Regency Personalities Series-Sir George Staunton 2nd Baronet

Regency Personalities Series

In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Sir George Staunton 2nd Baronet
26 May 1781 – 10 August 1859

George Staunton

Sir George Staunton 2nd Baronet was born at Milford House near Salisbury, he was the son of Sir George Leonard Staunton, first baronet, diplomatist and Orientalist. In 1792, at the age of 12, he accompanied his father, who had been appointed secretary to Lord Macartney’s mission to China, to the Far East (1792–1794). Prior to the trip the young George Staunton had begun to learn Chinese alongside Sir John Barrow, 1st Baronet and for the duration was therefore given the role of Page to Lord Macartney. During the mission his Chinese proved good enough to engage in diplomatic banter and he received a personal gift from the Qianlong Emperor. In 1797 he spent two terms at Trinity College, Cambridge.

In 1798 was appointed a writer in the British East India Company’s factory at Canton (Guangzhou), and subsequently its chief. During this time his knowledge of Chinese increased. In 1805 he translated a work of Dr George Pearson into Chinese, thereby introducing vaccination into China. Five years later he published a translation of a significant part of the Chinese legal code.

In April 1803 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1816 Staunton proceeded as second commissioner on a special mission to Beijing with Lord Amherst and Sir Henry Ellis. During the mission he landed in Hong Kong in July, 1816. He walked from the shore of Hong Kong to Hong Kong Village via Wong Chuk Hang. After the trip, Wong Chuk Hang was named Staunton Creek and the valley where Hong Kong Village was located was named Staunton Valley. Staunton Creek later became a cesspool of mud and rotting sampans and was eventually cleared to create Wong Chuk Hang Nullah with the residents housed in Wong Chuk Hang Estate. Hong Kong Village was most likely Wong Chuk Hang Lo Wai; only Wong Chuk Hang San Wai still exists at the bottom of Shouson Hill. After the ceding of Hong Kong from China to Great Britain, Staunton Street in Central was named after him.

The embassy was unsuccessful and shortly after it departed back to Britain Staunton decided to leave China permanently.

George Staunton had been looking for a country home for some years before his permanent return from China and in 1818 put in a bid for Newstead Abbey but was outbid by Thomas Wildman. In 1820 he purchased the Leigh estate in Hampshire which included what was to become Staunton Country Park. He lived there for part of each year and made substantial alterations to the buildings and the landscape.

Three years later he was heavily involved with the founding of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland. Their Sir George Staunton prize is awarded annually.

Between 1818 and 1852 he was MP for several English constituencies, finally for Portsmouth. He latter described himself as being during his early years in parliament a liberal Tory who looked to George Canning for leadership. He was a member of the East India Committee, and in 1823, in conjunction with Henry Thomas Colebrooke founded the Royal Asiatic Society.

From 1829 until 1856 he was a member of the Society of Dilettanti.

He had never married and the baronetcy became extinct on his death (in London). He left his Irish estate, Clydagh House, to his eldest cousin George Staunton Lynch (who took the additional surname of Staunton) and Leigh Park and his London house (17, Devonshire Street, Marylebone) to George Staunton Lynch’s younger brother, Captain Henry Cormick Lynch.

His publications include translations of Great Qing Legal Code, known as the Fundamental Laws of China (1810) and of the Narrative of the Chinese Embassy to the Khan of the Tourgouth Tartars (1821); Miscellaneous Notices Relating to China and our Commercial Intercourse with that Country (1822); Notes of Proceedings and Occurrences during the British Embassy to Peking (1824); Observations on our Chinese Commerce (1850). For the Hakluyt Society he edited Juan González de Mendoza’s History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China.

• Mendoza, Juan González de (1970). Staunton, Sir George Thomas, ed. The History of the Great and Mighty Kingdom of China and the Situation Thereof, Volume 1. Compiled by Juan González de Mendoza, Sir George Thomas Staunton Contributor Sir George Thomas Staunton (reprint ed.). B. Franklin.

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Regency Personalities Series-Sir George Staunton

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Sir George Staunton 1st Baronet
10 April 1737 – 14 January 1801

George Staunton

Sir George Leonard Staunton was born in Cargins, Co Galway, Ireland and educated at the Jesuit College, Toulouse, France (abtaining an MD in 1758) and the School of Medicine in Montpellier, France. He was awarded a DCL by Oxford University in 1790.

