daughter. Can they, I wonder, be quite sure of the provenance of these family pictures acquired acquired by this this scallywag of an ancestor? ancestor?
John Thomas Mayne’s family shield and crest. The coronet was part of his own embellishment!
HMS Andromache, at anchor off Crookhaven 1823, by Thomas Luny
Graduates of the Sea Edward Pellew, one of Nelson's remarkable contemporaries "We have...to boast of splendid instances of men who went to sea at the age of twelve and thirteen, who by self-education rendered themselves ornaments to our profession, and worthy of bearing comparison with the most distinguished statesmen and diplomats of the age; namely, Lord St Vincent, Lord Nelson, Lord Collingwood, Lord Exmouth, Sir Richard Keats, Sir George Cockburn - and many others” - Sir T Byam Martin . I found this quotation when I was reading about the life of Edward Pellew - who later became Viscount Exmouth and Admiral of the Red. How was it that such men, brought up for for the most part at sea and deprived of further schooling and of a normal home life, were
later able to stand comparison comparison with the greatest greatest in the land? land? I can see that seamanship, courage and strength of character are developed in such a hard school, but whence comes the intellectual capacity, the wider knowledge and the imagination, even the brilliance of a Pellew or a Nelson? Old sea dogs are not generally known known for their diplomatic skills - associated more with drawing rooms than Captains' cabins. Yet one cannot but admire the subtlety with which Pellew in 1816 first negotiated and, with judicious use of force from a confined area of sea, achieved the safe release of 3000 Christian slaves at Algiers and the abolition of slavery along the North African coast (See Note 1 at the end of this story).
Captain Sir Edward Pellew (1757-1833). Thomas Lawrence's portrait, circa 1799
I looked for some common thread to explain the rare distinctions achieved by the great great Sea Captains of that day. Few of them had a privileged background. background. Edward Pellew, who came from from a poor but
well-connected Cornish seafaring family, may have started with fewer advantages than Nelson but was certainly more fortunate than Collingwood. Colli ngwood. Pellew’s father, a Packet Captain, died when he was only eight and the young boy was brought up in Penzance by his grandmother. Such funds as the family possessed were invested in his eldest brother's medical training. Pellew attended attended school at Penzance and later at Truro where he can have learnt little beyond reading and writing. In 1770, aged 13, 13, he went to sea - the same year as Nelson who was was a few months younger. This was the time of the seizure of the Falklands by Spaniards when Pellew joined the frigate Juno on passage to the islands under Captain Stott. Stott had been boatswain with "Old Dreadnought", Dreadnought", the great Admiral Edward Boscawen, who had "the reputation of always going bald-headed at the enemy" - no diplomat he!
"Old Dreadnought": Admiral Edward Boscawen (1711-61), another Cornishman. Portrait by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Physically Pellew was a strong and lively boy with unbounded selfconfidence. He was an excellent swimmer and repeatedly saved seamen who fell overboard - on one occasion diving from the
foreyard of his frigate. Several times in his his career during "a storm or battle when the seamen quailed quailed before before some dangerous dangerous piece piece of work, work, he either did it himself or set an example which the men felt bound to follow". The rescue of passengers from the ill-fated Dutton Dutton in a winter storm in 1796 was one such occasion and typical of the man (see Note 2 at the end of this story). After four years under Stott, Pellew transferred to the Blonde as midshipman under Captain Philemon Pownoll, who also had been trained and brought forward by Boscawen. In 1775 they sailed to the relief of Quebec and supported subsequent operations on the American Lakes and at Saratoga (the battle in which Pellew's youngest brother John, just 17, was killed). Pellew distinguished himself in these actions which earned him promotion to Lieutenant. Four years later he was again serving under Pownoll, this time in Apollo, Apollo, when his Captain was killed beside him during a sharp action with a large French privateer, the Stanislaus, Stanislaus, off Ostend. The relationship relationshi p between Pownoll Pownoll and Pellew had been a close one. With mutual respect had grown affection and when Pellew's eldest son was born six years later he named him after his much revered Captain and mentor. Edward Osler in 1835 remarked on "how far the influence of a great commander may extend". "St Vincent and Pownoll who were brought up under Boscawen, Boscawen, and received received their Lieutenant's Lieutenant's commission from him, contributed materially to form a Nelson or an Exmouth; each the founder of a school of officers, whose model is the character of their chief, and their example his successes". I am not sure that all the distinguished sailors mentioned by Byam Martin can be said to have well-developed diplomatic skills. If they did they had probably not come under the influence of the Boscawen approach! The Royal Navy's attitude to the diplomatic function is summed up in a picture from the Great War - "Waiting for Diplomacy".
"Waiting for Diplomacy". Small Arms men on HMS Agincourt at at Gallipoli (Courtesy of the Victoria Arms, Arms, Salcombe, Devon).
Several became Members of Parliament, but in that warlike age they were given little litt le time for for politics. Pellew was was elected MP for Barnstaple in 1802 following the short-lived peace of Amiens, but he returned to sea soon after. His brief Parliamentary career is remembered for the speech he made two years later supporting Lord St Vincent's naval policy. This was not taken in good part by his political ally, Mr Pitt, whose whose censure motion was defeated as a result of Pellew's intervention. interventi on. There were repercussions. Pellew, who left the following month to take up his appointment as C-in-C in the East Indies, found his command had been halved in size by "the new admiralty". admiralty" . He finally obtained redress but did not return home from the Far East station for nearly five years during which Trafalgar was fought and won. Indeed Edward's younger brother, Israel, was Captain of the Conqueror (74 guns) at the battle, the fourth ship in the weather line, and had captured the Bucentau the Bucentaure re (80 (80 guns) and with it Admiral Villeneuve, commander of the French fleet.
Unlike Nelson, Edward Pellew survived to enjoy "a long but indignant old age". His crowning success success at Algiers, referred to earlier, had come when he was nearly sixty at the end of a sparkling naval career career spanning 46 years. For almost three quarters quarters of that time the country was at war and Pellew himself in action at sea - a process process of education education under fire rather than t han "self-education" "self-education".. In this hard school preferment came only to those of true quality who survived. Among the very few naval commanders that approach Nelson's pinnacle, pinnacle, Edward Edward Pellew is surely surely numbered. numbered. He died aged 76 in 1833 - Viscount Exmouth, Vice-Admiral of The United Kingdom, heaped with the honours of his own and many other countries who had been allies in the 22 year long struggle against the French. Pellew had asked "to be buried buried in a clean hammock in the pure element of salt water" - but was denied this and lies instead at Christow, Christow, his Devon Devon home. It is almost the only thing in his long and courageous life that he failed to achieve.
The Arms of Edward Pellew, 1st Viscount Exmouth. On the crest is the wreck of the Dutton whose passengers and crew he saved in 1796, while on the shield is a picture of the bombardment of Algiers of 1816 resulting in the release of 3000 Christian slaves, one of whom is shown as a supporter
NOTE 1. Extracts from a letter written by Midshipman William Mills after the Algiers battle. Algiers Bay, 29th August 1816 My dear Father, The battle is fought, and Britain's flag is victorious ... On the 27th being off this Port, Lord Exmouth sent in a flag of truce which was rejected and and not allowed to land. He, without waiting till his boat could return, immediately bore up, hung out the signal for battle and slapped right into the mole, and anchored anchored 50 yards only from their batteries, followed closely by the Superb Superb and Leander . This was at at 2.30. The enemy opened a very heavy and galling fire from over 300 guns which was was returned in most superior style. At 3 pm most of the fleet had taken up their stations under under the walls as close as we could lay without damaging each other. The fire fire was tremendous and kept up with as much spirit as imagination even can paint. About About 5.40 most of their Frigates Frigates were on fire and their walls came tumbling down about their ears. ears. Rockets flying and and setting fire to all they came across, bombs playing, ships burning and blowing up and drifting on to their own town, so that, on the whole, had hell broke loose it could hardly have been worse ...We fought fought for eight and a half hours and at 11.20 pm hauled out of gunshot into the Bay after having destroyed their whole Navy except one Brig, and knocked down all all their walls that our shot could reach. reach. To tell the the truth I was never more glad of a thing in my life when it was all over for I was ready to drop with fatigue..... We have suffered very severely in the Fleet, the returns of killed and wounded amount to upwards of 1000. That of the Algerines is supposed to be between 2000 and 3000, which I think looking at their shattered town today is a moderate calculation. Captain Ekins is slightly slightly wounded so is Lord Exmouth. George Markham is severely wounded in the thigh with grapeshot but not dangerously, and it has not touched the bone. Dobbs is well, Wolseley is slightly wounded in the shin and I thank God, although in the thickest part - for the boats were inside of all and the large ships fired over them - I am quite safe....
"The Bombardment of Algiers 1816", by Thomas Luny 1820
The old Trafalgar boys say that this was hotter than either that or Copenhagen and it is the longest battle ever fought at sea, especially so close. By the bye, the Dey has this morning come to all our terms and owns himself himself completely licked. He had hardly a boat to bring him off. Your affect. son, William Willi am Mills
NOTE 2. The rescue of survivors from the wreck of the Dutton – Dutton – off the Royal Citadel, Plymouth 26th January 1796 The Dutton The Dutton was was a large East Indiaman on her way to the West Indies with part of the 2nd Queen's Regiment and their families. They had already been at sea for seven weeks and had been driven into Plymouth Sound by stress of weather and sickness on board. On the way into the Cattewater to put her sick soldiers ashore, the Dutton struck the end of the reef under Mount Batten, lost her rudder and was dismasted and grounded by the winter storm under the walls of the Royal Citadel.
Captain Edward Pellew, whose ship Indefatigable Indefatigable was docked in Hamoaze, was on his way to dine with friends. Seeing the crowds on the Hoe he followed them to the scene of the wreck. He found most of the ship's senior officers were on shore having abandoned the Dutton Dutton and could not not be persuaded to return to their duty. Pellew saw at once that the loss of nearly all on board, between 5-600, was inevitable inevitabl e without someone to direct them. Thereupon, using the single rope then connecting the stricken ship to the shore, he had himself hauled aboard through the surf during which operation he suffered an injury to his back.
“The wreck of the Dutton” in Plymouth Sound under the walls of the Royal Citadel in 1796. Painted by Thomas Luny in 1835.
Disregarding this he reached the deck and assumed command. command. His well-known name, the calmness and energy he displayed, not to mention his drawn sword, gave confidence to those on the wreck, although his task was made more difficult because the soldiers had got at the liquor and many were drunk. Eventually the ends of two hawsers were got on shore and Pellew contrived cradles and travelling ropes which, with the assistance of a cutter that had succeeded in getting alongside, allowed all to be saved. Pellew
himself was one of the last to leave the ship before she broke up. The rescue was painted on canvas (above) nearly 40 years after the event by the famous Cornish marine artist Thomas Luny, who had recorded many of the events of Lord Exmouth’s life. #########
I must go down to the seas again, for the call of the running tide Is a wild call and a clear call call that may not be denied; denied; And all I ask is a windy day with the white white clouds flying, flying, And the flung spray and the blown spume, and the sea-gulls crying John Masefield (“Sea Fever”) 1902
“The best thing I know between France and England is – the sea” Douglas Jerrold (The Anglo-French Alliance) 1859, English playwright and journalist
A Shy Cornishman The artist Claughton Pellew 1890-1966 Anne Tennent
“Self-portrait 1912”, red chalk on paper
Cornwall has been the inspiration for generations of artists and writers. Here is an exception, a Cornishman, the last of of his family to to be born in Cornwall, Cornwall, who by circumstance circumstance became exposed exposed to quite different artistic influences and, instead of returning to his native land, chose to live in isolation on the windy north Norfolk coast. From there his visions of the countryside around him began to flow like a dream.
“ He seemed fated to work for f or and help others and denied denied himself the full exercise of his talents. Poor dear man he was the most unselfish of beings”, beings”, wrote the artist John Nash of his lifelong friend Claughton Pellew. Claughton was a landscape artist who sought obscurity but found himself playing an important role when his perceptions perceptions of English pastoral pastoral peace and harmony, harmony, translated translated into water-colour and wood engraving, led the way out of the trauma inflicted on the country by the First World War. Even today, some eighty years after the main body of his work was completed, his burning affection affection for for the rural scenes scenes of the past shines shines through. through. The brothers Paul and John Nash, who became two of the most influential English landscape painters of the last century, were each of them fired up by the young Claughton’s romantic approach and by the intensity of his love for the countryside and its features. features. Paul trained with Claughton at the Slade in London, where their contemporaries included such future luminaries of the art world as Ben Nicholson, Stanley Spencer and Christopher Nevinson. In 1912 Paul spent a walking holiday with Claughton staying at the latter’s lodgings in Norfolk, and in his autobiography wrote of him: “ He was the first creature of a truly poetic cast of mind that I had met. We had much in sympathy, although I had more to learn than I could possibly give. His own work was remarkable for a searching intensity intensit y both in thought and technique. It was full of suggestion to my unformed mind ”....“ ”....“ I was shaken shaken within; a new vibration had been set up”. up”. Paul’s younger brother, John Nash, acknowledged acknowledged that he too owed Claughton “a “a great debt for his encouragement and advice at an impressionable age and his more mature views opened out a new world for me while his accomplished technique in his water-colours and engravings set me a standard to be achieved ”. achieved ”. How was it then that an artist, clearly one of distinction and influence, who received such accolades from his peers, has remained comparatively unknown? The answer seems to be that he was, in both a spiritual and artistic sense, a casualty casualty of the First World War which caused him to withdraw into a form of self-imposed obscurity. Not until the late Anne Stevens Stevens at the Ashmolean Ashmolean in Oxford Oxford mounted
an exhibition of his wood engravings in 1987, followed three years later by full exhibitions of his work held in London, Norfolk, Sussex and Devon, have Claughton’s remarkable talents come to be more widely admired. In 2001 BBC TV broadcast a film about his life and work: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djaB606p_DE&feature=youtu.b e
Claughton Pellew circa 1910.
Claughton, who was born at Redruth in 1890, the great grandson of Samuel Harvey and Philippa Pellew of Chacewater, was the last of this old Cornish family to be born in the Duchy. He and his parents, the peripatetic mining engineer William Pellew-Harvey and the artistic, amusing Elizabeth Hichens, became part of the great Cornish exodus when the mines had to close. It was thus that that Claughton spent his early years in the mountains of British Columbia. Columbia. The isolation and beauty of that environment made a great impression on
him and he developed there a fiercely independent attitude to life, which in later years lay uneasily alongside the gentle nature of this essentially shy and sensitive man. The family returned home from Canada in 1901, not to Cornwall but to London where Claughton’s father set up a thriving mining consultancy. Much to William Pellew-Harvey’s disappointment, disappoint ment, the young Claughton was far too unworldly to be tempted into the family business; he dropped the Harvey from his surname and left home to study art. Four years at the Slade in London were were followed by the transcendent experience of seeing the art of the Florentine Quattrocento and visits to Assisi where the town’s historical and religious associations overwhelmed him. On his return he wholeheartedly embraced religious symbolism in his work and converted to Catholicism. The year was 1914. 1914.
