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);
Saint Cuthbert and the scaffold in Cornwall (...the Road to
Launceston); Ayub Khan, Governor of Herat, Afghanistan (My God
– Maiwand!)

MA Biddulph (The Rifles Museum, Salisbury)

“Afghanistan” - A sketch of Girishk, overlooking the Helmand

river, drawn in 1880 when British soldiers were again fighting
there. See “Death on the Pale Horse” 1842 and “My God –
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, Toby, Madeleine, William,

Callum, Thomas, Edward, Scarlett, Henry,
Anna, Charlie, Joe, Oliver and Finnley

and for

my grandmother Mary Emily 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 she left, letters, several lengthy pedigrees written out in her
large scrawling hand, lists of family heirlooms, keepsakes, and other
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 – 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
upright citizens - “A Policeman’s Lot...”, some highly eccentric –
“Robert Blair Mayne...” – and a couple were just ‘scallywags’ - “A
Mild Deception”. They lived in a variety of times and places – every
century from the 16th 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
strife in Elizabethan England - “Saint Cuthbert…”. Then compare
this quiet Saint with a modern example of the power of conscience in
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 19th 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 16 & 17th Century England
th

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

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/MAYNE-
One-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.co.uk/article/gladysstory.htm
 CHRISTIAN CONFLICT IN 16th &
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 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, 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. He was baptised into the Church of 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 to the "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 Maritime 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 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 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 Cornish properties, including his home at Golden
Manor where he had illegally harboured Cuthbert, the Catholic priest.
[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 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 appointment at Oxford and a 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 him when he came under the influence of two 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 Collection, Ashmolean 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 over his buccaneering exploits and from the
preferment of 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. It was the thinnest pretence: there was nothing to 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 and spent the next 26 years in gaol. On the Queen's 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-sisters-at-lanherne.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!”
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. 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 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 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
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" (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 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 accounts of the battle describe
it as "one of the most murderous conflicts of the war" 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 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 and fortune in the Stuart
cause, he received no recompense after the restoration of the
monarchy in 1660. Sadly, this most loyal Cavalier died in 1676 in
poverty and obscurity and is now almost forgotten by history. His
demise also meant the end of what had been one of the most
powerful and wealthy Kent families of the Middle Ages, said to have
grown rich in the broadcloth industry (See “Horsmonden..”). 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 16th 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 Mayne and the Dissenters of Aylesbury”).

Today in a country where political loyalties have become blurred it is

perhaps more useful to divide people, as in the 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 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 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;
They threw our altars to the ground
And tumbled down the crosses.
They set up Cromwell and his heir –
The Lord and Lady Claypole –
Because they hated Common 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.” So wrote the historian GF
Kerr, referring to the town’s disloyalty to the King who seven years
later was done to death with the signatures of several prominent
Aylesbury citizens on the death warrant – Simon 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 John Hampden was assessed
in twenty shillings ship money levied by command of the King
without authority of law, 4th 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.”

It was a tragedy for King Charles that he should alienate such a man
whose integrity, tolerance and moderating influence might have
prevented the later struggles becoming so brutal and 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 men - for the most part non-combatants 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 actions onto 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. 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 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.”

When the regicides came to be tried for High Treason at the Old
Bailey, there was little 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. 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 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!” 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 referred to as
“a great Committee man wherein he licked his fingers; one of his
Prince’s cruel 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 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 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 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 walls do not
a prison make, Nor iron bars a cage…” (“To Althea from Prison”
1642) and: I could not love thee, dear, so much, Loved I not honour
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 (a white
Arab), a distinctive figure to the enemy watching from the hills. In
time they came to 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 13th 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). 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 of ‘safe passage’ but were slaughtered by the Afghans
or had frozen to 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 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 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". 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 branch of the Maynes
had come from Lochwood in Lanarkshire and been settled near
Stirling since the 15th century. They were farmers and fighters both.
Maynes had fought and fallen at Flodden in 1513 and had been in
every Scottish battle since. 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 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 slopes of the Ochil Hills overlooking the
River Forth and were described as "set amid well-watered fields,
comfortable and well-stored farmsteads and 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 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 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 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, the family has continued to multiply (See also “A
Portrait of 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 flocked into India from 1761 onwards, leaving two graves in
Darjeeling, two in Allahabad, one in Saharastra, one in Meerut, one
in Bangalore, one in Akola and another in Lucknow".