He initially practised as a physician in the West Indies but switched to law and was made Attorney-General in Grenada in 1779. In 1784, he accompanied his lifelong friend George, Lord Macartney, whom he first met in the West Indies, to Madras to negotiate peace with Tipu Sultan, for which service Staunton was created a baronet of Ireland, of Cargins in the County of Galway on 31 October 1785.

He was elected in February 1787 a Fellow of the Royal Society.

In 1793, he was named Secretary to the British mission to the Chinese Imperial court. This diplomatic and trade mission would be headed by Lord Macartney. Although the Macartney Embassy returned to London without obtaining any concession from China, the mission could have been termed a success because it brought back detailed observations. Staunton was charged with producing the official account of the expedition after their return. This multi-volume work was taken chiefly from the papers of Lord Macartney and from the papers of Sir Erasmus Gower, who was Commander of the expedition. Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, was responsible for selecting and arranging engraving of the illustrations in this official record.

He died at his London house, 17 Devonshire Street, on 14 January 1801 and was buried in Westminster Abbey, where a monument bySir Francis Chantrey is erected to his memory. The baronetcy, his Irish estate at Clydagh, County Galway and his London home were all inherited by his only son, George Thomas Staunton.

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Regency Personalities Series-James Harris 1st Earl of Malmesbury

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

James Harris 1st Earl of Malmesbury
21 April 1746 – 21 November 1820

James Harris

James Harris 1st Earl of Malmesbury was born at Salisbury, the son of James Harris, an MP and the author of Hermes, and Elizabeth Clarke of Sandford, Somerset. He was educated at Winchester, Oxford and Leiden.

Harris arrived in Spain in December 1768 and became secretary to the British embassy at Madrid, and was left as chargé d’affaires at that court on the departure of Sir James Grey in August 1769 until the arrival of George Pitt, afterwards Lord Rivers. This interval gave him his opportunity; he discovered the intention of Spain to attack the Falkland Islands, and was instrumental in thwarting it by putting on a bold countenance. As a reward he was appointed minister ad interim at Madrid.

In January 1772 Harris was appointed envoy-extraordinary to Prussia in Berlin, arriving on 21 February. Within a month of his arrival he became the first diplomat to hear of Frederick the Great’s partition of Poland with the cooperation of Russia. His service in this office was undistinguished but he made an impression on Frederick, who requested that he be reappointed.

Harris married Harriet Maria Amyand (1761 – 20 August 1830), the youngest daughter of Sir George Amyand MP (1720 – 1766) and Anna Maria Korteen. They had four children together:

• Lady Frances Harris (d. 1 November 1847) m. General Galbraith Lowry Cole
• Lady Catherine Harris (d. December 1855) m. General Sir John Bell
• James Edward Harris, 2nd Earl of Malmesbury (19 August 1778 – 10 September 1841)
• Rev. Hon. Thomas Alfred Harris (24 March 1782 – 15 December 1823)

In autumn of 1777, Harris travelled to Russia to be envoy-extraordinary to Russia, an office he held until September 1783. At St Petersburg he made his reputation, for he managed to get on with Catherine II, in spite of her predilections for France, and steered adroitly through the accumulated difficulties of the first Armed Neutrality. He was made a Knight of the Bath at the end of 1778; but in 1782 he returned home owing to ill-health, and was appointed by his friend, Charles James Fox, to be minister at The Hague, an appointment confirmed after some delay by William Pitt the Younger (1784).

He did very great service in furthering Pitt’s policy of maintaining England’s influence on the Continent by the arms of her allies, and held the threads of the diplomacy which ended in the king of Prussia’s overthrowing the Patriot republican party in the Netherlands, which was inclined to France, and re-establishing the Prince of Orange. In recognition of his services he was created Baron Malmesbury of Malmesbury (September 1788), and permitted by the King of Prussia to bear the Prussian eagle on his arms, and by the Prince of Orange to use his motto “Je maintiendrai“.

In 1786 he told Pitt that France was “an ambitious and restless rival power, on whose good faith we never can rely, whose friendship never can be deemed sincere, and of whose enmity we have the most to apprehend.” He also wrote to Robert Murray Keith: “…from everything I hear and observe, there is not the least doubt that France is working hard at the formation of a League, the object of which, is the Destruction of England.”

He returned to England and took an anxious interest in politics, which ended in his seceding from the Whig party with the Duke of Portland in 1793.