“Rick tops 1914”, Pen & ink, watercolour, gouache & chalk. “Claughton first visited Norfolk in 1912 with Paul Nash, and may then have planned to settle there. The ricks are seen as more than an incidental feature of the landscape; their height dominates the surroundings and makes them a fitting emblem of the climactic moment of harvest”
When war came, Claughton, a pacifist like many of his artist contemporaries, became a conscientious objector. He refused to be drafted or to cooperate with the war effort in any way, so a noncombatant role such as war artist, which Paul Nash became, was not open for him. For this he suffered grievously in labour camps and prisons in the south of England, England, Scotland, Yorkshire and finally in Dartmoor. These were miserable, lonely and traumatic years. On release his alienation from society, deepened by knowing that betterconnected Bloomsbury Group pacifists like Mark Gertler and Duncan Grant had avoided imprisonment, was almost complete. John Nash described it as “a “ a sense of permanent isolation from ”. which Claughton never recovered ”. In 1919 he married another artist, Emma-Marie (‘Kechie’) Tennent (see http://www.scribd.com/doc/193108438/ for more about her and her pictures) and they settled in a remote corner of north Norfolk where, apart from family visits to his native Cornwall and holidays in the Bavarian Alps where he could recreate his British Columbian boyhood, they remained remained for the rest of their lives. They lived the simple life using bicycles for transport and, until 1955, oil lamps for light, and with their privacy protected by a flock of geese. geese. Norfolk may seem an odd choice for an expatriate Cornish artist but it was in part the trees that attracted attracted him. “The trees slanting one way, their branches welded together in tortuous forms by the relentless winds ” became a characteristic characteristic of his landscape landscapes. s.
“Evening 1930”, wood engraving
It was in the 1920s that Claughton began the most productive part of his working life. It was a time time when the world of nature and especially the English countryside and its landscapes became the panacea panacea for the ills that war had inflicted. This movement represented a step back, reverence for the past and its traditions and an escape from war and the modern industrial machine. The burning affection that Claughton expressed in his English rural landscapes, the romantic intensity of his art and his skill at the traditional craft of wood engraving, all equipped him to be at the centre of this movement.
“The Return 1925”, wood engraving.
One of his best known village designs is The Return. Return. It is based on the little Cornish fishing port of Mousehole. The houses houses are grouped to show the closeness of the community, and the chimney smoke rising vertically emphasises the peacefulness of the scene. The whole feeling is of order and tradition with people, in this case fishermen, working with nature.
“The Train 1920”, watercolour, ink & gouache [Hove Museum & Art Gallery]
Among his water-colours The Train 1920, 1920 , is familiar, one of a few to feature ‘an infernal machine’. Here he depicts the night train, which which he could see from his home in Norfolk, not as an alien element but in peaceful peaceful harmony with the shepherd shepherd and his flock; flock; all is calm despite the evidence of wind in the “tortuous “tortuous form” form” of the trees. In some of his work the figures play only a subsidiary role, as in The Return 1925 where “the figures of the fishermen creeping up the steps from the boat landing are barely discernible”. In his Mother and child 1920 1920 “he creates a secular parallel with the Madonna and child image. The glowing non-naturalistic colours transform an individual into a symbolic representation of ‘motherhood’ in general”. He also made a wood engraving of this subject.
“Mother and child 1920”, 1 920”, watercolour.
By the depression of the 1930s Claughton’s productive years were over. Interest in country themes had waned as had the demand for prints, but he was loathe to leave his rural idyll to gain the stimulation stimul ation to strike out in a new direction. Then war returned again and poor Claughton, who was known to have German friends and to speak the language, was arrested as a suspected spy and held until his blameless British British status could be established. established. Despite his rather sad life, lived for the most part in self-imposed obscurity, this kind, unassuming and gifted man has left us some wonderful pictures that epitomise that period between the wars when his images of rural peace helped eclipse the memories of bloody
conflict. His search for solace in a savage world led to to some saintly visions of a land now forgotten but well worth remembering.
“Gloucestershire Lane 1933”, wood engraving. In 1928-29 Claughton visited his aunt at Upper Wick near Dursley, a distinctive region of steep wood-topped hills More information on this artist: http://www.scribd.com/doc/117326171/
HORSMONDEN HORSMONDEN - What's in a name? A look at the ancient parish parish of Horsmonde Horsmonden n and its hidden history history of guns, stomach pumps and smugglers, and of a family with links to colonial Virginia
The north-east end of Furnace Pond, Horsmonden. Horsmonden. The head of water from this 16 acre lake once powered the giant hammer of John Browne's forge. The flames from his blast blast furnace could be "seen about the country at 10 miles distance"
In one of the most beautiful parts of the Kentish Weald lies the popular village of Horsmon Horsmonden. den. It has an old English English name but there there are few clues to its history visible there today. Among the modern brick houses which crowd the village green are a couple couple of picturesque picturesque half-timbered half-timbered ones near the old Gun Inn (now called The Gun and Spitroast ); ); while tucked away along side-roads is an occasional timber-framed house of the early 16th century. The parish is especially especially rich in such fine old buildings whose Tudor doorways, crude timbers and weather-stained plaster denote their age. These were not just the homesteads of farm labourers but also of
workers in the two great industries for which Horsmonden was famous in the 17th century - the manufacture of Kentish broadcloth and of guns.
The old “Gun Inn”, once the heart of the iron foundry.
With the abundance of iron ore in the clay and of oak to fuel the blast furnace, Horsmonden in 1613 had two hundred men employed in its iron foundry under the great John Browne. Such was his skill in casting and proving guns that he was later granted a monopoly as "Gunfounder for the King's service afloat and ashore". In 1638 King Charles I himself was at Horsmonden to watch a gun being cast. Browne also supplied guns to the Dutch, at that time the greatest sea power; and, on the arrival arrival of Cromwell and the Commonwealth, Commonwealth, he was quick to switch his allegiance and was casting guns for Parliament until his death in 1651. When this former King's Gunfounder was buried, an impressive alabaster and black marble monument was erected to him in the Parish church. It stands there no longer. A 19th century Rector, an ardent Royalist, Royalist, could not abide to see a memorial in his church to a man who had turned his coat for Cromwell, and removed it! Thus there is little now to show for this once great industry, apart from such local names as Flightshott Farm and Furnace Pond, and several chalybeate springs (impregnated with iron salts).
Grovehurst, an old "clothmaster's hall" (partly Tudor) used as a residence, office and warehouse when Kentish Broadcloth was being made. It is said that its cellars, and secret passages leading from them, were used for contraband by the Hawkhurst gang
Horsmonden is pronounced with emphasis on the last syllable. The components of the name are thought to be Horse-Burn-Denne, meaning "a clearing in the forest by a stream where horses are watered", and indeed the Parish, which extends to about nine square miles, is bounded on the east by the river Teise. This tributary tributary of the Medway is now just a meandering little stream, but it once powered the mills of Horsmonden's thriving woollen industry. Several of the the weavers' timbered cottages survive as do two wonderful old "clothmaster's halls", Grovehurst and Broadford, where cloth for Queen Elizabeth I was made. When the broadcloth trade was at its height in the 17th century, these halls were owned by the Austen family, ancestors of the writer Jane Austen. A descendant descendant of hers still has one of the Queen's tokens, which were issued to commemorate a royal visit to Broadford in 1573.
Broadford, another old "clothmaster's hall", part of which is 15th century. The timber framework has been covered in rough cast and the windows altered. Cloth was made here for Queen Elizabeth I who visited the hall in 1573 when it was owned by the Austen family
The Parish church, St Margaret's, is set on a gentle southern slope looking over the Teise valley towards the hilltop village of Goudhurst just a mile mile away. It was during the 14th century that Henry de Grofhurst, Rector of the Parish for fifty years, inspired and built the church in this peaceful peaceful setting using the local local Wealden sandstone. Years later the present village became establis established hed on the Heath around John Browne's forge, separated by some two miles from Grofhurst's church. Foremost among among the antiquarian treasures in St Margaret's is a contemporary brass portrait in the chancel floor, engraved about 1340. It is of Henry de Grofhurst himself, the father of Horsmonden whose handiwork speaks to those who visit his beautiful church church across across the 670 years that that have intervened. intervened.
St Margaret's, Margaret 's, Horsmonden, Horsmonde n, from an engraving engr aving circa 1840. The church was built of the local Wealden sandstone in the 14th century by Rector Henry de Grofhurst. Grofhur st. 200 year yearss later the present village was was established two miles to the north, centred on the cloth and iron foundry industries
Looking down on the congregation from the south wall is the fine sculptured head in marble of a Victorian. He was John John Read, gardener and handyman to the Rector of the time; but more famously, he was an inventor of exceptional ingenuity. Many of this clever man's ideas and inventions were taken up, such as his methods for hop-drying and for the treatment of blown cattle. In 1823 Read astonished the medical establishment by successfully demonstrating the very first stomach pump. pump. This unpretentious invention must have saved more lives and relieved more suffering than almost any other.
Two memorials in the church: Left is to John Read 1760-1847, the inventor, on a plinth inscribed “Integrity”. Right is to Henry de Grofhurst, "the father of Horsmonden", Rector of the Parish for 50 years (1311-61) and builder of the church – from a contemporary portrait of about 1340 in brass (latten).
In common with other Wealden villages, Horsmonden was in smuggling country and, being astride the Tonbridge road, was also the haunt of highwaymen. The most notorious smugglers smugglers of 18th century Kent were the Hawkhurst Gang who used to terrorise the locality. locality . It is said that the cellars of Grovehurst, and secret passages leading from them, them, were used for their contraband. In 1747, seven members of the gang, including its leader Richard Kingsmill, were cornered nearby after after a shoot out with militia. militi a. They were duly hanged and, as a warning to the Parish, the bodies of two of them, Gore and Fairall by name, were displayed in Horsmonden chained up to a post in Gibbet Lane – possibly the post in the next picture. Stories are still told of ghosts with rattling chains being seen in this Lane, which must have been the site of many a grisly execution.
Two signs: The quartered village sign representing (clockwise from top left) ‘Oasthouse’, ‘Oak tree’, ‘Church’ & ‘Cannon’; and Gibbet Lane
There was once a family of Horsmondens (spelling varies). They probably probably acquired acquired the name when they moved three miles up the road to Goudhurst, where in 1479 the death of one of them, Thomas Horsmonden a weaver, is recorded. It is possible to trace his descendants rising in wealth and influence as they describe themselves and each other in Wills and other documents - from (i.e. Householder) to Clothier . After a century, Smith to Smith to Houseke Housekeeper eper (i.e. they had a Coat of Arms and were educating their sons at Cambridge to be clergymen or lawyers.
Examples of timber-framed houses of the 16th century in Horsmonden. Left is an old weaver’s cottage at Capel Cross. Right are fine specimens of early 16th century houses. The exterior woodwork and the Tudor doorway are original while the roof and windows are of course modern.
In the 17th century, the family's influence spread to the American colonies. Colonel Warham Horsmonden of Lenham (between Maidstone and Ashford) spent twenty years in Virginia where he became a member of the Colonial Council. His grandson, grandson, who was brought up by the Horsmondens Horsmondens back in England, was the celebrated celebrated William Byrd, satirical writer and diarist, a founder of the modern State of Virginia and of Richmond, its future capital (See article “ The House that Byrd Built ” at page 60). The Colonel's great nephew, Daniel Horsmonden, was in 1763 appointed the last Chief Justice of New York Province. Province. None of the Horsmondens Horsmondens of Daniel's generation produced male heirs, and it seems that by 1800 this old Kentish family name had died out on both sides of the Atlantic. So the Horsmonden name (sometimes Horsm anden) now lives on only in the parish, one of the most favoured in the High Weald with its rich undulating farmland, woods, hop-gardens and orchards. In the peace and beauty of this place, it is difficult to believe in Horsmonden's sometimes turbulent history and in the woollen mills, foundries and furnaces of its industrial past.
THE ULSTERMEN: SOLDIERS, PUBLIC SERVANTS AND ECCENTRICS “If there must be trouble let it be in my day, that my child may have peace” Thomas Paine 1737-1809, English political theorist
“My mission is to pacify Ireland” WE Gladstone 1868, Prime Minister on forming his first cabinet
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An Irish Murder My mother, whose surname was Mayne, had a diverse racial heritage like many of us in these small islands. Born in Victorian India, the granddaughter of a Scottish missionary from Glasgow, her strongest roots lay in Ireland, and it is from amongst these that this story comes. Her Mayne ancestors came to Ireland from England in the early 17th century at the time of the ‘Plantation of Ulster’. That was when Protestant English settlers and Presbyterian Scots were granted land there which had been forfeited after the flight of the Irish Earls to the Continent in 1607. That event marked the end of many of the Gaelic chieftains and the start of what politicians came to refer to as the Protestant Ascendancy in Ireland – local rule through large landowners, ‘establishment’ clergy and the professional classes, all supported by the Army. The Ascendancy of course primarily excluded Roman
Catholics who comprised the majority of the indigenous population. The continuance of this ‘repression’ led to the ‘Irish troubles’ which have dogged Ulster and much of the country for the last four hundred years. The Maynes, who were farming at Mount Sedborough in County Fermanagh, soon found themselves having to defend their property against ‘marauding Irish’. During the rebellion of 1641 thousands of Protestants were killed. Among them was John Mayne who was murdered in front of his wife and children and had his house ransacked. It was Tuesday 26 th October and the Mayne family still remember Tuesday as a day of ill omen. Cromwell came later to exact retribution for the revolt but with such ferocity that he left a legacy of lasting bitterness. John Mayne
Mount Sedborough, Co. Fermanagh, where John Mayne was murdered during the Irish Rebellion of 1641. The Maynes still farm this land
The scene shifts to John Mayne’s great grandson, Edward Mayne, more than a century later. Until 1763, Edward had been serving his Majesty King George III (who later freed the American colonies) as a Lieutenant in the 93 rd Regiment of Foot (Sutherland Fencibles) in
Ireland. In that year, he was 38 and retired from the Army to his family home at Brantrim near Monaghan, there to marry and raise children in the tranquillity of the Irish countryside. It was then that his life was disrupted by one of those many short but violent episodes in the history of Ulster. This time Edward was called upon as a private citizen to help and advise the Monaghan Magistrate, Charles Coote, with a handful of mounted troops, in protecting lives and homesteads in the County against a growing protest movement that had suddenly become a serious threat to peace and order. It was thanks to the the strategy and the speed with which these two acted that within a few weeks the danger was averted. Not every County in Ulster Ulster was so fortunate.