The grave at Lucknow is of Robert's grandson, young Augustus

Otway Mayne of the Bengal Horse Artillery. He was killed at the
Relief of Lucknow in 1857, and Lieut Frederick Roberts (later Lord
Roberts of Kandahar), on finding his body, "took his dear friend
Mayne out at early dawn and dug his grave and 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 Course, a cause of great frustration to 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 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 a spectacle of terror met the
eye almost simultaneously with the return of day. The lifeless 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".
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 being enveloped by this army, but it was only partially
successful and the British/Indian losses were great. The battle is
examined in detail in “My God – 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 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 deserves to be remembered.

#########
“First comes one Englishman, as a traveller or for shikar
[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 [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 two 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’,
currently a presenter on BBC TV’s Antiques Road 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 was soon to overwhelm her and her 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). 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 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”. An
honorary Burgess of Stirling, he had nevertheless left home to join
his elder brother William in London where they opened a banking
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 his young wife and 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. Robert, still grieving for Sarah and now 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
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
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 by the removal of this 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 War 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, 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 of the large Scottish 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 - the yew, planted by George Washington, the
elms and sycamores, and the line of tulip 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”]. 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: this was a man of culture, wide accomplishments and
considerable charm, a genial host who had powerful friends on both
sides of the Atlantic. He crossed that 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 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, William
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 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. At each approach to the property are elegant
wrought-iron gates incorporating the Byrd family Arms. The main
gates have WB woven into their classical design, while large eagles
of lead stand on the stone columns on which they 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, which was perhaps an

allusion to birds that he introduced at Westover. He was a lover of
books and gathered together in his new home one of the largest
libraries in the colonies - over 3600 volumes - of which he was
inordinately proud. It contained Bibles in Dutch, Hebrew, Greek and
Latin all of which he 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. 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 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 high-
heeled 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 Byrd II,

who ‘died of unrequited love’

William was a hardy traveller. He led the 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 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 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 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 and became a 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. In the end the debt prevented him returning to England to
spend his declining years among his friends as he had 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 of 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 in polar exploration. In 1926 he became the first
man to fly over the North Pole – this was three days before the
Norwegian, Roald Amundsen, reached it in an airship. Richard
became a national hero and media celebrity, was honoured with a
New York ticker-tape parade, medals from President 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 riverside setting, and of the
history of nearly three centuries that have passed since the Black
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 in
the wrong. He does everything on principle. He fights you on
patriotic principles; he robs you on business principles; he
enslaves you on imperial principles; he bullies you on manly
principles; he supports his King on loyal 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 Country
family, he could trace seven generations of them back to a successful
brewer and Freeman of the City of Exeter in the 16th century. He
was heir to a large estate beside the beautiful river Nadder, a
peaceful part of Wiltshire where the family had moved 130 years
before. His fine manor house was as full of 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, when I was 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 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 19th 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". That
period, now five centuries ago, is surprisingly well 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 did not belong there. He
included a couple of famous West Country clerics - clearly to
impress. It was unfortunate for his credibility 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 St Cuthbert's true family background was 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 after Cuthbert, could not possibly be his nephew and
that neither belong among John Thomas Mayne's ancestors. We
begin to touch firm ground in his 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 his diaries that in
1818 and 1819 he spent many days copying out the Mayne wills and
pedigrees which he found at Doctor's Commons [the College of
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 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. In
this portrait Walter is given a classical title, Legionis Tribunus,
suggesting that he held a military rank or some office of state. The
National Portrait Gallery 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 in
parish registers or of 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 being critical of those of others. Self
deception has always 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. The Mayne pedigree in Sir Richard Colt
Hoare's "History of 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 that drove him to pretend a common 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 by this scallywag of an 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 the most part at sea
and deprived of further schooling and of a normal home life, were
later able to stand comparison with the greatest in the 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 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 Sea Captains of that day. Few of them had a
privileged background. Edward Pellew, who came from a poor but
well-connected Cornish seafaring family, may have started with
fewer advantages than Nelson but was certainly more fortunate than
Collingwood. 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 school at
Penzance and later at Truro where he can have learnt little beyond
reading and writing. In 1770, aged 13, he went to sea - the same year
as Nelson who 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", 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 self-
confidence. 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 career during "a storm or
battle when the seamen quailed before some dangerous piece of 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 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, when his Captain was killed beside him during a sharp action
with a large French privateer, the Stanislaus, off Ostend. The
relationship between 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, and received their 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
Gallipoli (Courtesy of the Victoria Arms, Salcombe, Devon).

