Page images
PDF
EPUB

DEATHS.-Nov. 1844.

dour, Henry Wells Allfrey, esq., to Adeline Frances, daughter of Colonel Sir Robert Mowbray, of Cockairne, Fifeshire.

9. At Leamington, the Rev. Charles Courtenay Locke, to Blanche, second daughter of the late General the Right Hon. Lord Edward Somerset, G. C. B.

[ocr errors]

At St. Margaret's, Westminster, John Clerk, esq., third son of the Right Hon. Sir George Clerk, Bart., M.P., to Rose Alice Clotilde, youngest daughter of Thomas Greene, esq., M. P., of Styne, and Whittington Hall, Lancashire.

At Staynton, the Rev. Francis Thomas, Rector of Haroldston West, to Susan, fourth daughter of the late Captain Dobbin, of Milford.

10. At St. Mary's, Bryanstone-square, Charles Bladen Carruthers, esq., to Ellen, fourth daughter of John Showell, esq., of Hall Place Lodge, St. John's Wood.

11. At Churchover, Warwick, Charles Home Drummond, esq., second son of Henry Home Drummond, of Blair Drummond, M.P. for the county of Perth, to the Lady Anne Georgina Douglas, youngest daughter of Charles, late Marquis of Queensbury.

At Wigan, the Rev. Edward Meyrick Goulburn, eldest son of Mr. Serjeant Goulburn, to Julia, daughter of W. R. Cartwright, esq., M. P. for the county of Northampton.

At St. George's, Hanover-square, Bernard Hale, esq., to Charlotte Cecilia, daughter of the late Sir Robert Sheffield, Bart., and relict of the late Henry H. Jackson, esq., of Holly Hill, Sussex.

13. At St. George's, Hanover-square, the Rev. Edward Everard, D.D., of Bishop's Hull, to Catherine Maria, widow of the late J. D. Greenhill, esq., of Stone Easton, Somersetshire.

15. At St. George's, Hanover-square, Henry Langley, esq., of Brittas Castle, county of Tipperary, to Harriet, daughter of James Bradshaw, esq., M. P.

16. At Bandinan House, Perthshire, Henry Smyth Pigott, esq., of the Royal Scots Grays, to Elizabeth, third daughter of James Drummond Nairne, esq., of Dunsinane.

18. At Gretna Green, Joseph Atkinson, esq., late of Workington, to Alicia, youngest daughter of the Hon. William Lee, Solicitor-General of Antigua.

19. At Tintagel, Cornwall, Charles Robert Bree, esq., to Frances, eldest daughter of Sir Augustus Brydges Henniker, Bart., of Plashwood, near Stowmarket.

20. At Marylebone Church, E. R. Wylde, esq., of Cheltenham, to Flora Frances, eldest daughter of the late Colonel John Macdonald, of Summerlands, Exeter.

23. At the chapel of the British Legation, Naples, M. Adolphe Auguste de Sturier, of the Canton of Berne, Switzerland, to Henrietta Knox, daughter of the late Lord Bishop of Derry.

27. At Castleknock Church, near Dublin, the Hon. Mr. Daly, eldest son of Lord Dunsandle, to the Hon. Miss A'Court, only daughter of his Excellency the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland.

30. At St. Margaret's, Westminster, the Rev. Charles Edward Kennaway, second son of the late Sir John Kennaway, Bart., of Escot, Devon, to Olivia, third daughter of the late Rev. Lewis Way, of Stansted-park, Sussex.

At Cheltenham, John Warre Tyndale, esq., Barrister-at-Law, Lincoln's Inn, to Helen, only daughter of the late Sir Edward Synge, Bart.

DEATHS. 1844.

NOVEMBER.

14. At Hampstead, aged 70, Thomas Andrews, esq., Serjeant-at-Law, and a leading member of the Midland Circuit. He was called to the bar at Gray's Inn, Feb. 4, 1803, and to the rank of a Serjeant-at-Law in Trinity Term, 1827. He had a patent of precedence. His death was by suicide, attributed to depression of spirits, occasioned by excessive study.