Brantrim, Monaghan, where Edward Mayne was born in 1725. The large house is typical of Ascendancy homes of the period, many of which have been allowed to fall into disrepair and ruin, as has this one.
The “Oakboy” movement had originated in north Armagh in June 1763, primarily as a protest against local taxation and the free use made of farm labourers to repair roads. It quickly spread to County Monaghan where large gatherings of protesters, called “Oakboys” because because they wore sprigs of oak in their hats, were were intimidating Grand Jury members, Protestant clergy and others with influence in the community. The size, organisation and belligerence of the Oakboy ‘army’ is shown in a contemporary description of them, “ all
marching in order and many of them arm’d. They fill’d at least two miles of the road and were formed into companies with each a standard or colours displayed.” displayed.” Some gatherings of Oakboys, increased by many who had been intimidated to join them, were described as “numbering “numbering 10,000” 10,000” - probably an exaggeration for several thousand at most. They were well organised, mainly peaceful peaceful but using the sheer sheer strength of their numbers numbers and the threat of force to gain their ends. In some cases the mere sight of redcoats was sufficient to disperse them, but a few serious clashes occurred before before order was restored and the movement ended. It was from one of these incidents that the charge of murder arose. It was on another Tuesday, 19 July 1763, that Edward Mayne and the Magistrate Charles Coote of Bellamont Forest set out from Cootehill to cover the fifteen miles to Castleblayney to confront the Oakboys there. With them they had about fourteen of the Magistrate’s Cootehill Cootehil l tenants and a troop of light horse. It was raining heavily when they arrived at the castle at two o’clock yet the streets of the town were were crowded with Oakboys. The Magistrate’s party then repaired to an inn to await the arrival of Colonel Roberts, the commander of the Army contingent at the castle. After dining and toasting the King’s good health, Mayne and Coote went out from the inn alone to meet the colonel. The two “had no arms but their swords, swords, with their greatcoats around around them as it rained rained heavily. In the middle of the street Mr Coote was accosted by about twenty of the Hearts of Oak who separated themselves from the other crowds. ” They had one Alexander McDonald at their head, a large but agile man, “a “a most insolent fellow” fellow ” who had been active elsewhere as one of the leaders of the Oakboys. “This McDonald advanced two or three steps from his party towards Mr Coote and, upon being told that he was a Magistrate for the County and that he should approach him with more respect and his hat off, McDonald lept at him like a tiger and seized him behind by his arms to prevent him making use of his sword.” sword. ” “ Mayne immediately drew [his sword] sword] and extricated Coote out of their hands but was himself instantly seized behind the back by two
more. Happily Coote was then at liberty and in turn was able to extricate him. Mr Coote and Lieut. Mayne being clear, clear, they were then directly attacked in another manner - by [the] [the] firing of several guns at them out of the doors and windows of adjacent adjacent houses. These guns were loaded with ball, which shows the Oaks were prepared, prepared, and the stones of the street flew as thick as hail; several of them hit Mr Coote.” Coote. ” “The shots fir’d alarmed Mr Coote’s party in the inn; they immediately came to their relief, and returned the fire from the doors and windows very briskly. Oakboys were observed observed levelling their pieces at both Mayne and Coote and snapping at them from a door. door. Notwithstanding, Notwithstanding, they still advanced and the t he mob retreated retreated and shut the doors. By this time, the Squadron’s Squadron’s guard at the castle was alarmed and came up briskly. They pursued the rebels, broke into their houses, from thence into into the gardens gardens and the fields” fields” where fourteen prisoners were taken. McDonald died of his wounds and three other Oakboys were severely wounded.
CASTLEBLAYNEY today: the castle where the cavalry squadron was stationed in 1763 stood on the ridge which the white building now occupies overlooking Lough Muckno. The town is in the trees beyond with the steeple of St Maeldord’s M aeldord’s church on the left.
Despite their own injuries, Charles Coote and Edward Mayne, who had been joined from Cootehill by the latter’s cousin Charles Mayne, continued to direct operations by the Army against the Oakboys in other parts of Counties Monaghan and Cavan. On 27 July they took part in a skirmish against a large group of Oakboys Oakboys at Wattle W attle Bridge in which two troopers were wounded and seven Oakboys killed. On 3rd August a general pardon was offered to those who returned peacefully peacefully to their homes, and all resistance resistance by the t he rebels in the two counties was at an end. The following year 1764, notwithstanding their prodigious effort in re-establishing the King’s peace in Monaghan, Charles Coote and Edward Mayne stood trial jointly at the Monaghan Lent Assize for the murder of the unfortunate McDonald. However, there is doubt that the two were seriously at risk as to the outcome. At that time in the Protestant Ascendancy, there was little danger of a Monaghan court passing a guilty verdict against such members of the local establishment who were trying to maintain it. Indeed they were both duly acquitted. Charles Coote (a note about this extraordinary character and his family follows below) was knighted for his enthusiasm in putting down the revolt and each lived into old age and begat many children. children.
CHARLES COOTE 1738-1800 of Bellamont Forest, Cootehill, Co. Monaghan In his youth Charles Coote, who became the 1st Earl of Bellamont following his work in helping to put down the Oakboy revolt, was a Captain in the 10th of Foot. For all his " gallantry " gallantry and and high spirits spirits" and "dazzling "dazzling polish", polish", he was also described as "that " that madman!" madman!" He fought a duel with Marquess Townshend in which Charles received a serious bullet wound in the groin. This gave rise to much hilarity in view of his reputation with the ladies. The Cootes as a family were nothing if not unconventional. Some of the Cootehill branch might better be described as eccentric - even by the standards of the Irish Ascendancy of those times. Maurice Craig
in his "Dublin 1660-1860" sees them as "a " a great and eminently successful successful stock, military adventurers adventurers from Tyrone's wars onwards onwards and premier baronets of England ". ". In his later years, Burke was more blunt and described Charles Coote as "a " a somewhat absurd figure, ultra sophisticated sophisticated and ardently Francophile, Francophile, he insisted on making his maiden speech in the Irish House of Lords in French! Pompous and an inveterate inveterate womaniser ". ". Charles’ Will shows that the scallywag had as many as 18 children of whom only five were by his wife, the rest being by four other women. Reynold's in his portrait of him makes him look absurd. absurd. A descendant descendant of the family, John Coote, an Australian interior designer, purchased the family’s old Bellamont Forest property at Cootehill in 1987. He died in 2012 since when this fine estate has awaited a new owner.
Bellamont Forest, Charles Coote’s home at Cootehill. ‘The finest Palladian mansion in Ireland’, built in about 1730 by Sir Edward Lovett Pearce for his uncle Thomas Coote, Charles’ grandfather.
The Mystery of Plot 118 Beneath those rugged rugged elms, that that yew-tree’s yew-tree’s shade, shade, Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap, Each in his narrow narrow cell cell for ever laid, laid, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep.
The poet Thomas Gray was himself laid to rest in the churchyard of Stoke Poges in Buckinghamshire where he wrote those lines. Now more than two centuries later the hamlet has become a straggling village on the edge of an expanding Slough; but still the churchyard of St Giles, which is forever associated with the “ solemn stillness stillness”” of a late summer evening in the English countryside, remains a tranquil spot far from the strife of less happy lands.
St Giles Parish Church, Stoke Poges, and its ‘country churchyard’ made famous by Thomas Gray’s Elegy
Yet, even in this peaceful place we find echoes of distant troubles. The earliest reminder is a brass to Sir William de Molyns, killed at the siege of Orleans in 1425. From our own times, there is a tablet
with the names of the 48 men of the village who fell in the Great War, a memorial window for the dead of the Second World War and the insignia of St Giles’ current current link with the Gurkhas. Not far from where Thomas Gray lies, there is a large unmarked tomb, an imposing example of the sepulchral art of Napoleon’s time. It is totally anonymous, identified on the churchyard record only as Plot 118, and now hidden behind the new Vestry that has been built onto the north side of the Chancel. Who it is lies buried in Plot 118 might have remained a mystery if it had not been for the discovery of a note in a book about Irish history published in 1879. This made an unlikely link between Stoke Poges and a small parish in the heart of County Monaghan countryside near the border with Northern Ireland.
Plot 118 - The anonymous tomb
The central figure in the Irish side of the story is one Thomas Dawson, a wealthy banker and Member of Parliament. He was born in 1725 and lived at Dawson’s Grove on the Dartrey estate in Monaghan, land acquired by his great grandfather in the previous century. In Thomas’ day, day, Dartrey was one one of the most beautiful properties properties in Ireland. Ireland. “ A scene more formed for high contemplation and rapturous enthusiasm cannot be imagined ,” ,” wrote the diarist Parson J Burrows in 1773, “a “ a thousand acres of lake, three hundred
of which flows within a few yards of the house, with the hills on each side covered covered from top to bottom with the most beautiful beautiful delicious delicious woods, brings all fairy land to ones imagination”. imagination ”.
Part of the Dartrey estate of Thomas Dawson 1725-1813. Once one of the most beautiful properties in all Ireland, today it is entirely given over to forestry
Thomas Dawson’s early life was to be no fairy tale; his sweet natured wife, Lady Anne Fermor, much loved and “distinguished “ distinguished for her virtues and her beauty”, beauty”, died aged only only 36. Neither of their two teenage children survived and they were buried with their mother in Dartrey churchyard. In her memory the grieving Thomas Thomas erected on his estate “one “one of the finest monuments in Ireland ” incorporating a dramatic life-sized statue by Joseph Wilton within a Romanesque temple. It stands on Black Island which Thomas could see from his house across the lake. In 1770, Thomas married again. This was to Philadelphia Hannah Freame, granddaughter of William Penn the founder of Pennsylvania, who bore him two children. When they too died young, Thomas’ nephew, Richard Dawson who represented County Monaghan in parliament, became his heir. Thomas was a benevolent landlord who actually lived on his property, property, unlike many of the ‘Protestant ascendancy’ ascendancy’ of his time. A liberal employer of local labour and benefactor of the neighbourhood, he had a name among his compatriots for fair and generous dealing. He was also a long standing Unionist politician of
consummate skill and reputation who in 1785 at the age of sixty was made the first Viscount Cremorne. City of Bristol Museum & Art Gallery
Thomas Dawson, Viscount Cremorne, and his second wife Philadelphia Hannah Freame 1741-1826. She was named after the town in which she was born and, like her grandfather William Penn, was a Quaker. It is a Quaker’s cap she is wearing. Portraits by Sir Thomas Lawrence c.1789
The 1790s in Ireland was a turbulent decade, not the first nor last in its history, culminating in the bloody but unsuccessful Irish rebellion of 1798. To his dismay Thomas found that Richard, his heir, was actually supporting the rebels and it may have been this that finally caused this faithful old Unionist to withdraw to London, there to support the Act of Union which became law three years later - an Act said by its Irish opponents to have been “ carried by corruption and fraud ”. ”. It is difficult to be sure sure of Thomas’ motives but in what seems a final gesture of rejection, made while the rebellion in Ireland was at its height, he arranged for the bodies of his first wife, buried at their home in Ireland nearly thirty years before, and her two children to be removed to England. Did he perhaps see the events of 1798 1798 as an act of ingratitude ingratit ude to himself personally? Whatever the cause cause he effectively turned his back on his fine home and friends in Ireland
and he and Philadelphia went to live in Chelsea near the present Cremorne Gardens, which were named after them.
The hatchment of Thomas Dawson, Viscount Cremorne (1725-1813), on the wall wall of St Giles. The motto reads ‘Toujours Propice’ (Always in Favour), but did the Parish welcome these Irish interlopers with ostentatious memorials? memorials? Their tomb today has has no name or inscription inscription
Transporting those three bodies across from Ireland with a serious rebellion in progress cannot have been an easy task. They were reinterred together with Philadelphia’s two children at Stoke Poges where the Penns had their own family vault. Her grandfather, William Penn, had been born in the village and his son’s widow, Juliana Fermor, the sister of Anne, still lived at Stoke Park just two hundred yards yards from St Giles. What more natural than that these refugees from Ireland be given space in the churchyard. Yet the anonymity of the large Cremorne tomb is puzzling. Despite the family motto ‘Toujours ‘Toujours Propice’ Propice’ (Always in Favour) this small country parish may not have been quite so welcoming to Irish interlopers with ostentatious memorials! This then is the story of who lies in Plot 118. Thomas, the last Viscount Cremorne whose hatchment still hangs in the church, died
aged 89 and was buried there with wife Anne Fermor and his four children. Thirteen years later in 1826 Philadelphia was laid beside them and the tomb finally closed. A visitor to Dartrey today will will find few signs of the picturesque estate described by Parson Burrows, or of the once great family that for nearly three centuries had owned it. The Dawson male line died out out in 1933 and the contents of the house were subsequently auctioned, the house demolished and the estate sold to the Eire Department of Forestry. The avenues of beech trees, the sloping lawns and terraced gardens which ran down to Lough Dromore are no more and Thomas’ island memorial to Anne Fermor has been desecrated and became just a roofless ruin hidden among the trees. But the Dartrey Heritage Association Association,, formed in 2005, has since been working to completely restore this 240 year old monument and its temple to their original state – a huge task which is now nearing completion. More than two centuries have passed since the rebellion which finally prompted Thomas Dawson to sever his links with his Irish home; yet echoes of that turbulent time still rumble like thunder around the hills of these islands. Perhaps visitors to the churchyard made famous by a great poem will look and wonder at the large unmarked tomb on Plot 118. It is that of an Irishman and his family family who finally found a sanctuary “ far from the madding madding crowd’s crowd’s ignoble strife”. strife”.
Epilogue Thomas Dawson’s Temple & Statue on Black Island
(Left) The temple, designed by James Wyatt to house the Anne Dawson monument, was modelled on the Pantheon in Rome, entered through a portico with the interior lit solely by an open hole (oculus) in the dome. This small version is of red brick and limestone, 30 foot high. The attitude of Philadelphia Dawson, Thomas’ second wife, to the building of such an expensive memorial to her predecessor is unknown. (Right) Dome of the Roman Pantheon showing the effect of the oculus in good weather.
The Architect. The neoclassical design of the Dawson Temple at Dartrey is of some interest. Its young architect, James Wyatt (17461813), had just made his name by designing the Pantheon in Oxford Street, London, reminiscent of the Pantheon in Rome. His building had a central domed hall surrounded by galleried aisles. It opened in 1772 and, soon after, Thomas Dawson engaged him to design the Temple at Dartrey, which explains its style with open dome and Romanesque portico. James Wyatt went on to build many famous mansions, among them Castle Coole in Ireland, and became the leading British architect of his generation. He was buried among the great and the good in Westminster Abbey.