In that year he was sent by Pitt, but in vain, to try to keep Prussia true to the first coalition against France. In 1794, he was sent to Brunswick to solicit the hand of the unfortunate Princess Caroline of Brunswick for the Prince of Wales, to marry her as proxy, and conduct her to her husband in England. For once his diplomatic skills seem to have failed him: confronted with Caroline’s bizarre manner and appearance, he sent no advance word to the Prince, who was so shocked by the sight of his future wife that he asked Malmesbury to bring him brandy.

In 1796 and 1797 he was in Paris vainly negotiating with the French Directory, and then in Lille in summer 1797 for equally fruitless negotiations with the Directory’s plenipotentiaries Hugues-Bernard Maret, duc de Bassano, Georges René Le Peley de Pléville and Etienne Louis François Honoré Letourner.

Due to bad roads in France, Malmesbury reached Paris on 22 October 1796, a week after leaving London. This led the foremost opponent of peace with France, Edmund Burke, to quip that his journey was slow because “he went the whole way on his knees”.

After 1797, he became partially deaf, and quit diplomacy altogether; but for his long and eminent services he was in 1800 created Earl of Malmesbury and Viscount Fitzharris of Heron Court in the county of Hants.

He now became a sort of political Nestor, consulted on foreign policy by successive foreign ministers, trusted by men of the most different ideas in political crises, and above all the confidant, and for a short time after Pitt’s death almost the political director, of Canning. Younger men were also wont to go to him for advice, and Lord Palmerston particularly, who was his ward, was tenderly attached to him, and owed many of his ideas on foreign policy directly to his teaching. His later years were free from politics, and till his death on 21 November 1820 he lived very quietly and almost forgotten.

As a statesman, Malmesbury had an influence among his contemporaries which is scarcely to be understood from his writings, but which must have owed much to personal charm of manner and persuasiveness of tongue; as a diplomatist, he seems to have deserved his reputation, and shares with Macartney, Auckland and Whitworth the credit of raising diplomacy from a profession in which only great nobles won the prizes to a career opening the path of honour to ability. One historian called him “the greatest English diplomat of the eighteenth century.”

Malmesbury remarked that it was “a truth inculcated into John Bull with his mother’s milk, viz. that France is our natural enemy”. He said on another occasion that “The history of the present century afforded repeated proofs, that the English fought and conquered less for themselves than for the sake of their allies, and to preserve that equilibrium of power, on which the fate of all Europe depends”.

Malmesbury did not publish anything himself, except an account of the Dutch revolution, and an edition of his father’s works, but his important Diaries (1844) and Letters (1870) were edited by his grandson.

He was a Member of Parliament (MP) for Christchurch from 1770 to 1774 and from 1780 to 1788.

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Regency Personalities Series-James Stuart (East India Company Officer)

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

James Stuart (East India Company Officer)
died 2 February 1793

James Stuart

James Stuart was a British Army officer who served in various colonial wars of the 18th century. His service of the British East India Company was marked by his conflict with Lord Pigot, the governor of Madras; Stuart’s arrest of the latter in 1776 resulted in his suspension as commander-in-chief, and he was not vindicated until 1780. He later fought in the Second Anglo-Mysore War, but was suspended from command in 1782 by Lord Macartney, an action that provoked a duel between the two men. Stuart was a younger brother of the lawyer and politician Andrew Stuart.

Stuart was appointed captain in the 56th Regiment of Foot on 1 November 1755. He first saw active service at the siege of Louisbourg (present-day Nova Scotia) under Lord Amherst in 1758. On 9 May of the same year he was promoted to the rank of major, and in 1761 was present with Colonel Morgan’s regiment at the reduction of Belle Île. During the course of the expedition he acted as quartermaster-general, and in consequence obtained the rank of lieutenant-colonel.

From Belle Île he went to the West Indies, and served in the expedition against Martinique, which was captured in February 1762, and on the death of Colonel Morgan took command of the regiment. After the conquest of Martinique his regiment was ordered to join the expedition against Havana, where he greatly distinguished himself by his conduct in the assault of the castle of Morro, the capture of which determined the success of the expedition.

In 1775 he received permission to enter the service of the East India Company as second in command on the Coromandel Coast, with the rank of colonel. On his arrival he found serious differences existing between the council of the Madras Presidency and the governor, Lord Pigot, and on 23 August 1776 he arrested the governor at Madras, at the command of the majority of the council. On this news reaching England, Stuart was suspended by the directors from the office of commander-in-chief of the Madras Army, to which he had succeeded, with the rank of brigadier-general, on the death of Sir Robert Fletcher in December 1776.