16. At the seat of his brother at Bathford, at an advanced age, Rear-Admiral Nathaniel Day Cochrane, Rear-Admiral of the Blue. On the 18th Dec., 1805, when commanding the Kingfisher sloop, he captured a French privateer of 14 guns and 100 men; was present in the action off St. Domingo between Sir John T. Duckworth and Rear-Admiral Leissegues; and subsequently commanded the Alexandria and Orontes frigates, on the North Sea and Cape of Good Hope stations.

23. At Edinburgh, in his 48th year, Thomas Henderson, esq., Professor of Practical Astronomy in that University. He was born at Dundee, on the 28th Dec., 1798, his father being a tradesman

DEATHS.-Nov. 1844.

in respectable circumstances. At the age of fifteen he was placed in the office of Mr. Small, a writer (or solicitor) in Dundee, with whom his brother had entered into partnership. In this situation he remained six years, and during that period he began to devote his leisure hours to the study of astronomy. At the age of twenty-one Mr. Henderson repaired to Edinburgh, where he first obtained a situation in the law office of a writer to the Signet. His intelligence and abilities were remarked by Mr. (now Sir James) Gibson Craig, who became his steady patron and friend, and by whose recommendation he was appointed secretary or advocate's clerk to the celebrated John Clerk, afterwards one of the judges of the Supreme Court of Scotland, under the title of Lord Eldin. On Lord Eldin's retirement from the bench, he was for some time private secretary to the Earl of Lauderdale; an office which he relinquished for the more profitable appointment of secretary to the Lord Advocate (Jeffrey). His astronomical acquirements also procured him introductions to Profs. Leslie and Wallace, Capt. Basil Hall, and other distinguished persons. At that time the small observatory on the Calton Hill, belonging to the Astronomical Institution of Edinburgh, was placed under the charge of Prof. Wallace, who finding in Mr. Henderson a person in whose hands the instruments could be safely entrusted, allowed him free access to them, and thereby gave him an opportunity of acquiring a practical knowledge of a subject which he had already become familiar with from study and books. Mr. Henderson first brought himself into notice as an astronomer in 1824, by communicating in that year to Dr. Young, then Secretary to the Board of Longitude, a method of computing an observed occultation of a fixed star by the moon, published, under the title of an improvement on his own method, in the Nautical Almanack for 1827, and the four following years; accompanied in some of the last of those years by a second method, also proposed by Mr. Henderson. These methods were also published in the London Quarterly Journal of Science, and he received for them the thanks of the Board of Longitude. In 1827, he communicated a paper to the Royal Society of London, "On the Difference of Meridians of the Royal Observatories of London and Paris," which is published in the Philosophical

Transactions for that year. His character as an astronomer being fully established, on the death of Mr. Fallows, in 1831, Mr. Henderson was regarded as one of the persons best qualified to undertake the direction and management of the Observatory established by Government, and then recently completed, at the Cape of Good Hope. The warrant of his appointment is dated in October, 1831, and a few months after he embarked for the colony. The results of his own personal exertions while there, comprehended the determination of the latitude and longitude of his station; the positions of stars near the South Pole for determining the polar positions of his instruments; the amount of refraction near the horizon; observations of the moon and stars for determining the moon's horizontal parallax; of Mars for determining the parallax of that planet, and thence that of the sun; of eclipses of Jupiter's satellites; occultations of fixed stars by the moon; a transit of Mercury; places of Encke's and Biela's comets; and, finally, between 5,000 and 6,000 observations of declination. In May, 1833, he resigned the office, and shortly after returned to Europe, and took up his abode in Edinburgh. Being now without official engagements, he began the task of reducing the rich store of observations he had brought with him from the Cape. The first result of this self-imposed labour was the determination of an important astronomical element - the sun's parallax-from a comparison of observations of the declinations of Mars near opposition, made at Greenwich, Cambridge, and Altona, with the corresponding observations at the Cape. Another paper of a more elaborate kind followed soon after, containing an investigation of the anomalies of the 6-foot mural circle in the Cape Observatory. At the request of Mr. Baily, he undertook the reduction of Capt. Foster's observations of the comet of 1830, made at Ascension Island. In 1834, an agreement was concluded between the Government and the members of the Astronomical Institution of Edinburgh, whereby the latter gave up to the University the use of their observatory on the Calton Hill, which the former undertook to convert into a public establishment, by furnishing it with suitable instruments, and making provision for an observer and assistant. It was then resolved to fill up the office of Professor of Practical Astro