Sculptor Joseph Wilton with his statue, erected at Dartrey in 1774
The Sculptor. In contrast to Wyatt, Joseph Wilton (1722-1803) the classical sculptor of the memorial to Thomas Dawson’s first wife, Anne Fermor, was at the end of a highly successful career. A founding member of the Royal Academy, his work included some notable busts, and two of his memorials are in Westminster Abbey. But in 1768 he inherited a fortune on the death of his father and had immediately given up sculpture for, it is said, “a “ a life of dissolution”. dissolution”. It is therefore interesting to speculate how his work came to be erected in Wyatt’s Temple in 1774. Did Thomas Dawson manage to persuade persuade him back to work again, or was the sculpture sculpture perhaps perhaps delegated to the assistants Wilton used at the Richmond House gallery workshop? The answer may lie in the price banker Dawson paid Wilton – 1000 guineas. guineas. The value of that today (based on income) is over £2 million. Despite this, Wilton subsequently went bankrupt. bankrupt.
A Policeman’s Lot … Sir Richard Mayne was one of the architects of London’s Metropolitan Metropolitan Police of of which he was Commissioner Commissioner from from its date of of formation for almost 40 years 1829-68, 1829-68, and “one to whom the public public owed a debt that was but ill repaid”
Sir Richard Mayne 1796-1868 , an Ulsterman, who was Commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police from its foundation in 1829 until his death – a period p eriod of 39 years
Richard Mayne was born in Dublin, the fourth son of an Irish Judge. They were descended from an Anglo-Irish family who had settled in Ulster at the time of “the plantations” early in the 17 th century (see “ An Irish Murder ” at page 108 which is about the same family). Educated at Trinity College, Dublin, and at Cambridge, he became a
barrister barrister on the English Northern Northern Circuit. He was aged only 33 when he was selected by Sir Robert Peel, the Home Secretary, as one of two joint Commissioners of the Metropolitan Police on its formation in 1829. With only seven years in practice practice since he had been called to the Bar, Mayne was a comparatively junior lawyer for this type of appointment. appointment . It was was suggested that that such an exacting and poorly paid post (£700 p.a.) would not have been particularly particularly attractive to a senior lawyer. In fact he had already shown himself to be a hard working, even brilliant barrister and his selection to work in tandem with an older man of totally different background proved a happy choice. His fellow Commissioner was Lieutenant-Colonel Charles Rowan of the Indian Army and later a Police Magistrate in Ireland. They had not previously met although both were Ulstermen. Rowan was sixteen years older than Mayne and came to be looked upon by the public as the senior of the two, although in practice practice both had equal access to the Secretary of State. They worked together in what seemed complete harmony for twenty-one years until 1850 when Rowan resigned due to ill health. The combination of experienced soldier and sharp young barrister proved ideal. They got got on well well and complemented each other in facing the considerable problems of building up a new Force Force from from scratch against against some bitter bitter opposition. opposition.
Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles Rowan 1784-1852
They “had “had to raise, organise and train a small army, to instruct them in duties hitherto unknown in England, and to teach them to discharge their office with patience and consideration”. consideration ”. The principles of the new police system which Mayne laid down in 1829 still remain in the preface to General Orders of the Metropolitan Police today :“The primary object of an efficient police force is the prevention of crime; the next that of detection and punishment of offenders, if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of police must be directed.” “The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquillity and the absence of crime will alone prove whether those efforts have been successful and whether the objects for which the police were appointed appointed have have been attained.” attained.” But it needed more than fine words and a grand design. Apart from some public resistance there was hostility from the Whig opposition as well as friction with the Home Office. One of the main difficulties they had was the retention of recruits. Within two years of formation, 1250 officers had resigned out of an original establishment of 4000. Peel had set the pay at a guinea a week which was then the level of unskilled agricultural labourers. He was determined “to refuse gentlemen employment in the police because they would be above the work”, saying that “a three shillings a day man is better than a five shillings man”. Thus did the problem over police pay begin! However, despite such setbacks, Rowan and Mayne, succeeded in establishing the completely new concept in England of “ police “ police as a citizen body, and the ideals of courtesy, forbearance and helpfulness to all ”. ”. The new Force had its successes, being complemented on the great tact with which they acted during the Chartist agitation of 1848 and in policing the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park in 1851. This last was the product of systems that Mayne had created for dealing with large public gatherings and for controlling street traffic. On Rowan’s resignation in January 1850 (he died two years later), another retired soldier, Captain William Hay, was appointed as a
deputy. But Mayne never got on with him and there followed an unhappy five years until the Captain also resigned from ill health. Mayne then continued as sole Commissioner for the next thirteen years until his death still in harness at the age of 72. It was a time when police problems were increasing with the crime rate, especially crimes of violence following the abolition of transportation. Police strength, which had initially been built up with such difficulty against opposition, had dropped because pay was again low with men drifting away to better paid jobs in the factories of the Industrial Revolution. Revoluti on. This coincided with frequent clashes between police and public caused by opposition to the Reform Bill. Public confidence confidence was further shaken by widespread acts of violence by ‘Fenians’, Irish/American Republicans demanding Irish home rule. One such occasion was an explosion at Clerkenwell, which resulted in twelve deaths and many injured. For his part in this, Michael Barnett was publicly executed executed at the Old Bailey on 26 May 1868, the last public execution in England. As a result of these events, the ‘Met’ declined in prestige and public favour with not a little criticism being aimed at Mayne himself, who the papers pillori pilloried ed as as an autocrat without political control. In many ways he was typical of his era, never relaxing from the high standard of dedication and hard work that he had maintained since his appointment, yet no longer as quick to react to new circumstances as he once had been. Letter in The Times of Times of 1 February 1868 WRONG IN THE MAYNE
“Sir, Permit me through your columns to ask the following questions :Where is the humble ratepayer to take his daily exercise, and may he deduct the expense of his revolver from the police rate? The circumstances are as follows :We all know how admirable are our police arrangements, and what a debt of gratitude we owe to Sir Richard Mayne for perfecting them; but there remains the uncomfortable uncomfortable fact that, even even before the
Fenians took to blowing us up, it was unsafe to walk through the streets of London, owing to the thieves, roughs and garrotters. The only secure promenade for the ratepayers was the sewers. Alas, Sir, these are now closed to him; every passage and hole is guarded or locked, I am informed, on account of the Fenians. What with powder barrels below and garrotters above, this metropolis is reduced to a pretty pass. Turned out of the peaceful slush below, I have bought a revolver which I can ill-afford and must get on, I suppose, as I can until, by Sir Richard Mayne’s retirement, “a consummation devoutly to be wished”, he and the Londoners gain their well-earned repose. There is a rumour (I don’t know how far it is true) that the plucky Colonel of the Havelock Volunteers is to take command of the police; that the force is to wear breast-plates and to be permanently encamped at Aldershot. Anyhow we cannot be worse off than we are at present; but I think it is hard that Jemima and I who are both getting fat, should have no place for that daily walk we so much desire. I am, Sir, yours, A semi-obese ratepayer.” It was during this difficult period that Mayne twice tendered his resignation. Once was after the Reform Bill riots in Hyde Park in July 1866 where many police were injured and the Army had to be brought in (See Punc (See Punch h cartoon below). Mayne, who was on the spot on horseback, no mean feat for a man of nearly 70, was himself injured in the affray. He offered his resignation again two years later when widespread acts of violence (now described as ‘terrorism’) were carried out in London by those demanding Irish home rule. It was probably due to the political difficulty of selecting a successor in such a sensitive post that neither resignation was accepted.
Cartoon from Punch 11 Aug 1866 after the Reform Bill riots in Hyde Park during which many police, including Mayne, were injured
Mayne died at his London home, 80 Chester Square, at the end of that same year, 1868, beset by the pressures of civil unrest in the City and the cruel campaign of criticism, mainly in the press, which had continued unabated. He was also defending himself in a long drawn out court case brought against him in his official capacity. His final sorrow was the death earlier in the year of his youngest daughter, Katherine, aged sixteen.
Sir Richard Mayne KCB (1796-1868), after nearly forty years as the founding Commissioner Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police
Two years after Mayne’s death when a monument to his memory was erected at Kensal Green, an unusual gesture to a public servant, it was said that his name was still regarded “with veneration and even affection by the highest to the lowest ranks of the Metropolitan Police”. The original Force which he and Rowan established had grown “to nearly 8000 men; the area it policed had increased to ten times its original size”, and their concept “had spread to every county and town in the country”. The Arms and motto of Mayne’s AngloIrish family are below:
MAYNE of Ulster
“ Manus Justa Decus”
POSTSCRIPT: Modern Commissioners Despite the different era, the parallels between Mayne’s difficulties at the end of his term as first Commissioner and the experience of some of his successors in modern times are uncanny. In 2000, Sir Paul Condon after only seven years in post was beset by almost the same problems as those that tormented Mayne 132 years before him. Condon’s difficulties included a continuing threat of terrorist action from Irish bombers (the modern Fenians), animal rights activists, and Muslim fundamentalists. Police actions during various riots which had taken place in central London, on behalf of the National Front and ‘third world debt’, had been criticised. During his time, the manpower of the ‘Met’ had fallen by 6000 staff (including 2400 officers) due to government budget cuts. Then with poor pay came low morale making the recruitment crisis worse. Wikipedia
Sir Paul Condon: Commissioner 1993-2000
Morale had also been affected by Condon’s successful campaign to root out police corruption. And it had then slumped further as a result of the mishandling of the long-running Stephen Lawrence murder case. The Macpherson report, which followed, labelled the Met “institutionally racist” – an impossible accusation to refute. Thus did the vilification of Condon and his men by the press and by the activities activiti es of the race relations industry start. One result was a significant (30%) increase in young black street crime because officers were loathe to use their stop-and-search powers for fear of the racist stigma. Condon’s resignation had been persistently called for by the media ever since the leaking of the Macpherson report, and he was being sued privately together with several of his officers
by the Lawrence Lawrence family for racial discrimination. discrimination. Nevertheless Nevertheless he managed to retain his job for a further eleven months until his fixed date of retirement. Five years later came the most accident-prone Commissioner of recent times, Sir Ian Blair, who lasted just three. A clever but cautious man and a forthright speaker with plenty of reforming zeal, he succeeded in reducing London’s crime rate. Yet he eventually became notorious for his ill-considered ill-considered comments (Soham murders) murders) and secretly recording phone calls. He had to confront Muslim suicide bombers in London, but they exposed the weakness of his leadership: he misled the public over the incompetent way his officers had killed an innocent Brazilian by mistake, and then compounded it by blocking independent investigation claiming he had the Prime Ministers agreement. It later transpired that there was a lack of trust among his close advisers, with two senior Asian officers accusing him of racism. Following the example of many Labour government ministers, even this ‘final straw’ did not result in his resignation. It was politics that eventually achieved it. Guardian
Sir Ian Blair: Commissioner Commissioner 2005-2008
Blair was seen as being too close to the ‘New Labour’ government that appointed him, but he aggravated this impression by personally lobbying for various unpopular government measures (90 day holding of suspects, ID cards). It was only the arrival of a newly elected Conservative Mayor of London combined with a weak Home Secretary which forced Commissioner Blair’s long-delayed resignation.
This emphasises the political pressure under which the Metropolitan Police Commissioner has perforce to work. On one side he has the highly critical citizens of London (like the “semi-obese ratepayer”) strongly supported by the media (and today by the London Police Authority), and on the other is the Home Secretary and the government. Even in Mayne’s time he had to insist on his right of direct access to the Home Secretary. In those early days Mayne fought a long but successful battle with the Permanent Secretary at the Home Office, Samuel Philipps, who believed that the Police Commissioners should answer to him and his officials. It is said that thereafter the Met Police and the Home Office were at odds for sixty years. Very similar policing problems seem to have faced successive Commissioners. This high profile appointment remains one of the most onerous and thankless in the public sector. One can only marvel at the length of time that Mayne held it with such distinction and in the face of public opposition and personal vilification by the press in his final years.
Robert Blair Mayne, DSO* The complex character of one of the outstanding military heroes of the Second World War Mayne family
Left: Blair Mayne near the SAS base at Kabrit on the Suez Canal 1942. Right: Pre-war, playing rugby for Queens University. Later he played for both Ireland and the British Lions.
No British soldier in the Second World War was more decorated decorated than Robert Blair Mayne - one of the six founder members of the Special Air Service (SAS). Blair Mayne (known inevitably as ‘Paddy’) was an exceptional Ulsterman, endowed with great physical strength, stature and uniquely swift reflexes, which he used with devastating effect - in the boxing ring, on the international rugby field, in the bars of Belfast and later in battle. His military skill and extraordinary courage in wartime became legendary and were acknowledged by the award to him of the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) for leadership and personal courage on no fewer than four occasions. France awarded him both the Croix de Guerre and Legion d’Honneur. He first made his name in the desert campaign campaign in
North Africa where he was memorably memorably credited with having destroyed behind enemy lines more German aircraft than the Royal Air Force. Force. His audacious exploits continued during the campaigns in Sicily, Italy, France and Germany, throughout which by some miracle he survived almost unscathed. Blair Mayne was from a Presbyterian family who had come originally from Scotland and settled in Northern Ireland near Belfast early in the 18th century. His great grandfather, William Mayne, established the present family home at Newtownards and began a wine and grocery business there, which was still flourishing when Blair was a boy. Blair was the the third son son of the family and and named after a cousin of his mother’s, Captain Robert Blair DSO of the Border Regiment who was killed in action in 1916. The young Blair Mayne derived great strength from his family (he had three brothers and three sisters), from the stability of their home life at Mount Pleasant in Newtownards, and especially from his mother, Margaret Vance. Throughout his life it was always to her that he turned for support. Blair went to the local school and then studied law at Queen’s University in Belfast, where he emerged as a formidable heavyweight boxer and played rugby football (second row forward) for Ireland and on the British Lion’s tour to South Africa in 1938. He was capped for his country six times before the war intervened. Blair was a complex character - a man of contrasts. On the one hand he could be the gentle giant, rather shy, soft spoken, friendly and compassionate - showing great concern for the welfare of others, a lover of the countryside who lavished attention on his rose garden. On the other hand, he could be unpredictable, given to black moods, quick temper and short bursts of uncontrolled uncontroll ed ferocity. Such behaviour behaviour in a man of his physique made both friend and opponent opponent wary of him. Socially he was not a good mixer, uncomfortable with women and happiest when he was roistering with his drinking companions.