Several became Members of Parliament, but in that warlike age they

were given little time for politics. Pellew 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 censure motion was defeated as a result
of Pellew's intervention. 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". 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 Bucentaure (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 at Algiers, referred to
earlier, had come when he was nearly sixty at the end of a sparkling
naval career spanning 46 years. For almost three quarters of that
time the country was at war and Pellew himself in action at sea - a
process of education under fire rather than "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, Edward Pellew is surely 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 in a clean
hammock in the pure element of salt water" - but was denied this and
lies instead at Christow, his 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 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 50 yards only
from their batteries, followed closely by the Superb and Leander.
This was at 2.30. The enemy opened a very heavy and galling fire
from over 300 guns which was returned in most superior style. At 3
pm most of the fleet had taken up their stations under the walls as
close as we could lay without damaging each other. The fire was
tremendous and kept up with as much spirit as imagination even can
paint. About 5.40 most of their Frigates were on fire and their walls
came tumbling down about their ears. Rockets flying 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 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 their walls that our shot could reach. To tell 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 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 completely licked. He had hardly a boat to bring
him off. Your affect. son, William Mills

NOTE 2.
The rescue of survivors from the wreck of the Dutton – off the
Royal Citadel, Plymouth 26th January 1796

The Dutton 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 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 and could 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 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. 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 that may not be denied;
And all I ask is a windy day with the white clouds 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 his family to
be born in Cornwall, who by circumstance became 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 and help others and denied himself the
full exercise of his talents. Poor dear man he was the most unselfish
of 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 of English pastoral peace and harmony, 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 for the rural scenes of the past shines 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. 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 both in thought and technique. It was full of suggestion to
my unformed mind”....“I was shaken within; a new vibration had
been set up”. Paul’s younger brother, John Nash, acknowledged that
he too owed Claughton “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”.

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 of the First World War
which caused him to withdraw into a form of self-imposed obscurity.
Not until the late Anne Stevens at the Ashmolean in 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 Claughton
spent his early years in the mountains of British 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, 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 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.

“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 non-
combatant 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, Scotland, Yorkshire and finally in
Dartmoor. These were miserable, lonely and traumatic years. On
release his alienation from society, deepened by knowing that better-
connected Bloomsbury Group pacifists like Mark Gertler and
Duncan Grant had avoided imprisonment, was almost complete.
John Nash described it as “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 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. Norfolk
may seem an odd choice for an expatriate Cornish artist but it was in
part the trees that attracted him. “The trees slanting one way, their
branches welded together in tortuous forms by the relentless winds”
became a characteristic of his landscapes.
 “Evening 1930”, wood engraving

It was in the 1920s that Claughton began the most productive part of
his working life. It was a time when the world of nature and
especially the English countryside and its landscapes became the
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. It is based on

the little Cornish fishing port of Mousehole. The 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, is familiar, one of a few to

feature ‘an infernal machine’. Here he depicts the night train, which
he could see from his home in Norfolk, not as an alien element but in
peaceful harmony with the shepherd and his flock; all is calm despite
the evidence of wind in the “tortuous 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 “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”, 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 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 status could be 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 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 - What's in a name?
A look at the ancient parish of Horsmonden and its hidden history -
of guns, stomach pumps and smugglers, and of a family with links to
colonial Virginia