DEATHS.-JAN.

[blocks in formation]

21. At his residence in Greenwich Hospital, aged 61, Capt. Thomas Huskisson, R. N., the senior captain of that institution. Capt. Huskisson was a son of the late William Huskisson, esq., of Oxley, Staffordshire, where he was born, July 31, 1784; and half-brother of the late Right Hon. William Huskisson, and of Major-Gen. Samuel Huskisson. He entered the Navy under the patronage of Admiral Mark Milbanke, in 1800, and served in the Romney of 50 guns, Capt. Sir Home Popham, with which he proceeded to the Red Sea, where he was employed with another midshipman, in a small hired brig, surveying the coast of Arabia. In 1803, he served under Capt. George Hope, in the Defence, 74, which bore a very distinguished part at the battle of Trafalgar. Mr. Huskisson next joined the Foudroyant, 80, bearing the flag of Sir John B. Warren, in which he became Lieutenant. After serving in several vessels, in May, 1809, he was made Commander, and appointed to the Pelorus, a fine 18-gun brig, stationed at the Leeward Islands; and in October following assisted at the destruction of a French schooner privateer, in the bight of Point-a-Pitre, under circumstances of considerable difficulty, highly honourable to the parties employed. The Pelorus also formed part of the naval force under Sir Alex. Cochrane, at the reduction of Guadaloupe, in 1810. Capt. Huskisson's promotion to post rank took place in 1811,

and he commanded the Barbadoes, 28, in which he was wrecked with his convoy on Sable Island. His next appointment was, June 7, 1815, to the Euryalus, 42, in which frigate he proceeded to cruise off Havre, where he remained as senior officer of the squadron employed in watching that port and the mouth of the Seine, to prevent the escape of Napoleon Bonaparte, until it was known that the Emperor had surrendered himself to the Bellerophon. In 1818, Capt. Huskisson was again appointed to the Euryalus, on the Leeward Islands' station, of which he became the chief in command, from the death of Rear-Adm. Campbell; a similar circumstance happened to him in 1820, from the invaliding of Sir Home Popham on the Jamaica station. In September, 1821, he obtained the command of the Semiramis, 42, fitting for the flag of Lord Colville, with whom he continued on the Irish station until March 16, 1822. In March, 1827, he was appointed Paymaster of the Navy.

24. Aged 26, Mr. William Oakley Burgess, engraver, pupil of Lupton, the well-known mezzotinto engraver. By dint of great application, Mr. Burgess had acquired an exquisite delicacy in his art; of which the best specimens are the large and small plates that he engraved from Sir Thomas Lawrence's portrait of the Duke of Wellington. The last few months of his life were devoted to three other plates, after Lawrence-portraits of Sir John Moore, of the Archbishop of Canterbury, and the Duchess of Northumberland, for a series of the works of that eminent painter.

31. Killed in action, near Sassendroog, aged 22, Lieut. Alexander P. Campbell, 2nd Bombay Light Inf., only son of Capt. Archibald Campbell, StaffOfficer Perth district, and great-grandson of Col. Robertson, who commanded the Clan Robertson in Prince Charles's army at Culloden. Lieut. C. had greatly distinguished himself at the storming of Samanghur and Punalla.

1845.

JANUARY.