And so, in 1940, this awkward, ill-disciplined, unreliable, moody young Irishman found himself undergoing Commando training on Arran, a remote island off the west coast of Scotland. This proved to be the making of him - the metamorphosis metamorphosis of Mayne into a professional professional soldier. soldier. The duality in his nature nature was always always there but on operations he invariably became a strict disciplinarian, avoided all alcohol and was above all, completely reliable. reliable. He had had qualities of leadership that had been developed on the playing field and had a marked ability to inspire confidence - not just by his large physical presence presence (6 foot 3 inches tall and 220 lbs) but by his calm sense of purpose in times of stress, stress, his quick reactions and his extraordinary courage. Blair first saw action in June 1941 on a Commando raid behind Vichy French lines on the Litani River in Syria. It was marred by heavy losses. These included the death of his CO, Lt Col Richard Peddar, with whom he had been since the Isle of Arran (the operation is described at the end of this chapter). Blair’s temperament made him a difficult subordinate, who could react badly if thwarted or crossed. He drove himself unmercifully and felt extreme frustration at inaction, which sometimes led to black moods, bouts of drinking and violent acts. After a little disagreement in Egypt with his new commanding officer, who he had knocked unconscious, Blair was rescued from close arrest by the influence of Captain David Stirling. This officer had just been authorised by General Auchinleck to form a new force to operate in the desert behind German and Italian lines. He needed big Blair Mayne. There followed a series of operations by this new force, known as ‘L’ detachment of the Special Air Service (SAS), against enemy airfields and supply lines. The first one led by Lieutenant Mayne against Tamet airfield in the Libyan desert destroyed 14 aircraft, damaged 10, and blew up bomb and fuel dumps. Within four months the reputation of the newly formed SAS had grown and Blair’s personal personal count of enemy aircraft aircraft destroyed destroyed had risen to over a hundred. It was a deadly business. After a raid on Fuka, Blair reported that the enemy “had posted a sentry on nearly every bloody plane. I had to knife them before I could place the bombs” bombs”. He and
his team destroyed 17 planes that night. Such operations by the SAS continued with increasing tempo. They also made raids at Daba, Sidi Hameish and Matru in Egypt, and then at Gazala, Timimi, Berka, Sirte and Tamet in Libya as the 8 th Army advanced westward.
By the end of 1942 the desert war was virtually won, David Stirling had been captured and Blair Mayne had taken over command of the SAS for the Sicily landings. In this operation, Blair had had the key role of capturing and destroying coastal batteries at Capo Murro di Porco just south of Syracuse on the south-east coast of the island. It was a complete success. An extract from the citation for the DSO (his second) awarded to Blair on that occasion reads: “By nightfall Major Mayne’s Mayne’s force had captured three additional batteries, taken 450 prisoners and killed 2-300 Italians” . The force force re-embarked and two days later carried out a hazardous daylight landing to capture the town of Augusta just ten miles up the coast. In both these operations it was “Major Mayne’s courage, determination and superb leadership which proved the key to success. He personally led his men from the landing craft in the face of heavy machine-gun fire. By this action he succeeded in forcing his way to ground where it was possible to form form up….” up….” This was the first operation of many undertaken by Blair’s SAS during the Italian campaign campaign of 1943. When the SAS finally left Italy to return to Britain for the D Day invasion various tributes were paid to them. General Dempsey Dempsey wrote to Blair - “In my military career
and in my time I have commanded many units. I have never met a unit in which I had such confidence as I have in yours.” The SAS experiment, which had started with Stirling and Mayne in the desert, had proved a success. By the time of the Normandy landings in June 1944, the SAS role had been expanded and was undertaken by a Brigade of 2500 men who had been training for months on the Scottish moorland. Their task was to parachute behind the lines and establish a series of bases from which they could operate in strength. From there they were to harass the enemy, disrupt his vital communications and provide detailed intelligence for our forward units, as well as train and support the Maquis (French resistance) in sabotage. In this grand design Blair commanded commanded 1st Regiment SAS - a unit that had been developed from the nucleus of his desert teams. Early on D Day 6th June 1944, the SAS carried out diversionary parachute parachute landings on the Cherbourg Cherbourg peninsular peninsular to the west of the Normandy Normandy beaches. beaches. Subsequently Subsequently until the liberation of Paris they were engaged in their spoiling role from Abbeville as far south as Paris and the river Loire. The strength of the enemy enemy reaction reaction against them was a measure of their success, but they lost fine men who on being taken prisoner were interrogated interrogated and executed executed by the Gestapo. Blair was awarded his third DSO for these operations. “It was entirely due to Lt Col Mayne’s fine leadership and example, and his utter disregard of danger, that the unit was able to achieve such striking success” success”,, says the citation.
Jeeps of Blair Mayne’s 1st Regiment SAS armed with twin ‘K’ Vickers machine-guns (1200 rounds per minute) operating 100 miles south-east of Paris near Auxerre, August 1944 [Photo Derrick Harrison]
In the last months of the war Blair’s Regiment took part with the Canadian 4th Armoured Division in the final breakout through Germany which ended at the Baltic port of Kiel. They were equipped for this phase with heavily armed Jeeps, each with two pairs of twin Vickers Vickers and some with .50 Browning Browning machine-guns machine-guns (Blair’s vehicle had two additions - a public address system ‘for broadcasting broadcasting rude words to the retreating retreating Germans’ Germans’ and a gramophone on which he would endlessly play Irish ballads). 1st Regiment SAS therefore had the fire power but their effectiveness was constrained by the topography and their lack of protection which made them very vulnerable in the armoured battle. This new role for the SAS resulted in some of the worst losses for the Regiment. On one occasion near Oldenburg Blair won his fourth DSO (which many thought should have been a VC) in a desperate moment when his forward Squadron commander had been killed and several of his men were wounded and under fire. On his arrival Blair calmly dominated the situation and "by a single act of supreme bravery" not only
rescued the wounded but broke “the crust of the enemy defences in the whole of that sector”. sector”. Here by any standards was a remarkable man whose time came, and who for four long years had driven himself unmercifully in operation after operation in different theatres of war. But at what cost to himself? At the end of the war Blair was just thirty, a hero and like many a returning soldier unsuited to normal sedentary life. He sought isolation and got a job with the Falkland Island Survey for two years in the south Atlantic, but it soon ended for him when the pain in his back which he had damaged damaged in the desert desert became acute. He finally had to resign himself to ordinary life. He became Secretary to the Northern Ireland Law Society but remained unsettled - an unhappy and frustrated man on borrowed time. Big Blair was alone when he died at the wheel of his red Riley sports car returning home early one morning. He was just forty years years old. A mythology about Blair Mayne’s exploits and his excesses has grown up over the years. It cannot disguise disguise the truth that this is an extraordinary story of the survival of a soldier against all odds. His hunter’s instinct and speed of reflex, the loyalty and confidence he inspired in his men, and above all his selfless courage will long be remembered in Ulster and in the history of the Special Air Service. Stella Little
Life-size bronze statue of Mayne in Conway Square, near his home at Newtownards in County Down, Ulster
The Litani River Commando Raid, June 1941
On 3 rd June 1941 Lieutenant Mayne with 11 Commando, nearly 400 strong, embarked in Cyprus for a landing in strength to raid the Germans and Vichy French in Syria. An amphibious amphibious assault assault against a defended shore is one of the most difficult and hazardous of operations. On this occasion occasion as a result of navigational error by some of the landing craft, many of the commandos were put ashore in the thick of enemy defences. Their CO and and about half of the other officers and 120 men were all killed. Despite this, the raid achieved a measure of success in which Blair Mayne played a leading part and for which he was mentioned in dispatches. In a letter to his brother the following month he looks back on the operation and describes it in, for him, unusual detail:“We did a good piece of work when we landed behind the French lines at the Litani River. We were fired on as we landed, but got off the beach with a couple of casualties. Then we saw a lot of men and transport about 600 yards up the road. I couldn’t understand it as they seemed to be firing the wrong way, but might have been Aussies [there were Australians in the Allied force advancing north through Palestine]. Palestine]. There was quite a lot of cover - kind of hayfield - I crawled up to thirty yards or so and heard them talking French. So I started whaling grenades grenades at them and my men opened fire. After about five minutes, up went a white flag. There were about forty of them - two machine-guns and a mortar - a nice bag to start with. We had only a couple of men hurt. They [the enemy] had enemy] had been firing at McGonigal’s McGonigal’s crowd who had landed further north. We left those prisoners and pushed on. McGunn, McGunn, a Cameronian, Cameronian, was in charge of my forward section and he got stuck, so we went round him. I had about fifteen men.” “It got hilly and hard going and Frenchies were all over the place. Eventually we came to a path which we followed and came on a dozen mules and one knew that there must be something somewhere and we came on it just round the corner. About thirty of those fellows sitting twenty yards yards away. away. I was round round first with my my revolver, revolver, and the sergeant sergeant had a tommy-gun. tommy-gun. Were they surprised! surprised! I called on them
“jettez-vous à la planche” but they seemed to be a bit slow on the uptake. One of them lifted a rifle and I’m afraid he didn’t have time to be sorry. This was a sort of HQ place, typewriters, ammunition, revolvers, bombs and, more to the point, beer and food. We had been going about about six hours hours and we were ready for it.” “While we were dining the phone rang. We didn’t answer but followed the wire wire and got got another bull bull - four machine-guns machine-guns,, two light machine-guns, two mortars and fifty more prisoners. We lost only two men (sounds like a German communiqué). It was a long time since I had a day like it. Eventually, Eventually, about eight eight hours later, we came came back through the Aussie lines. We were rather tired so the prisoner laddies kindly carried the booty and equipment. The rest of the story can keep until I see you. I am getting rather tired of the country[Egypt] country[Egypt].. The job is not bad, but I can’t stand the natives!”
INDIA: MISSION and MASSACRE “The Raj was the conundrum at the very heart of the British Empire. How on earth did 900 British civil civil servants servants and 70,000 British soldiers manage to govern upwards of 250 million Indians!”
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Faith and Family in South India “By the 1880s most British officials had reverted to the habit of their predecessors predecessors of the 1820s in regarding missionaries missionaries as, at least, absurd, at worst, subversive” subversive” Niall Ferguson (Empire: (Empire: How Britain made made the Modern World) World) 2003
The life of a Christian missionary working in India in the 19 th century was hard. The belief, commitment, strength of character and health demanded of him and his family in those days is difficult to imagine in our more comfortable times. When in 1837 Robert Caldwell, on setting off from Glasgow to sail to India, kissed his mother goodbye, he knew he would never see his parents again, and that, if he survived, he was unlikely to return home for twenty years (in 1841 this was reduced to 10 years, with 7 year gaps between subsequent home leaves). In the event, it was 17 years before Caldwell took his first leave at home, while his father-in-law, Rev. Charles Mault, never had a home leave throughout the 35 years he worked in Travancore.
Robert Caldwell (1814-91), missionary bishop in South India
Robert Caldwell was a Scot, born near Belfast in Ireland, and brought up in a Presbyterian Presbyterian home in which he was the seventh child of eight. His father, William, was a calico printer and his mother, Isabella Hamilton, came from a Glasgow family with strong religious and commercial connections in that city. Robert's siblings included four spinster sisters and two surviving brothers, both of whom eventually established successful businesses in Glasgow, one a silk manufacturer and the other a drysalter. Robert trained as an artist for three years in Dublin, where he attended an Independent chapel and was exposed exposed to the piety of the Church of Ireland. Ireland. Despite some success with his painting, he gave up that career ‘to give myself to God’. Returning to his family home in Glasgow, he worked with the Congregationalists and, on acceptance by the London Missionary Society (LMS), studied at the University of Glasgow. He proved to
be a brilliant student, winning a half share of the Robert Robert Peel prize for graduating top of his year, and developing a deep interest in ‘comparative philology’ through Sir Daniel Sandford, his Greek tutor. He was ordained as a non-conformist minister, and arrived at Madras in January 1838 aged 24. He found himself in the wake of an army of young men and women, described as "idealistic altruistic adventurers intent on spreading the word". Missionaries had only been allowed to work in India as a result of the review of the East India Company's Charter of 1813. Before this, chaplains employed by the Company were explicitly banned from preac preaching hing to the India Indians. ns. The Compa Company's ny's conce concern rn was that well-meaning militant Christian evangelism might so threaten some Indian cultural or religious practices, viewed as barbaric or evil in the drawing rooms of Britain, as to interfere with its vital commercial interests. It has since been suggested that the bloody Mutiny of 1857 was in part an Indian reaction to the zealous way in which these missionaries advanced their 'alien' cause - the very effect which the East India Company had tried to prevent. Caldwell had always been a voracious reader, remembered what he read and had an extraordinary gift for language. His memory for the etymology of words was compendious. In Madras he not only learned Tamil but was so attracted by the beauty of the language that he also explored its rich literature and poetry. In the process he became familiar with many of the other languages of the region. He even learned German purely to read from the work of the Lutheran missionaries who had preceded him in South India. After four years working in Madras he transferred from the LMS to the (Anglican) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel Gospel (SPG). He felt he could do most good by ministering not to the privileged higher castes in the towns and European settlements but to the poorest poorest and most isolated rural communities. In his case this meant Tinnevelly (now Tirunelveli), the SPG’s southernmost District of Madras. From Cape Comorin, the southern tip of India, Tinnevelly extended 100 miles up the east coast. Its western border with Travancore is formed by the Ghauts, a mountain range which lies
between between 40 and 75 miles inland. The District was some 5,500 square miles in size with a population of about 1 ! million. Robert’s mission station was at Idaiyangudi 30 miles east of Cape Comorin and three miles from the sea. Despite having once been been told by a doctor that he was ‘unlikely ‘unlikely to be ever able to bear the trials of a tropical climate’, climate’, Caldwell decided to make the 800 mile journey to Tinnevelly via the Nilgiri Hills on foot ‘to ‘to get acquainted with the people and their ideas, manners, manners, and to talk in a way in which I could never expect to do if I travelled in a palanquin or even a cart’ – the normal European European conveyances. conveyances.
Robert Caldwell aged 23 painted Eliza Mault married Robert in by the LMS before sailing for India Travancore, South India 1844
Eliza
In 1844 Robert married Eliza, the elder daughter of the veteran LMS missionary Charles Mault who, with his wife Martha Mead, had then been working in Travancore Travancore for 25 years. After their marriage marriage at Nagercoil, Nagercoil, Eliza joined her husband at Idaiyangudi. Idaiyangudi. She found herself living in a remote village among poverty-stricken Shanars (known today as Nadars) Nadars) in one of the hottest districts of India, shaded only by the tall Palmyra trees standing on red infertile sand.