The north-east end of Furnace Pond, 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 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 Horsmonden. It has an old English name but there
are few clues to its history visible there today. Among the modern
brick houses which crowd the village green are a couple of
picturesque 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 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 of Cromwell and the 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, 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 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
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 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 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 setting using the local Wealden
sandstone. Years later the present village became established on the
Heath around John Browne's forge, separated by some two miles
from Grofhurst's church. Foremost 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 across the 670 years that have intervened.
St Margaret's, Horsmonden, from an engraving circa 1840. The
church was built of the local Wealden sandstone in the 14th century by
Rector Henry de Grofhurst. 200 years later the present village 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 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. 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 of 18th
century Kent were the Hawkhurst Gang who used to terrorise the
locality. It is said that the cellars of Grovehurst, and secret passages
leading from them, were used for their contraband. In 1747, seven
members of the gang, including its leader Richard Kingsmill, were
cornered nearby after a shoot out with militia. 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 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
Smith to Housekeeper (i.e. Householder) to Clothier. After a century,
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, who was
brought up by the Horsmondens back in England, was the 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. None of the 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 Horsmanden) 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

##########

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 26th 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 93rd 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 strategy and
the speed with which these two acted that within a few weeks the
danger was averted. Not every County in 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 they wore sprigs of oak in their hats, 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.” Some gatherings of Oakboys,
increased by many who had been intimidated to join them, were
described as “numbering 10,000” - probably an exaggeration for
several thousand at most. They were well organised, mainly
peaceful but using the sheer strength of their 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 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 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 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, with their greatcoats around them as it 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 most insolent 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.”

“Mayne immediately drew [his 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, they were
then directly attacked in another manner - by [the] firing of several
guns at them out of the doors and windows of adjacent houses.
These guns were loaded with ball, which shows the Oaks were
prepared, and the stones of the street flew as thick as hail; several of
them hit Mr 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 levelling their
pieces at both Mayne and Coote and snapping at them from a door.
Notwithstanding, they still advanced and the mob retreated and shut
the doors.
By this time, the Squadron’s guard at the castle was alarmed and
came up briskly. They pursued the rebels, broke into their houses,
from thence into the gardens and the 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 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 at Wattle Bridge
in which two troopers were wounded and seven Oakboys killed. On
3rd August a general pardon was offered to those who returned
peacefully to their homes, and all resistance by the 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.

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 and high spirits"
and "dazzling polish", he was also described as "that 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 great and eminently
successful stock, military adventurers from Tyrone's wars onwards
and premier baronets of England". In his later years, Burke was
more blunt and described Charles Coote as "a somewhat absurd
figure, ultra sophisticated and ardently Francophile, he insisted on
making his maiden speech in the Irish House of Lords in French!
Pompous and an 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. A 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 elms, that yew-tree’s shade,
Where heaves the turf in many a mould’ring heap,
Each in his narrow cell for ever 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” 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 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, Dartrey was one of the most beautiful
properties in Ireland. “A scene more formed for high contemplation
and rapturous enthusiasm cannot be imagined,” wrote the diarist
Parson J Burrows in 1773, “a thousand acres of lake, three hundred
of which flows within a few yards of the house, with the hills on each
side covered from top to bottom with the most beautiful delicious
woods, brings all fairy land to ones 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 for
her virtues and her beauty”, died aged 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 erected on
his estate “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, unlike many of the ‘Protestant 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 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 as
an act of ingratitude to himself personally? Whatever the 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 of St Giles. The motto reads ‘Toujours Propice’ (Always in
Favour), but did the Parish welcome these Irish interlopers with
ostentatious memorials? Their tomb today has no name or inscription

Transporting those three bodies across from Ireland with a serious

rebellion in progress cannot have been an easy task. They were re-
interred 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 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 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
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 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, 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
who finally found a sanctuary “far from the madding crowd’s
ignoble 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 (1746-
1813), 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 life of 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 him back to work again, or was the sculpture 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. The value of that today (based on
income) is over £2 million. Despite this, Wilton subsequently went
bankrupt.
 A Policeman’s Lot …
Sir Richard Mayne was one of the architects of London’s
Metropolitan Police of which he was Commissioner from its date of
formation for almost 40 years 1829-68, and “one to whom the 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 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 17th 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 on the English 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 since he had been called
to the Bar, Mayne was a comparatively junior lawyer for this type of
appointment. It was suggested that such an exacting and poorly paid
post (£700 p.a.) would not have been 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 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 on well and
complemented each other in facing the considerable problems of
building up a new Force from scratch against some bitter opposition.