1. At Carmarthen, in his 63rd year, Major-Gen. Sir William Nott, G. Č. B. This distinguished commander was born

DEATHS.-JAN.

at Neath, in Glamorganshire, on the 20th January, 1782, the son of a highly respectable inhabitant of that place. His father removed to Carmarthen, where he kept the Ivy Bush inn, and was also a mail proprietor there. He entered the East India Company's service on the 27th October, 1800, and at a very early period of his career, gave promise of future eminence. In July, 1804, four years after his arrival at Calcutta, Lieutenant Nott sailed in command of a detachment of Bengal Volunteers, despatched with the expedition under Commander Hayes to Muckie, to chastise the natives of that port for their barbarous treatment of the crew of an English ship, the Crescent, and the subsequent attempt made by them to assassinate the deputation sent from Fort Marlborough, to demand satisfaction for the original outrage. Lieutenant Nott was specially mentioned by Captain Hayes, in his despatch announcing the capture of this place. In 1811, he was appointed Superintendent of Family Payments, which office he resigned in the year 1822. In 1826, he returned to Wales with injured health, the rank of Major, and a fortune, which enabled him to buy an estate near Carmarthen, named Job's Well. And here his career might have closed, but for one of those accidents which have from time to time brought forth great men in spite of themselves; the failure of a bank at Calcutta seriously impaired his means, and obliged him to sell Job's Well. He returned to the East, and in 1837 was appointed to the command of the 38th Native Regiment. In 1838, he was appointed a brigadier of the second class, and selected to command the second division of the army of the Indus; and soon after he was highly commended by Sir W. Cotton for the admirable manner in which he had conducted a march of more than 1,000 miles. In 1839, he was invested with the command of the whole of the troops in Scinde and Lower Affghanistan, in which command he displayed, at a most critical time, great firmness, decision, and ability. The first important service which he performed was the capture of the town and fortress of Khelat. In January, 1841, he established his head quarters at Candahar, and during the greater part of that year everything went on pretty smoothly; but, towards its close, the insurrection broke out at Cabool, the result of which was to give spirit and confidence to the

disaffected throughout the whole country. A large hostile force assembled in the neighbourhood of Candahar, and made their appearance on the 12th January, 1842, at the distance of about eight miles from the town, commanded by Prince Sufter Jung. They took up a strong position, with a deep morass in front, which rendered it extremely difficult for our troops to reach them. Sir William Nott, however, with the utmost gallantry, marched out, attacked, defeated, and put them to flight. But unfortunately he was deficient in cavalry, and could not follow up his success. On that occasion he had to contend with 12,000 of the enemy, to oppose whom he had only 5,000 men, his whole force consisting of 7,000 of all arms. In the month of March, the enemy once more approached Candahar. General Nott, anxious to bring them to a decided action, marched out, on the 7th of March, and was led in pursuit thirty or forty miles from Candahar. On the 10th of March, a part of the enemy's army, taking advantage of that movement, made a dash on Candahar, and succeeded in getting possession of one of the gates of the city; but the garrison, under Major Lane, though very much reduced in number, successfully withstood the enemy. In that attempt, 500 of the enemy were slain, and our troops were completely successful. About this time Sir William Nott received instructions from the Governor-General of India to retire from Candahar. He was greatly embarrassed on the receipt of those instructions, which, however, it was his duty to obey. He was ordered to withdraw the garrison of Khelat-i-Ghilzie, and he despatched Colonel Wymer with the greatest portion of his force, to accomplish that object. The enemy, discovering that his forces were weakened, determined to make another desperate attempt to overcome him. Prince Sufter Jung, being joined by a reinforcement of 3,000 men, under Åkbar Khan, chief of Zemindawur, on the 29th of May advanced within a mile of the city, confident of success. Sir William Nott, ready for every exigency, marched out and attacked them, and drove them in confusion from the field. Speaking of this action, he thus expresses himself in a letter to Major-General Pollock:

"Candahar, May 30, 1842. "Our troops carried the enemy's positions in gallant style; it was the finest thing I ever saw. These 8,000

DEATHS.-JAN.