Having been brought up in Travancore, Eliza spoke Tamil as a native, and for the last four years had worked full time with her mother Martha in the girl schools that they had set up there. It is not surprising therefore that her main contribution to her husband’s work was in the field of female education incorporating lace classes. This had first been introduced by her mother Martha at Nagercoil in 1822. At an appropriate stage, girls were taught lace-making which provided them with the means of earning money, and hence gave both them and their families a sense of their worth. worth. To some unfortunate girls, who were virtual slaves, it gave the means of buying their freedom. freedom. A good lace-maker lace-maker there could earn twice the wage of an ordinary labourer. Eliza’s example was followed in other SPG missions in Tinnevelly, notably by the Cæmmerers at Nazareth. In 1845, the year in which her eldest son was born, Eliza graphically described the problems of female education and welfare which they were facing: In consequence consequence of their degraded degraded condition, condition, the females of the district had no desire for improvement, nor had they any wish for the education of their children …They were not only extremely ignorant but filthy in their habits, rude in their manners, and quarrelsome. If this was the state of the Christian females who, though long neglected, were in every respect superior to the heathen, it may be imagined how very low the heathen women were sunk. [Eliza to Reverend Vincent Shortland, Secretary to the Madras Diocesan Committee (SPG), 14 July 1845 ] Soon after her arrival, Eliza expanded the girls’ day school (set up by her husband) into a boarding school and, with it, also took over control of the existing boys’ boarding school. The boarding school is the stronghold of a mission, from it comes forth the educated members of the congregation, congregation, the schoolmasters schoolmasters and mistresses, the catechists, the native clergy and the best counsellors. counsellors. [Reverend D Vedamuthu 1866-92, native Tinnevelly clergyman ] It was the beginning of a long campaign which Eliza and Robert waged to improve the prospects of native girls, and through them convince their families of the value of education. Much of the financial support for this depended on their personal reputations at home in England, as it came direct from private donors there, as well
as from SPG, SPCK and other sources in India. Their campaign continued unabated in the following years while Eliza gave birth to four sons and three daughters. Indeed, by the 1860s, her two elder daughters, Isabella (photograph below) and Louisa, were working alongside their mother in superintending the boarding and day schools that she and Robert had by then set up. Martha Mault née Mead of St Neots, Huntingdon
Eliza’s mother, Martha, is part of this story because of the huge influence she wielded, especially on her daughters Eliza and Sarah, and granddaughters Isabella and Louise. Martha was a formidable lady and her example in the trying circumstances of South India provided the distaff distaff backbone backbone to the two missionary missionary generations generations of her family that succeeded hers. It was accepted that her strong character came from a famous ancestor to whom she bore a strong likeness: she was a descendant of one of the four daughters of Oliver Cromwell, the soldier and Puritan firebrand who deposed the King and ruled Britain in the 17 th century. His nickname was ‘Old Ironside’, and it was certainly iron of the spirit which was needed in large measure by these missionary wives. It was what Eliza showed in her later years when her husband was beset both by poor health and attacks on his whole reputation from the outriders of the (High Church) Oxford Movement in Madras and London which will be discussed later.
(Left) Oliver Cromwell 1599-1658, by Samuel Cooper c.1652. (Centre) His descendant, Martha Mault 1794-1870, LMS photo.
(Right) Isabella Caldwell 1848-1933, Martha’s eldest granddaughter who married Rev Joseph Wyatt in 1868, and so they became the third South Indian missionary generation in the family’s female descent.
Caldwell and his people
A missionary in the field in rural Tinnevelly faced many adversities. There was the pressure of the climate, and that of a large population. Caldwell had to walk many miles on sandy tracks under the sun to reach his people, most of whom were grindingly poor, being dependant almost entirely on the products of the Palmyra tree, and many lived in ignorance and were often enslaved by superstition and idolatry. In July 1877 a severe drought caused famine famine in Tinnevelly and Ramnad; then, just as it was subsiding, the same districts were struck by heavy rain and destructive floods. This double disaster lasted for seven months. Caldwell and his missionaries were seen on the ground throughout this terrible time, helping to relieve distress without favouring any religion or caste. One effect of this help given to the sufferers without distinction was a prolonged increase in the ‘accessions’ to Christianity after the floods had subsided. Critics referred to these newcomers as ‘rice Christians’, although only a small proportion of them actually reverted back to heathenism. SPG accessions up to January 1878 numbered 16,000 and by the following November had reached 22,000. From the start, Caldwell was at one with the Tamils and their thought processes. processes. They valued highly his Tamil sermons propounding propounding the simple truths, and eventually came to look on him as their patriarch. The strict system of evangelism he adopted seemed to suit the Shanars who Shanars who were the majority caste in Tinnevelly. The Shanars are Shanars are simple, hardworking and frugal. They have a strong loyalty to their ‘race’ and are remarkably biddable. Thus, when a village chief gives up demon worship, the whole village together will follow him. Caldwell’s method was to use the old existing village hierarchical structure to raise congregations, establish a pattern for Christian villages based on the model at his mission at Idaiyangudi, and to build churches. churches. At the same time, despite opposition opposition from the Madras committee of the SPG, he set up committees and other structures to encourage the development of independence within the
native church. This included the raising of their own funds, and the building of many ‘daughter’ ‘daughter’ churches churches in the district, mostly from money contributed locally by the villagers themselves. In the words of his obituary in The Times, Times, Caldwell ‘had ‘had seen the Christians in Tinnevelly increase from 6,000 to 100,000’. 100,000 ’. Few of these accessions, however, came from the higher castes despite the considerable efforts he made towards them. Caldwell lived his life for his flock, bringing to bear all his great intellectual and spiritual powers on their behalf, and identifying himself with their concerns. concerns. As he once wrote, ‘my ‘my residence in India for by far the t he larger portion of my life, and the deep interest I have always taken in India and everything Indian makes me more an Indian than anything else’. else ’. An illustration illustrati on of the charismatic effect effect he had was the occasion of the consecration in 1880 of Holy Trinity church at Idaiyangudi of which he was the architect, and which had taken him 33 years to build, having himself laid the foundation stone in 1847. With space in the church for for only 3000, the consecration was attended by nearly 9,000 natives of whom 7,000 were Christians and nearly 2000 Hindus. That there were 35 native clergymen present present reflected reflected the efforts efforts Caldwell had made towards the indigenous future of the church. Robert and Eliza Caldwell are now Julie Draper both buried beneath the chance chancell of Holy Trinity. Trinity.
Idaiyangudi today: (Left) The newly refurbished Pastor’s bungalow and chapel – an improvement on the 17x11 foot room Caldwell had in 1841. (Right) Holy Trinity, the church took Caldwell 33 years to build.
Fame as an author and scholar Caldwell was a prolific author (a complete list of his published works numbers 29) and a reviser of the Tamil Bible, Prayer and
Hymn Books. His books on Dravidian languages, history and the ancient civilisation of the peoples of South India, to which he devoted much of his life, were described as ‘one ‘ one of the monumental works of the age’ age’ and lifted him to European fame as a scholar. His research was extensive, including not only the study of palm leaf manuscripts and vernacular literature but even some archaeological excavation. His conclusions raised the reputation of the Tamil language by demonstrating its antiquity independent of Sanskrit, and indicating a common cultural heritage among those who speak the various languages of South India, Tamil, Malayalam, Telugu, Kannada etc. He gave this distinct family of languages the name “Dravidian”. His work thus provided a linguistic and cultural identity to the lower castes, the Tamils in particular. It brought thousands into the Christian church giving them access to education and so, over the intervening years, has raised their status. status. In effect effect Caldwell helped to launch a Dravidian movement, much broader than he can ever have envisaged. It is now widely recognised as the ‘Tamil Renaissance’. Renaissance’. The Bishop and the Madras Diocesan Committee (MDC) At Calcutta in March 1877 after nearly forty years in India and at the age of 63, 63, Caldwell was consecrated consecrated as bishop. bishop. It had long been felt that Tinnevelly should have a bishop of its own and in many ways Caldwell had been carrying out the coordinating function in his district. district . Sadly, the last days of his episcopate were to be blighted by various disputes among missionaries and between Caldwell and the SPG Committee 500 miles away in Madras. This committee came to be dominated by men influenced by the Oxford Movement, Movement, some of whose practices were already being imposed on Indian congregations under protest. These men tended to distrust Caldwell because of his background background in the nonconformist nonconformist evangelical evangelical tradition, and they acted to frustrate his measures for the self-government of the native Church. They almost succeeded in closing Caldwell College by withdrawing its funding, and did withdraw recognition from Eliza’s long standing Female College at Tuticorin on a technicality. Something of her formidable personality can be seen in her magnificent rejoinder (dated June 1887) to what she considered was an act of spite:
I beg to call your attention to the fact that the Committee were never asked to recognise my school so that it was gratuitous on their part to pass such an unfeeling and uncalled for resolution. resoluti on. I cannot help feeling that an insult has been offered to my life-long voluntary labours of forty-three years in the cause of female education. … Now that the Committee have thus gone out of their way to ignore my labours, I consider myself quite independent of them (for I receive no help from them) and I intend acting henceforth on my own responsibility without reference to them. When the action of the Committee is known to friends at home I wonder who will be the sufferers. The Caldwell name had considerable influence in England, and Eliza’s last sentence was not an an idle threat. Caldwell had twice appealed successfully to the President of the SPG, the Archbishop of Canterbury Edward Benson, to reverse decisions by the MDC, and now did so about this ruling and the whole role of the MDC. The Archbishop in December 1887 advised the SPG to call the MDC to order and to restructure its organisation abroad so that proper account was taken of the views of bishops and others working at a distance in the field. Unfortunately his ‘advice’ seems to have had virtually virtuall y no no effect on the MDC in Madras. In particular they took further steps to counteract the measures Caldwell had taken to foster self-governance in the native church on the grounds that it was in its infancy. Subsequent events proved how wrong they were: That.in 1896 [five years after Caldwell’s death] it was possible for Tinnevelly to become, by contemporary standards, a properlyconstituted Anglican diocese, is a measure of the reactionary, negative and misguided character of the opposition Caldwell faced, and a measure, too, of the soundness of his own vision and aspirations. [Y Vincent Kumaradoss, “Robert Caldwell: a scholar-missionary in colonial South India” (ISPCK, 2007) ] Now, looking back over more than a century, these irritants to Caldwell’s work during his last days seem insignificant in the light of his achievements. His life story and saintly qualities are still remembered in India, and the influence of his name and the schools that he and his wife founded echo today in the lives of many of the men and women of South India whatever their faith. At the end of his
last visit to England when friends tried to persuade the old missionary to remain at home, his reply illustrates his affection for the people of Tamilnad: ‘I wish to die amongst the people for whom I have lived’, and in 1891 after half a century of labour, his wish was fulfilled.
Robert and Eliza Caldwell, Caldwell, circa 1880
Conclusion It is said that by Indian Independence in 1947 after 130 years of unrestricted missionary effort in India as a whole, Christianity had made little headway with the masses. For the most part, new Christians were drawn from marginal groups – the lower castes, hill tribes, Anglo-Indians. The large accessions to Christianity made by Caldwell and his colleagues were primarily among the lower castes of Tinnevelly, and the Shanars Shanars in particular. Yet it was not each accession itself but the elementary education and the encouragement to benefit from it that proved to be important. It led to the rising selfconfidence of the Tamil people, to which Caldwell’s scholarly work on local languages and history had greatly contributed.
Today Tinnevelly is a thriving diocese of the Church of South India which continues to try hard to improve the lot of the poor masses. It now has the help of a new class of Christian-educated Tamils who have reached positions of influence that were never open to their
forefathers. Caldwell is high among the names with which this widening of Tamil horizons is associated. But it was the missionary wives who provided the backbone to their ministry – from Martha Mault to daughters Eliza and her sister Sarah, and finally to granddaughter Isabella Caldwell – they set up homes and managed their large families between two continents, and quietly worked with extraordinary devotion for the education of native children, and in particular particular for the encouragement encouragement and well-being of young Indian women. That was more than a century ago, but there is an echo of their work in a report on local skills training in the late 1960s which reads: “A “A flourishing lace-making and embroidery industry is still going on here, but reduced reduced from the t he past when it involved involved thousands of women”. women”.
Statue of Caldwel Caldwell, l, the “Pioneer Dravidian Linguist” which was erected in Madras in 1968, and the Indian postage stamps issued in 2014 to celebrate the bi-centenary of his birth.
My God – Maiwand! On leaving Afghanistan in 2014 after twelve years of an, as yet, inconclusive and costly war, Britain is in a reflective mood. Many will be unaware that this is the fourth intervention British soldiers have made in this ancient, huge, grindingly poor, physically inhospitable, unstable country. Landlocked in central Asia, bordering five other Moslem countries plus China and Russia, Afghanistan is almost almost unchanged since the the first Anglo-Afghan Anglo-Afghan war of 1839-42 1839-42 (which is recalled in my earlier article “Death on the Pale Horse”). Below Horse”). Below is the story of a battle that that occurred occurred in 1880, towards towards the end of our second Afghan war when a British/Indian force suffered “one of the most serious defeats ever sustained sustained by the British Army in India”. India”.
BACKGROUND Britain was then responsible for the defence of India’s troubled north-west frontier region (now part of Pakistan). As they do today, events over the border in Afghanistan were exerting a wide influence and we enter the story, as we did in 2002, with another Afghan rebellion in progress. Following the murder of the British Resident and his staff at Kabul in September 1879, a British/Indian force under General Frederick Roberts came there to exact retribution. In the process a new Amir of Afghanistan was installed. He was a British protégé acceptable to many Afghans, but not to Ayub Khan, the Governor of Herat and his followers. So Ayub, the brother of the deposed Amir, set out at the end of May 1880 to replace the new Amir himself. However, he was faced with a march of 650 miles to reach Roberts at Kabul, and with the prospect of opposition on the way from the British/Indian troops at Kandahar.
News of Ayub’s progress, and the increasing increasing size of his army as he approached, began to unsettle the Kandahar countryside. Thus, on 3 rd July 1880 a column of some 2,700 fighting troops (one Infantry and one Cavalry Brigade) under Brigadier George Burrows set out from the city. Their immediate task was to support a force of 6000 British-
equipped and allegedly loyal tribesmen who were holding a blocking position on the Helmand river opposite opposite the fort at Girishk (below). (below). With this increase in strength Burrows’ orders were to defeat or at least disperse Ayub and his army. Sketch by Maj Gen MA Biddulph (The Rifles Museum, Salisbury)
The fort at Girishk overlooking the Helmand river, the site of the mutiny of the blocking force on 11th July
Burrows’ column joined the ‘6000 loyal tribesmen’ on the Helmand River on the 11 th July, but his arrival appears to have prompted the mutiny of most of these Afghan ‘allies’. They went off to join Ayub, leaving Burrows’ depleted force to face the approaching rebel army in countryside where every man’s hand had suddenly turned against them. It was not possible for Burrows to hold the line of the Helmand river, which at that season was mostly fordable, so he withdrew to a camp at Kushk-i-Nahkud (below). From there he could cover the direct approach to Kandahar as well as the route to Ghazni and Kabul which lay through the village of Maiwand ten miles to the north of his camp. Sketch by Maj Gen MA Biddulph (The Rifles Museum, Salisbury)
Kushk-i-Nahkud, where Burrows’ force was camped before the battle
Maiwand - The advance to contact, and then the headlong retreat back to Kandahar (Burrows Force movements in red)
Burrows’ infantry consisted of the 66 th Regiment (they later became the Royal Berkshires) equipped with the Martini-Henry 0.45 breechloading (BL) rifle, and two Regiments of Bombay Native Infantry: the 1st Grenadiers and 30 th Jacob’s Rifles, both with the Snider 0.577 BL rifle firing a round heavy enough to bowl over the most dedicated fanatic. However, the 30th had seen no active service and included a high proportion of young recruits whose weapon training was incomplete. There were two cavalry regiments, the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry (260 sabres) and 3 rd Sind Horse (200 sabres), and half a Company of Bombay Sappers & Miners. The artillery consisted of the six 9 pounder rifled-muzzle-loaded (RML) guns of E Battery, B Brigade, Royal Horse Artillery and six smoothbore guns (6 and 12 pounders) pounders) just recovered recovered from the Afghan mutineers mutineers with detachments provided by hurriedly-trained men from the 66 th.