Lieutenant-Colonel Sir Charles Rowan 1784-1852

They “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”. 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 have been 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 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. This coincided with frequent clashes between police and
public caused by opposition to the Reform Bill. Public 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 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 pilloried 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 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 fact that, 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 Punch 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 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 Anglo-
Irish 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 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 family for racial discrimination. 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 comments (Soham 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 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

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 in
North Africa where he was memorably credited with having
destroyed behind enemy lines more German aircraft than the Royal
Air 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 third son of the family 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 heavy-
weight 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 ferocity. Such
behaviour in a man of his physique made both friend and 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 of Mayne into a
professional soldier. The duality in his nature was always there but
on operations he invariably became a strict disciplinarian, avoided all
alcohol and was above all, completely reliable. He 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 (6 foot 3 inches tall and 220 lbs) but by his calm sense of
purpose in times of 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 count of enemy aircraft 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”. 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 8th 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 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 force had captured three additional batteries, taken
450 prisoners and killed 2-300 Italians”. The 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 up….”

This was the first operation of many undertaken by Blair’s SAS

during the Italian 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 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 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 landings on the Cherbourg peninsular to the west of the
Normandy beaches. 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 reaction against
them was a measure of their success, but they lost fine men who on
being taken prisoner were interrogated and 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”, 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 and some with .50 Browning machine-guns
(Blair’s vehicle had two additions - a public address system ‘for
broadcasting rude words to the retreating 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”.

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 in the 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 old.

A mythology about Blair Mayne’s exploits and his excesses has

grown up over the years. It cannot 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 3rd 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 assault against
a defended shore is one of the most difficult and hazardous of
operations. On this 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 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]. 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 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 been firing at
McGonigal’s crowd who had landed further north. We left those
prisoners and pushed on. McGunn, a 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 away. I was round first with my revolver, and the
sergeant had a tommy-gun. Were they 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 six hours and we were ready for it.”

“While we were dining the phone rang. We didn’t answer but

followed the wire and got another bull - four 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, about eight hours later, we 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]. 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 servants and 70,000
British soldiers manage to govern upwards of 250 million
Indians!”

########

Faith and Family in South India

“By the 1880s most British officials had reverted to the habit of
their predecessors of the 1820s in regarding missionaries as, at
least, absurd, at worst, subversive”
Niall Ferguson (Empire: How Britain made the Modern World) 2003

The life of a Christian missionary working in India in the 19th

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 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 to the piety of the Church of 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 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 preaching to the Indians. The Company's concern 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 (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 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 40 and 75 miles inland. The District was some 5,500 square
miles in size with a population of about 1¼ million. Robert’s mission
station was at Idaiyangudi 30 miles east of Cape Comorin and three
miles from the sea. Despite having once been told by a doctor that
he was ‘unlikely to be ever able to bear the trials of a tropical
climate’, Caldwell decided to make the 800 mile journey to
Tinnevelly via the Nilgiri Hills on foot ‘to get acquainted with the
people and their ideas, 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 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 for 25 years. After their marriage at
Nagercoil, Eliza joined her husband at Idaiyangudi. She found
herself living in a remote village among poverty-stricken Shanars
(known today as 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. To some
unfortunate girls, who were virtual slaves, it gave the means of
buying their freedom. A good 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 of their degraded 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, the schoolmasters
and mistresses, the catechists, the native clergy and the best
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 backbone to the two missionary 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 17th 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 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. They valued highly his Tamil sermons 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 were the majority caste in Tinnevelly. The 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. At the same time, despite 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’ churches in the district, mostly from
money contributed locally by the villagers themselves. In the words
of his obituary in The Times, Caldwell ‘had seen the Christians in
Tinnevelly increase from 6,000 to 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. As he once wrote, ‘my residence in
India for by far the 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’. An illustration of the charismatic 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 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 reflected the efforts Caldwell had made towards the
indigenous future of the church. Robert and Eliza Caldwell are now
both buried beneath the chancel of Holy Trinity. Julie Draper

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 of the monumental
works of the 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. In 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’.