Although he repeatedly demanded a trial, he could not, despite peremptory orders from England, succeed in obtaining a court-martial until December 1780, when he was honourably acquitted, and by order of the directors received the arrears of his pay from the time of his suspension.

On 11 January 1781 he was restored to the chief command in Madras by order of the governor and council. He returned to Madras in 1781, and, under Sir Eyre Coote, took part in the battle of Porto Novo on 1 July, and distinguished himself by his able handling of the second line of the British force. In the Battle of Pollilur, on 27 August, he had his leg carried away by a cannon shot. On 19 October he was promoted to the rank of major-general, and on the return of Sir Eyre Coote to Bengal he took command of the forces in Madras. Lord Macartney, the governor, however, would not allow him that freedom of action which Eyre Coote had enjoyed, and on the death of Hyder Ali on 7 December he urged him immediately to attack the Mysore army. Stuart declared his forces were not ready, and made no active movement for two months.

While besieging Cuddalore he was suspended from the command by the Madras government. He was placed in strict confinement in Madras, and sent home to England. On 8 June 1786, though unable to stand without support owing to his wounds, he fought a duel with Lord Macartney in Hyde Park, and severely wounded him. On 8 February 1792 he was appointed colonel of the 31st Foot.

He died on 2 February 1793. His portrait, painted by George Romney, was engraved by Hodges. He married Lady Margaret Hume, daughter of Hugh Hume-Campbell, 3rd Earl of Marchmont, but had no children.

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Regency Personalities Series-Sir Erasmus Gower

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

Sir Erasmus Gower
3 December 1742 – 21 June 1814

Erasmus Gower

Gower joined the Royal Navy in 1755 and served under Byron’s command on HMS Dolphin from 1764 to 1766. He was promoted to lieutenant, serving with distinction under Commander Philip Carteret from 1766 to 1769. He then served in the Falkland Islands, West Indies, Mediterranean, the East and Newfoundland until 1792, when he declined a baronetcy and was knighted.

In 1792, Gower was named Commander of the British expedition to the Chinese Imperial court and sailed in the 64-gun HMS Lion. This diplomatic and trade mission was headed by Lord George Macartney. They were also accompanied by East Indiaman Hindostan, chartered from the East India Company for the mission. Although the Macartney Embassy returned to London without obtaining any concession from China, the mission could have been termed a success because it brought back detailed observations.

George Staunton, Secretary to the Embassy, was charged with producing the official account of the expedition after their return. This multi-volume work was taken chiefly from the papers of Lord Maccauley and from the papers of Commander Gower. Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, was responsible for selecting and arranging engraving of the illustrations in this official record.

Gower was promoted rear-admiral of the white in 1799.

In 1804 he was promoted to vice-admiral of the white and appointed governor of Newfoundland. Gower Street in St. John’s is named in his honour.

In late 1804, Gower sent the hired cutter Queen Charlotte, under a Lieutenant Morrison, to Labrador to investigate reports of an influx of American fishing boats. As a result of the report, the Admiralty decided to station a sloop in the fishing waters to chase off the Americans.

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Regency Personalities Series–George Macartney

Regency Personalities Series
In my attempts to provide us with the details of the Regency, today I continue with one of the many period notables.

George Macartney
14 May 1737 – 31 May 1806

George Macartney

An Irish-born British statesman, colonial administrator and diplomat. He is often remembered for his observation following Britain’s success in the Seven Years War and subsequent territorial expansion at the Treaty of Paris that Britain now controlled “a vast Empire, on which the sun never sets”.

George Macartney was an Irishman descended from an old Scottish family, the Macartneys of Auchinleck, who had settled in 1649 at Lissanoure, in Loughguile, Ballymoney, County Antrim, Ireland, where he was born. After graduating from Trinity College, Dublin, in 1759, he became a student of the Temple, London. Through Stephen Fox, elder brother of Charles James Fox, he was taken up by Lord Holland (The Fox brothers father.)

Appointed envoy extraordinary to Russia in 1764, he succeeded in negotiating with Catherine II an alliance between Great Britain and that country. He was returned in 1768 to the Irish House of Commons as Member of Parliament for Armagh Borough, in order to discharge the duties of Chief Secretary for Ireland. On resigning this office he was knighted.