Affghans, led on by Prince Sufter Jung and many chiefs, could not stand our 1,200 men for one hour; and yet the cry of the press is that our sepoys cannot cope with the Affghans. I would at any time lead 1,000 Bengal sepoys against 5,000 Affghans. I hope you have received some of my letters. My beautiful regiments are in high health and spirits."

It now became a question with him whether it was his duty implicitly to obey the orders which he had received; and he wrote to the Governor-General, suggest ing that, although the insurrection which had broken out at Cabool was a most disastrous affair, yet the army under his command was not reduced to that very low ebb which it was supposed to be, and he suggested, in very respectful terms, that with the forces he had he could as easily advance as retire, and that in his opinion the former course would be attended with the least difficulty. He expressed his opinion that the route by Quettah, having no means of carriage, would be most dangerous, and he allowed it to appear that, in his mind, there was much less danger in advancing than in returning. Such was the effect of the wise, prudent, and energetic course he had pursued, that, notwithstanding his previous order, the Governor-General, mindful of what Sir William Nott had done, felt that he was capable of effecting every thing that was necessary for the success of our arms and the vindication of our honour, and left him to pursue his own course. On the 8th of August he set out on his adventurous march from Candahar, being then about 5,000 strong. He proceeded by Khelat-i-Ghilzie against Ghuznee. On the 18th of August, he was met by an immensely superior force of the enemy, which he defeated.

He

advanced; and on the 30th of August, when within thirty-eight miles of Ghuznee, was opposed by a force of 12,000 men under the command of Shumsoodeen Khan, a cousin of Akbar Khan, which also, after a short and spirited contest, he completely defeated. On the 6th September, General Nott found himself close to the fortress of Ghuznee. To the north-east of that place the enemy had established a camp. The city was full of men, the neighbouring heights were covered by large bodies of infantry and cavalry, and the gardens and ravines near the town were occupied by a hostile force, all determined to resist his further

progress. The enemy were formidable in numbers, having received a considerable reinforcement under Sultan Jan. Sir W. Nott attacked them, having, as he said, "at once determined on carrying the enemy's mountain positions before encamping my force. The troops ascended the heights in gallant style, driving the enemy before them, until every point was gained." Ghuznee was taken; and liberty was given to 347 of the former garrison, who were supposed to have been destroyed, Ghuznée, with its citadel, and the whole of its works, having been demolished, Sir W. Nott proceeded on his route to Cabool. On the 6th September he was, however, again assailed at the defiles of Mydan. Shumsoodeen had been joined by a large force, commanded by a number of Affghan chiefs, and they made another desperate attempt to intercept his march, but were again defeated. He proceeded, and on the 17th September effected his junction with General Pollock at Cabool. Such was the military career of Sir W. Nott. Whilst at the period in question the fortune of war varied in some parts of the country, the progress of Sir William Nott was one scene of uninterrupted victories and successes-his spirit animated every soldier under his command. On the 2nd December, 1842, General Nott was nominated a Knight Grand Cross of the Bath. He received the thanks of both houses of Parliament for the "intrepidity, skill, and perseverance," he displayed in the various operations he had conducted; and in September, 1843, the Court of Directors of the Hon. East India Company voted him an annuity of 1,000l., commencing from the day on which he left India, as a special mark of the sense which the Court entertained "of the foresight, judgment, decision, and courage evinced by Sir William Nott throughout the whole period of his command at Candahar, and during his brilliant and successful march from thence by Ghuznee to Cabool, which so greatly contributed to the triumphant vindication of the honour of the British nation, and to the maintenance of its reputation." From the period of his second year's service in Afghanistan, Sir William Nott's health began to break, and eventually became so impaired that at the conclusion of the war he found it necessary to return to England. He was very debilitated when he arrived in this country, and it is supposed the excitement caused by

« ՆախորդըՇարունակել »