ADVANCE ADVANCE TO T O CONTACT - 27th July morning Narrative of Captain Mosley Mayne, Mayne, commanding commanding a squadron squadron of rd the 3 Bombay Light Cavalry.
“ Even by nine in the morning the heat had become intense. intense. It was to become hotter still, with the temperature reaching over 120 degrees in the shade, had there been any. Fifty sabres of my Regiment under Lieutenant TP Geoghegan Geoghegan formed the Advanced Advanced Guard, Guard, some 600 yards ahead of me, with my Squadron and four guns of Major GF Blackwood’s Blackwood’s E/B Battery providing support. support. We were marching along a wide flat valley, its sandy desert floor cut by dry watercourses and covered with flinty stones and scattered scrub. The shimmering haze, which had already given way to mirages, made it difficult to see clearly for more than about 1500 yards across the baking ground.” ground. ” “The orders for our move to intercept the enemy at Maiwand had been given late the night before, much of which had been spent in packing up our camp at Khusk-i-Nakhud Khusk-i-Nakhud which was to be struck by 5.30 a.m. It was thus an already tired force that began marching north early that morning, the 27 th July, few of whom had eaten since the previous evening At about 10 a.m. we saw small bodies of cavalry far away up the valley and a little later when a halt was sounded and and Brigadier Brigadier Burrows, Burrows, his deputy deputy Thomas Thomas Nuttall and and their staff rode up to the front, front, I used a pair of of powerful glasses glasses to observe observe the enemy. I saw several large bodies of cavalry moving across our front while a few smaller groups groups came nearer and watched us. Beyond their cavalry and far away on the slopes slopes beneath the high hills towards Gurmao, I saw dark masses, which I first took for belts of trees. As I later learned it was in fact Ayub’s army army in column of route marching from the west towards Maiwand, whose buildings and trees I could see 3 or 4 miles ahead of us. ” “ A mile or so furthe f urtherr on we reached reached the t he village of Mundabad, Mundabad, just a few houses and mud-walled mud-walled gardens, gardens, which our scouts scouts had reported to be unoccupied. On the northern (enemy) side (enemy) side of this village was a wide ravine, 50 to 100 foot wide with its banks up to 20 foot high (see map below). below). Here Major Blackwood and Brigadier Nuttall
halted to reconnoitre. While this was happening happening I saw Lieutenant Hector Maclaine on our left with his two guns and an escort of Sind Horse galloping off towards the enemy, enemy, coming into action on the open ground about a mile in front of the ravine. Major Blackwood then ordered me to escort Lieutenant NP Fowell’s two guns to a position on the right about 500 yards yards beyond the ravine and from there at about 10.50 a.m. we fired the first rounds of the battle, shelling the enemy’ enemy’ss cavalry who quickly fell back. back.”” “ In due course the rest of the force arrived and took up positions in the open some 1500 yards beyond the Mundabad ravine. The six guns of E/B deployed deployed in the centre centre of the line, line, the Grenadiers Grenadiers and the Smoothbore Battery were on the left flank, and Jacob’s Rifles and the 66 th on the right where a shallow dried-out water course gave some protection. Most of the cavalry were held behind the left flank, and the baggage and its guard remained back at Mundabad under Colonel JHP Malcolmson of the Sind Horse.” Horse. ” THE BATTLE BEGINS – 27th July late morning and afternoon. based on an account by Captain Mosley Mayne, 3 rd Bombay Light Cavalry. “When the enemy cavalry cleared the front we were able to see indistinctly indisti nctly masses and masses masses of men. men. Due to the haze it was only when they moved about that we could distinguish them as men and not a dense forest ”. ”.
Sketch of the battlefield showing the two villages on higher ground to the south and the ravine and dry riverbeds (white) on the plain, where Burrows adopted an exposed position. British/Indian positions and line of their retreat are in red, and the Afghan attacks in light blue.
Intelligence sources had estimated the enemy strength at ten regular Kabuli and Herati infantry regiments totalling 6000 men and 4000 cavalry supported by 36 guns. The unknown unknown factor was was the number of tribesmen and Ghazis (religious fanatics who fought like fiends) that had joined Ayub during his march. In the end we found that there were at least 15,000 of these irregulars, so that our little force was suddenly confronted by an army of over 25,000 25,000 men. “They began to open fire, battery after battery, till we could count about 30 guns. My Squadron was in line on the right flank of Major Blackwood’s Blackwood’s guns; there was not a vestige of cover and my horses now began to suffer.” suffer. ” “This bombardment continued and by noon the mass of Afghan cavalry in loose open order had moved round to threaten our left flank, while crowds crowds of white-robed white-robed Ghazis advanced advanced on our right from the direction of Maiwand. Maiwand. Sharp firing firing in our rear rear told that the
Baggage Guard too were engaged. engaged. ” Two of the smoothbore guns were moved across to support the 66 th, commanded by Lieutenant Colonel James Galbraith, so that when the Ghazis with their banners attacked our right flank they ran into a blizzard of Martini-Henry rounds and case shot and were mown down in scores. However the superior numbers of the enemy despite their heavy losses had effectively turned both our flanks, our firing line on the left being extended by moving two companies each of the Grenadiers and the Rifles across there while our rear was being protected by the cavalry and their carbines. “The enemy, cleverly using dry watercourses and folds in the ground as covered approaches, now succeeded in establishing positions only about 500 yards away in a ravine running parallel to our front where only their banners and the heads of their mounted leaders were visible visible (it later proved to be an extension of the ravine in front of Mundabad). Suddenly guns opened up from this ravine right in front of my position and Major Blackwood Blackwood was wounded. My Squadron had by this time been standing passively for fully three hours under fire from artillery and now small arms, arms, and I had lost more than a third of my horses and was at at about only Troop strength. Around 1.30 p.m. the remnants of my unit were moved across to reinforce the left rear of our force where I found that a lot of Ghazis with masses of cavalry behind them were pressing very close. From there I saw Captain John Slade coming out of action at a trot with the smoothbore guns which, being without their own transport, transport, were withdrawing to replenish with ammunition. This seemed to unsettle the men who I heard remarking ‘what is this, our guns going back?’ .” .”
(L) Mosley Mayne (1845-1910), Captain 3rd Bombay Cavalry. (R) Captain John R Slade RHA, who took over command of E/B Battery when Major Blackwood was severely wounded. He was awarded the CB for his role in the rearguard during the retreat to Kandahar. Slade later became a General and was C-in-C in Egypt in 1897. Reports on the battle by both officers are quoted in this article.
DISASTER! - 27th July 2.30-3pm By early afternoon the fate of Burrows’ force was probably already sealed. By then, if he was to avoid the envelopment of his tiny fighting line of just over 1700 men by this army which was at least ten times larger, he needed to have made a measured withdrawal to the strong defensive position offered by Mundabad and its ravine. There, water, all his reserve ammunition and supplies were available to him. Instead, his his men were completely exposed in the open having suffered the depredations caused mainly by the enemy’s artillery but also by thirst and exhaustion from the brazen heat beating down on on them.
Casualties in the British/Indian line had begun to rise sharply. Although on the right the 66 th were almost untouched, the Grenadiers on the left had lost a third of their strength and Jacob’s Rifles, who had lost almost a quarter, had their only British officer killed and were seriously unsettled - in part by the departure of the Smoothbore Battery. Captain Slade, who had taken over command of E/B from
the wounded Blackwood, had lost a quarter of his manpower and over half the horses. At about 2.30 p.m. the Afghan horde surged forward again and this time succeeded in overwhelming the two isolated and inexperienced companies of the Rifles. Rifles. They fled into the rear ranks of the Grenadiers and, as Burrows reported, “the “ the infantry gave way, and commencing from the left, rolled up like a wave”. wave ”. Gunner WM Williams of E/B Battery described the gun position where “ many of the draught horses were kicking and plunging in the last agonies of death. The enemy, led by their chiefs who carried large silken banners of various colours, charged down on the guns, yelling and shouting as they came on”. on”. After firing a couple of rounds of case shot, Captain Slade gave the order to limber limber up. up. On the left Maclaine’s two guns were overrun and a vicious fight ensued around them with with handspikes, sponge-rods and Khyber knives. Sergeant Patrick Mullane won his Victoria Cross when he managed to save one team and, having run back under fire to pick up a wounded driver and place him on the limber, smashed his galloping horses through the ranks ranks of Ghazis. On the right Lieutenant EG Osborne’s two guns got out with difficulty but he was shot dead helping his gunners to hook on. Slade deployed the four remaining guns of the Battery about 400 yards back to try and cover the retreat; but the situation was beyond saving and he had to withdraw to Mundabad from where E/B covered the remnants of broken units streaming off the battlefield. THE CAVALRY CHARGE – 27th July afternoon 2.15 pm. based on accounts by Brigadier Thomas Nuttall, commanding the Cavalry Brigade, and Captain Mosley Mayne, 3rd Bengal Cavalry.
A vain attempt was made by the cavalry to charge the enemy and so give the infantry time to reform but “the “the terrible artillery fire to which they had been exposed, and from which they had suffered severely, severely, had so shaken them” them” that they were unable to deliver the charge fully home and it “was “was of but little effect ”. ”.
Pen and ink sketch by TD MacFarlane 1890 (National Army Museum)
“The charge of Nuttall’s cavalry at Maiwand”. The bareheaded officer with sword raised is said to be Capt Mosley Mayne, 3rd Bengal Cavalry.
Captain Mayne, who took part, wrote that “a “a minute or two was spent in forming a sort of line but we were all mixed, our men and Sind horsemen. The word was given to charge and we went off, heading to about the point where the 66 th had been before the break. We got amongst and cut up a group of Ghazis who were closely pursuing the Grenadiers Grenadiers but the charge bore away to the right and we retired into the ravine in front of Mundabad. ” In the ensuing confusion Mayne himself with the remnants of the 3 rd Cavalry joined the rearguard for the retreat, which was formed by Slade and E/B’s guns with a Troop of the Sind Horse under Lieutenant AM Monteith. DESTRUCTION OF THE 66th – 27th July 3pm. based on accounts by Bryan Perrett in “Against All Odds!” and a senior Afghan artillery officer.
When the fugitive Grenadiers, Rifles and Sappers fled into the dry watercourse occupied by the 66 th, they swelled and disorganised the ranks forcing the regiment out out into the open. Colonel Galbraith had no alternative but to conform to the general retreat and withdraw, which the 66th did losing some eighty soldiers before reaching the main ravine in front of Khig, a 1000 yards to the east of Mundabad. In crossing the steep-sided ravine, the regiment lost what remained of its internal order. Those on the left made for Mundabad Mundabad which
was in turmoil: Slade’s guns were firing away, the rearguard was being put together, while frantic efforts efforts were being made to get the wounded off on carts, horses, camels and mules, but without most of the civilian transport drivers who had already fled. The remainder of the 66 th succeeded in effecting a rally on the south bank of the ravine at Khig when Colonel Galbraith uncased uncased one of the Colours around which, as he fell, a group of about 200 formed. They were surrounded, their commanding officer was dead and they were doomed but, losing men all the while, they retired slowly through Khig to a mud-walled garden where a second stand was made. There died Major Blackwood the wounded commander of E/B Battery, Lieutenant Henn commanding the Sappers & Miners, and the remaining officers and men of the 66 th who in turn supported the Colours until each soldier was shot down. Even in the flush of their victory, the Afghans were awed by the end of the 66 th. “Surrounded by most of the Afghan army, they fought on until only eleven men were left, inflicting enormous loss on the enemy”, enemy ”, wrote one of Ayub’s senior artillery officers. “These men charged out of the garden and died with their faces to the enemy, their conduct was the admiration of all who witnessed it.” it. ”
(L) Lt Col James Galbraith, commanding the 66th, killed at Maiwand during the withdrawal withdrawal towards Khig. (C) “The last stand of the 66th Regiment” by Peter Archer. (R) Major George Blackwood commanding E/B Battery RHA was severely wounded and then killed with the 66th at Khig.
THE RETREAT TO KANDAHAR – – 27th July 3pm to 28th 6pm. based on accounts by Captain JR Slade RHA and Captain Mosley Mayne, 3rd Bengal Cavalry.