In 1775 he became governor of the British West Indies was created Baron Macartney in the Peerage of Ireland in 1776. He was elected to a seat in the British parliament (Bere Alston) from 1780 to 1781.

Mccartney was the Governor of Madras (now known as Chennai) from 1781 to 1785. During his’s tenure as governor, renovation and strengthening of the walls of Fort St. George was commenced after the siege of Lally and completed in 1783. It was also during this time that most of the buildings and barracks in the western portion of the Fort were erected. The Palace Street, the Arsenal, the Hanover square and the Western Barracks were constructed during this time. The streets in the eastern side of the Fort were also altered.

It was also during this time that idea of a police force for Madras was thought of. Popham, the brainchild of the steer which would bear his name (Popham’s Broadway) submitted a plan for the establishment of a regular police force for Madras and for the building of direct and cross drains in every street. He also advocated measures for the naming and lighting of streets, for the regular registration of births and deaths and for the licensing of liquor, arrack and toddy shops. A Board of Police assisted by a Kotwal was subsequently formed. The Kotwal was to be the officer of the markets under the Superintendent of Police.

He negotiated the Treaty of Mangalore which brought an end to the Second Anglo-Mysore War in 1784.

Mccartney declined the governor-generalship of India (then the British territories administered by the British East India Company) and returned to Britain in 1786.

After being created Earl Macartney in the Irish peerage (1792), he was appointed the first envoy of Britain to China (his visit followed more than a hundred years after the first visit to England by a Chinese man, Michael Shen Fu-Tsung in 1685). He led the Macartney Embassy to Beijing in 1792 with a large British delegation on board a 64-gun man-of-war, HMS Lion. The embassy was ultimately not successful. This was not due to Macartney’s refusal to kowtow in the presence of the Qianlong Emperor, as is commonly believed. It was also not a result of the Chinese reliance on tradition in dictating foreign policy but rather a result of competing world views which were uncomprehending and incompatible. After the conclusion of the embassy, Qianlong sent a letter to King George III, explaining in greater depth the reasons for his refusal to grant the requests of the embassy.

The Macartney Embassy is historically significant because it marked a missed opportunity by the Chinese to move toward some kind of accommodation with the West. This failure would continue to plague the Qing Dynasty as it encountered increasing foreign pressures and internal unrest during the 19th century.

The policies of the Thirteen Factories remained. The embassy returned to Britain in 1794 without obtaining any concession from China. However, the mission could be construed as a success because it brought back detailed observations. Sir George Staunton was charged with producing the official account of the expedition after their return. This multi-volume work was taken chiefly from the papers of Lord Maccauley and from the papers of Sir Erasmus Gower, who was Commander of the expedition. Sir Joseph Banks, the President of the Royal Society, was responsible for selecting and arranging engraving of the illustrations in this official record.

Macartney’s journal from the embassy to China included observations and opinions which have become famously associated with the British diplomat:

• “The Empire of China is an old, crazy, first-rate Man of War, which a fortunate succession of and vigilant officers have contrived to keep afloat for these hundred and fifty years past, and to overawe their neighbours merely by her bulk and appearance. But whenever an insufficient man happens to have the command on deck, adieu to the discipline and safety of the ship. She may, perhaps, not sink outright; she may drift some time as a wreck, and will then be dashed to pieces on the shore; but she can never be rebuilt on the old bottom.”

• “The breaking-up of the power of China (no very improbable event) would occasion a complete subversion of the commerce, not only of Asia, but a very sensible change in the other quarters of the world. The industry and the ingenuity of the Chinese would be checked and enfeebled, but they would not be annihilated. Her ports would no longer be barricaded; they would be attempted by all the adventures of all trading nations, who would search every channel, creek, and cranny of China for a market, and for some time be the cause of much rivalry and disorder. Nevertheless, as Great Britain, from the weight of her riches and the genius and spirits of her people, is become the first political, marine, and commercial Power on the globe, it is reasonable to think that she would prove the greatest gainer by such a revolution as I have alluded to, and rise superior over every competitor.”

On his return from a confidential mission to Italy in 1795, he was raised to the British peerage as Baron Macartney, and in the end of 1796 was appointed governor of the newly acquired territory of the Cape Colony, where he remained until ill health compelled him to resign in November 1798. He died at Chiswick, Middlesex, on 31 May 1806, the title becoming extinct, and his property, after the death of his widow (Lady Jane Stuart, daughter of the 3rd Earl of Bute; they were married in 1768), going to his niece, whose son took the name.

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