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, Caldwell was consecrated as 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. 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, some of
whose practices were already being imposed on Indian congregations
under protest. These men tended to distrust Caldwell because of his
background in the nonconformist 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. 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 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 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 properly-
constituted 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, 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 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 self-
confidence 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 for the 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 flourishing lace-making and embroidery industry is still
going on here, but reduced from the past when it involved thousands
of women”.

Statue of Caldwell, 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 unchanged since the first Anglo-Afghan war of
1839-42 (which is recalled in my earlier article “Death on the Pale
Horse”). Below is the story of a battle that occurred in 1880, towards
the end of our second Afghan war when a British/Indian force
suffered “one of the most serious defeats ever sustained by the
British Army in 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 size of his army as he

approached, began to unsettle the Kandahar countryside. Thus, on 3rd
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 the fort at Girishk (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 11th 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 66th Regiment (they later became

the Royal Berkshires) equipped with the Martini-Henry 0.45 breech-
loading (BL) rifle, and two Regiments of Bombay Native Infantry:
the 1st Grenadiers and 30th 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 3rd 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) just recovered from the Afghan mutineers with
detachments provided by hurriedly-trained men from the 66th.
ADVANCE TO CONTACT - 27th July morning
Narrative of Captain Mosley Mayne, commanding a squadron of
the 3rd Bombay Light Cavalry.

“Even by nine in the morning the heat had become 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 formed the Advanced Guard, some 600
yards ahead of me, with my Squadron and four guns of Major GF
Blackwood’s E/B Battery providing 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.”

“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 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 27th 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 Brigadier Burrows, his deputy Thomas Nuttall and their
staff rode up to the front, I used a pair of powerful glasses to observe
the enemy. I saw several large bodies of cavalry moving across our
front while a few smaller groups came nearer and watched us.
Beyond their cavalry and far away on the 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 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 further on we reached the village of Mundabad, just a

few houses and mud-walled gardens, which our scouts had reported
to be unoccupied. On the northern (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). Here Major Blackwood and Brigadier Nuttall
halted to reconnoitre. While this was happening I saw Lieutenant
Hector Maclaine on our left with his two guns and an escort of Sind
Horse galloping off towards the 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 beyond the ravine and from
there at about 10.50 a.m. we fired the first rounds of the battle,
shelling the enemy’s cavalry who quickly fell 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 in the centre of the line, the Grenadiers and the
Smoothbore Battery were on the left flank, and Jacob’s Rifles and the
66th 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.”

THE BATTLE BEGINS – 27th July late morning and afternoon.

based on an account by Captain Mosley Mayne, 3rd Bombay Light
Cavalry.
“When the enemy cavalry cleared the front we were able to see
indistinctly masses and masses of 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 factor 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 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 guns; there was not a vestige of cover and my horses
now began to 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 of white-robed Ghazis advanced on our right
from the direction of Maiwand. Sharp firing in our rear told that the
Baggage Guard too were engaged.” Two of the smoothbore guns
were moved across to support the 66th, 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 (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 was wounded. My Squadron
had by this time been standing passively for fully three hours under
fire from artillery and now small arms, and I had lost more than a
third of my horses and was 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, 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 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 them.

Casualties in the British/Indian line had begun to rise sharply.

Although on the right the 66th 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. They fled into the rear ranks of the
Grenadiers and, as Burrows reported, “the infantry gave way, and
commencing from the left, rolled up like a 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”. After firing a couple of rounds of case
shot, Captain Slade gave the order to limber up. On the left
Maclaine’s two guns were overrun and a vicious fight ensued around
them 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 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 terrible artillery fire to
which they had been exposed, and from which they had suffered
severely, had so shaken them” that they were unable to deliver the
charge fully home and it “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 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 66th had been before the break.
We got amongst and cut up a group of Ghazis who were closely
pursuing the 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 3rd 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 66th, they swelled and disorganised the
ranks forcing the regiment 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 which
was in turmoil: Slade’s guns were firing away, the rearguard was
being put together, while frantic 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 66th succeeded in effecting a rally on the south

bank of the ravine at Khig when Colonel Galbraith 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 66th 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 66th.
“Surrounded by most of the Afghan army, they fought on until only
eleven men were left, inflicting enormous loss on the 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.”