For the survivors of Burrow’s force the retreat over the 45 miles to Kandahar was an ordeal that was even worse than the battle itself. Only the artillery and the baggage guard had been able to preserve their unit discipline and it was around the former, now under Captain Slade, that a rearguard was was hurriedly formed. He described the scene: “ All over the wide expanse of desert are to be seen men in twos and threes retreating. Camels have thrown their loads; sick men, almost naked, are astride donkeys, mules and camels; the bearers have thrown down their doolies (covered litters) litters) and left the wounded to their fate. The guns and carriages are crowded with the helpless wounded suffering the tortures of the damned; horses are limping along with ugly wounds and men are pressing eagerly to the rear in the hope of finding water. Hordes of of irregular horsemen are to be seen amongst our baggage baggage animals, animals, relentlessly cutting our men down and looting. A few alone alone remain with Brigadier Brigadier Burrows to try and turn the rout into an orderly retreat.” retreat. ” “ And so it goes on for five or six miles, till the sun begins to sink serenely serenely into the horizon. horizon. The cries for ‘Water! Water!’ become more frequent and louder. Most suffer in silence for they they can can hardly speak. The wounded open their mouths to show a dry parched parched tongue. After a long search in the dead of night a deep well full of muddy water is found in the village of Hauz-i-Madat. There is just sufficient to satisfy satisfy the wounded and those in severe distress, distress, but none can be spared for the already worn out and exhausted horses. Everyone’s Everyone’s hand is against us. Villagers from all sides creep up behind the low mud walls and fire on us, and many a gallant fellow who had battled against the trials of the night fell victim to the jezail ” (a long Afghan musket). Gunner James Collis Collis of E/B won his Victoria Cross for drawing the fire of these snipers onto himself and so enabled many wounded and straggling soldiers to escape. “ At last the River Argandab Argandab is reached; reached; it is 11 a.m. and 32 miles from the battlefield. With what joy and delight do the unfortunate unfortunate
men and horses, who have not wetted their lips during the night, welcome the sight of it!”. it!”. But they still had 13 dangerous miles to go before before reaching the Citadel Citadel at Kandahar. Kandahar. Mayne, who who was one one of the last of the rearguard to arrive, came in “at “ at 6 p.m. Wednesday 28 th July rather exhausted exhausted having had no food since Monday Monday evening the th 26 . My horse could hardly walk he was so done”. done ”. There were 2566 British/Indian troops at Maiwand: of these 962 (37%) did not survive the battle and the retreat. Only 161 wounded reached Kandahar. AFTERMATH Over 2000 horses and other transport animals had been killed or captured, and during the retreat five smoothbore guns had to be abandoned for lack of horses able to draw them. Lieutenant Maclaine of E/B, whose two 9 pounder guns were captured in the battle, was wounded and later was himself captured in the t he search for water. A month later his captors cut his throat when General Frederick Roberts, following his epic march from Kabul, attacked and defeated Ayub’s army outside Kandahar in the final operation of the 2nd Afghan War. Roberts then captured all Ayub’s guns, which which had proved so lethal at Maiwand, and recaptured the two guns of E/B that had been overrun during the battle. Sketch by Captain JR Slade RHA (Rifles Museum, Salisbury)
Panorama of the Maiwand battlefield looking north from Mundabad
Roberts’ success (he was later made Lord Roberts of Kandahar) was in part due to the damage that Burrows’ force had inflicted on Ayub Khan’s army at such cost the month month before. It took Ayub Ayub a week week to
clear the Maiwand battlefield of his dead, which included 1500 of his regulars and up to 4000 Ghazis. More of his men left for home with the bodies of their kinsmen and he had to leave 1500 seriously wounded behind at Maiwand. Whatever the criticisms of Burrows’ battlefield tactics, and they were many, his troops’ exertions had helped to achieve the strategic objective he had been set of preventing preventing Ayub’s advance advance on Kabul. Kabul. Viewing this costly defeat from across the intervening century it is easy to become engrossed with who was to blame, the criticisms of the British command and the controversies that raged about these events - and in some respects still do. Brigadier Burrows received received sympathetic sympatheti c treatment and was eventually promoted. Following adverse reports submitted by Burrows and Nuttall, the commanding officers of the two cavalry regiments (Major AP Currie, 3 rd Bombay Light Cavalry, and Colonel JHP Malcolmson, 3 rd Sind Horse) faced court martial the following year but were acquitted “with honour”. Royal Artillery Historical Trust
Sergeant Sergea nt Patrick Patri ck Mullane VC. Gunner James Collis VC both of E/B Battery, Royal Horse Artillery. Mullane won his medal when the gun position was overrun by the enemy, and Collis during the long retreat to Kandahar
ACCOLADES Maiwand is essentially a story of bravery and endurance in the most adverse conditions, and of unselfishness and dedication in a long and difficult retreat. It is about the extraordinary courage of the native infantry who, despite suffering huge casualties, stood their ground in the open until finally overwhelmed by numbers; of the gallant sacrifice of those young British soldiers of the 66 th who were surrounded but fought on around their Colours Colours to the last man. Then there was the steadiness of the cavalry who stood and suffered heavily through 3 hours of bombardment without being able to take any action. And finally there was the discipline of the Horse Artillery, who “maintained “maintained their military formation and morale throughout ” and became the backbone of the retreat “to “to whom”, whom”, in the words of the Viceroy, “many “many of the survivors of the 27 th July owe their lives”. lives ”. Their contribution was reflected in the decorations awarded to men of E/B Battery: two VCs (Sgt Mullane and Gnr Collis), a CB (Capt Slade) and eight DCMs.
Fifteen years later James Collis forfeited his Victoria Cross when he was found guilty of bigamy. But it was restored to him him in 1901 1901 by King Edward VII who said that, if it came to it, Collis could wear it on the scaffold! Collis was typical of the hardy British soldier who went to fight the Empire’s wars for a shilling or so a day and his keep. They had good fellowship, harsh discipline and all the excitement and danger a young man could ask for. Kipling may well have been thinking of what some of the survivors of Maiwand had faced when he wrote in ‘The Young British Soldier’ (1892) Soldier’ (1892) :When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains And the women women come come out to cut up what what remains, remains, Just roll to your rifle rifle and blow out your brains brains An’ go to your Gawd Gawd like a soldier….. soldier…..
Ayub Khan 1857-1914, Governor of Herat, the victor of Maiwand
!"#$% "' #($ )*+#+%( ,$-$.# .# /.+0.'1 The Wisdom of Hindsight!
Initial Influences Circumstances dictated that Brigadier Burrows’ column came to be operating in a very different situation to that envisaged when it set out from Kandahar on 3 July 1880. The change took place on 11 July when some 6000 British-equipped local Afghan troops in a blocking position at Girishk mutinied and left to join Ayub Khan’s rebel army approaching from Herat. General JM Primrose at Kandahar, although expecting the 4th and 28th Native Infantry Regiments to reach him by the end of the month, until then had insufficient troops to secure his garrison and was unable to reinforce Burrows to compensate for his loss. Ayub’s approach had also unsettled the countryside around, and local Afghan villagers had turned against the British. The result was that when Burrows later advanced on Maiwand his force could move only slowly being
“encumbered with an enormous quantity of ordnance, commissariat stores and baggage baggage”” which could not safely be left behind at the camp at Kushk-i-Nahkud. Rifles Museum, Salisbury
Lieutenant G de la M Faunce of the 66th commanded the 42 men of his Regiment, who helped E/B Battery to man the recaptured Smoothbores
Smoothbore Battery Following the recapture of the six smoothbore muzzle-loading (ML) guns (four 6 pdrs and two 12 pdrs) from the mutineers at Girishk, insufficient horses for for the ammunition wagons could be found. It was therefore decided to burn the wagons and dump most of the smoothbore ammunition in the Helmand River leaving only 52 rounds per gun. In the event, this decision had repercussions at Maiwand when these guns had to be taken out of action to replenish with ammunition. This unsettled unsettled the infantry at a critical stage.
The Commanders Both Brigadiers Burrows and Nuttall in their mid 50s were rather elderly for field command. command. George Burrows, the force commander, was an infantryman who had been on the staff for the previous eight years and had not seen active service since the Indian Mutiny, a quarter of a century before. Thomas Nuttall, the Cavalry Brigade
commander, had fought in Abyssinia in 1867 but had never himself served in a cavalry regiment.
Intelligence Burrows’ knowledge of Ayub’s whereabouts, strength and intentions was woefully inadequate. Apart from from information gained gained from from his his cavalry patrols all his other intelligence was about three days old. Meanwhile Ayub, it would appear, was much better informed about British movements. It meant that, until sighting Ayub’s Ayub’s army on the morning of 27 July, Burrows was unaware of its full strength and was also surprised to find his enemy’s main body already at Maiwand before him. Even when one of his patrols did give him information relating to Ayub’s early advance on Maiwand, he waited two days for confirmation. In the end he was suddenly forced to act act and gave his orders at 10.30 p.m. on the 26 th for the advance early next morning, which resulted in few of his men getting any rest the night before the battle. Colonel Leigh Maxwell has been particularly critical of the intelligence collection plan, which he describes as rigid, unimaginative unimaginat ive and lacking in initiative initiati ve and aggression. A more robust patrol plan should have been implemented as soon as the enemy’s main body began to close in after its 300 mile march from Herat. There is no doubt that this deficiency put Burrows at a disadvantage at the start of the battle from which he was never able to recover.
Initial Deployment Burrows had been ordered to prevent Ayab by-passing Kandahar and moving on to Ghazni and then Kabul. Arriving near Maiwand too late to make any defensive preparations, he found that the enemy’s main body was already marching from the west across the valley ahead of him, apparently about to move on up the Khakrez valley, east towards Ghazni
“Maiwand” from The London Illustrated News: (L) ‘Negotiating a 9 Pounder down the ravine‘ and (R) ‘Lead team of Lieutenant Maclaine’s guns coming into action’ by Stanley L Wood 1905
Thus, despite the overwhelming numbers opposing him, he had to attack immediately to deflect deflect them away from this course. So it was that the guns of E/B in order to be in range of Ayub’s line of march were initially deployed in advanced positions on the flat open floor of this wide valley, about a mile out from from Mundabad. As the rest of the force arrived, they formed up around the guns with the baggage echelon remaining back at Mundabad in a good defensive position protected protected by a ravine on the north north (valley) side side of the village. village. Six weeks after the battle, Burrows, seeking to justify the positions his troops had occupied, claimed that his hand was forced by the length of the initial “unauthorised” advance of Maclaine’s guns beyond the ravine: “ I was compelled compelled to send send the cavalry cavalry and artillery artillery in support at once and hasten on the infantry. Thus the whole affair was precipitated and I had lost the opportunity of reconnoitring the enemy and selecting the position in which I would give battle”. battle” . Maclaine, a rather arrogant Old Etonian, could certainly be awkward
and had a reputation as a ‘glory hunter’, but it reflects no credit on Burrows that he should have attributed his troubles to a dead subaltern.
Reconnaissance We do not know whether it was Burrow’s intention to fight the whole battle from the exposed position that he occupied initially. As a place from which to face a vastly superior force, it had some major drawbacks. It was almost totally exposed both to enemy observation and to the sun, and re-supply of water and ammunition was at least half a mile away. Worse still, so rapid had been the deployment of the force that no proper reconnaissance of the ground was undertaken by Burrows or his staff. It wasn’t until after midday midday that it was found that an extension of the ravine in front of Mundabad ran right across the front of the British/Indian position (later measured as being at a distance distance of between 300 and 600 yards away). away). This provided the enemy with cover from direct fire for his troops forming up for attack. Although the desert floor of the valley looked flat, it was in fact cut by folds in the ground and numerous dry watercourses, which the enemy used to advantage. There is some suggestion that Burrows, having deflected the enemy from continuing towards Ghazni by his attack, intended to withdraw to Mundabad and possibly Khig which offered some cover and defensive positions that he could more easily have held. Unfortunately, such a move became impossible once his force had been outflanked outflanked and become become closely closely engaged. engaged.
E/B Battery gunners passing between the 66th Regiment on the left and the Indian cavalry on the right, before Maiwand, by RC Woodville
The Afghan Artillery The British seriously underestimated the fire power of the enemy artillery. The Afghans had 30 guns (as against the 12 12 under Major Blackwood). Most of them were 6 pounders but they also had three modern 14 pounder BL Armstrongs. The crippling effect on Burrows’ troops of more than three hours of their bombardment in the open is reflected in the reports, reports, which have been quoted. Almost all the British/Indian casualties up until the withdrawal were caused by gunfire. The Afghans’ Afghans’ guns were well handled and they used the ground to move move them forward forward and close the range. When their final assault came in, they had got ten of their guns forward firing from the ravine, some less than 500 yards from the British line. line. Reducing the range was a distinct advantage in the heat haze, which made estimation of distance very difficult; it is an indication of this problem that not one of the 42 guns on the battlefield was damaged by gunfire. gunfire.
The Cavalry Burrows has been criticised for ignoring his cavalry until it was in no condition to help him anymore. Perhaps because he was so badly outnumbered, he decided not to retain either cavalry regiment intact, using them piecemeal for such tasks as protecting guns, extending the fighting line, acting as flank guard and keeping enemy cavalry at bay. By so doing, he squandered squandered his ability to mount a strong counter-attack. In the event the cavalrymen and their horses remained in the open for more than three hours being gradually depleted by artillery fire, after which, as events proved, they were barely an an effective effective force. force. After the first charge had had “but “but little effect ”, ”, Nuttall, the Cavalry Brigade commander complained bitterly of his failure “to “to induce the men to rally and face the enemy”. enemy”. He reported that they “ seemed totally demoralised by the effects of the very heavy artillery fire, which had during the action killed and wounded 149 of the horses and about 14% of the men engaged in the front ”. front ”. Under this bombardment Captain Mosley Mayne, 3 rd Bombay Light Cavalry, lost a third of his Squadron’s horses while standing passively behind E/B E/B Battery’s guns. guns. He wrote that he “had “had been for hours expecting orders to move as I did not consider I was required as an escort after after the infantry had moved up up in line with with the guns. I thought all the cavalry would be moved out of direct fire and that my regiment would be formed and echeloned on a flank, but no orders came”. came”. Nuttall cannot be absolved absolved from responsibility responsibility for what seems a serious lack of direction to his Cavalry and for the failure to react to this profligate wasting of men and horses until it was too late. He was also criticised for his action during the final charge in “ swerving “ swerving off to the right, claiming later that he intended to clear his Brigade’s front. Understandably Understandably many of his troopers followed followed him while Mayne and others rode on to cut down those Afghans attacking att acking the rear of the Grenadiers”. Grenadiers ”. It was this fiasco and the failure to persuade Nuttall’s men to mount a second charge, charge, following following which they
trotted off the field to Mundabad, that led to a misleading and troublesome report by “The Times” correspondent that “the “ the cavalry had bolted!” bolted!”
Epilogue Even now, 134 years on, there is still controversy over where blame for this costly defeat should lie. Some of the Regiments and the descendants of the men that took part smart from criticisms levelled long ago. But the arguments are now surely cold and sterile. The defeat of the British at Maiwand was as much the product of the overwhelming size of the Afghan army and its greatly superior and well handled fire power, as of any perceived shortcomings attributed to individuals, units or the British command. The battle battle was fought in extreme conditions of heat and thirst, which the Victorians described as “trying “trying ”. ”. That so many of the British and Indian soldiers survived the long and dangerous retreat was due to the unselfishness of many individuals and the discipline and devotion to duty of units that had suffered greatly in the battle; yet they succeeded in protecting and shepherding so many wounded and other survivors back over the 45 miles to Kandahar. There, just a month later, they lived to see the defeat of Ayub Khan, whose army had lost five times as many killed at Maiwand as the troops he had so convincingly defeated.
Victory celebrations: Afghan commanders after the battle
This cast iron lion statue weighing 16 tons was erected in 1886 by public subscription in Forbury Gardens, Reading, Berkshire. It stands in memory of the 329 soldiers of the 66th Regiment of Foot (Berkshire Regiment) who were killed in the Afghanistan campaign of 1880 at Girishk, Maiwand and Kandahar. Their names, which include that of their commander, Lt Col James Galbraith, and ten other officers, are recorded on the plinth.