(L) Lt Col James Galbraith, commanding the 66th, killed at Maiwand

during the 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 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) 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 irregular horsemen are to be
seen amongst our baggage animals, relentlessly cutting our men
down and looting. A few alone remain with Brigadier Burrows to try
and turn the rout into an orderly retreat.”

“And so it goes on for five or six miles, till the sun begins to sink
serenely into the horizon. The cries for ‘Water! Water!’ become
more frequent and louder. Most suffer in silence for they can hardly
speak. The wounded open their mouths to show a dry 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 the wounded and those in severe distress, but
none can be spared for the already worn out and exhausted horses.
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 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 is reached; it is 11 a.m. and 32 miles

from the battlefield. With what joy and delight do the unfortunate
men and horses, who have not wetted their lips during the night,
welcome the sight of it!”. But they still had 13 dangerous miles to go
before reaching the Citadel at Kandahar. Mayne, who was one of the
last of the rearguard to arrive, came in “at 6 p.m. Wednesday 28th
July rather exhausted having had no food since Monday evening the
26th. My horse could hardly walk he was so 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 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
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 before. It took Ayub a 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 Ayub’s advance on 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
sympathetic treatment and was eventually promoted. Following
adverse reports submitted by Burrows and Nuttall, the commanding
officers of the two cavalry regiments (Major AP Currie, 3rd Bombay
Light Cavalry, and Colonel JHP Malcolmson, 3rd Sind Horse) faced
court martial the following year but were acquitted “with honour”.
Royal Artillery Historical Trust

Sergeant Patrick 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 66th who were
surrounded but fought on around their 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 their military formation and morale throughout”
and became the backbone of the retreat “to whom”, in the words of
the Viceroy, “many of the survivors of the 27th July owe their 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 in 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) :-
When you’re wounded and left on Afghanistan’s plains
And the women come out to cut up what remains,
Just roll to your rifle and blow out your brains
An’ go to your Gawd like a soldier…..
 Ayub Khan 1857-1914, Governor of Herat,
the victor of Maiwand

Notes on the British Defeat at Maiwand

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” 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 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 the infantry at a critical stage.

The Commanders
Both Brigadiers Burrows and Nuttall in their mid 50s were rather
elderly for field 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 information gained from 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 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
and gave his orders at 10.30 p.m. on the 26th 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 and lacking in initiative 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 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 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 by a ravine on the north (valley) side of the 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 to send the cavalry and 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”.
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 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 of between 300 and 600 yards 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 and become closely 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 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, which have been quoted. Almost
all the British/Indian casualties up until the withdrawal were caused
by gunfire. The Afghans’ guns were well handled and they used the
ground to move them 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. 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.
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 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 effective force.

After the first charge had had “but little effect”, Nuttall, the Cavalry
Brigade commander complained bitterly of his failure “to induce the
men to rally and face the 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”.

Under this bombardment Captain Mosley Mayne, 3rd Bombay Light

Cavalry, lost a third of his Squadron’s horses while standing
passively behind E/B Battery’s guns. He wrote that he “had been for
hours expecting orders to move as I did not consider I was required
as an escort after the infantry had moved up in line 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”.

Nuttall cannot be absolved from 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
off to the right, claiming later that he intended to clear his Brigade’s
front. Understandably many of his troopers followed him while
Mayne and others rode on to cut down those Afghans attacking the
rear of the Grenadiers”. It was this fiasco and the failure to persuade
Nuttall’s men to mount a second charge, following which they
trotted off the field to Mundabad, that led to a misleading and
troublesome report by “The Times” correspondent that “the cavalry
had 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 was fought
in extreme conditions of heat and thirst, which the Victorians
described as “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.