£25,000 of prize money which he received freed him from the unpleasant position of younger son of a family ruined by the extravagance of his father. He became rear-admiral in October 1762, was one of the Admiralty Board from July 1765 to November 1766, and was promoted vice-admiral on the 24th of October 1770. When the Falkland Island dispute occurred in 1770 he was to have commanded the fleet to be sent against Spain, but a settlement was reached, and he had no occasion to hoist his flag. The most important and the most debated period of his life belongs to the opening years of the war of American Independence. Keppel was by family connexion and personal preference a strong supporter of the Whig connexion, led by the Marquess of Rockingham and the Duke of Richmond. He shared in all the passions of his party, then excluded from power by the resolute will of George III. As a member of Parliament, in which he had a seat for Windsor from 1761 till 1780, and then for Surrey, he was a steady partisan, and was in constant hostility with the “King’s Friends.” In common with them he was prepared to believe that the king’s ministers, and in particular Lord Sandwich, then First Lord of the Admiralty, were capable of any villany. When therefore he was appointed to command the Western Squadron, the main fleet prepared against France in 1778, he went to sea predisposed to think that the First Lord would be glad to cause him to be defeated. It was a further misfortune that when Keppel hoisted his flag one of his subordinate admirals should have been Sir Hugh Palliser (1723–1796), who was a member of the Admiralty Board, a member of parliament, and in Keppel’s opinion, which was generally shared, jointly responsible with his colleagues for the bad state of the navy. When, therefore, the battle which Keppel fought with the French on the 27th of July 1778 ended in a highly unsatisfactory manner, owing mainly to his own unintelligent management, but partly through the failure of Sir Hugh Palliser to obey orders, he became convinced that he had been deliberately betrayed. Though he praised Sir Hugh in his public despatch he attacked him in private, and the Whig press, with the unquestionable aid of Keppel’s friends, began a campaign of calumny to which the ministerial papers answered in the same style, each side accusing the other of deliberate treason. The result was a scandalous series of scenes in parliament and of courts martial. Keppel was first tried and acquitted in 1779, and then Palliser was also tried and acquitted. Keppel was ordered to strike his flag in March 1779. Until the fall of Lord North’s ministry he acted as an opposition member of parliament. When it fell in 1782 he became First Lord, and was created Viscount Keppel and Baron Elden. His career in office was not distinguished, and he broke with his old political associates by resigning as a protest against the Peace of Paris. He finally discredited himself by joining the Coalition ministry formed by North and Fox, and with its fall disappeared from public life. He died unmarried on the 2nd of October 1786. Burke, who regarded him with great affection, said that he had “something high” in his nature, and that it was “a wild stock of pride on which the tenderest of all hearts had grafted the milder virtues.” His popularity disappeared entirely in his later years. His portrait was six times painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The copy which belonged originally to Burke is now in the National Gallery.
There is a full Life of Keppel (1842), by his grand-nephew, the Rev. Thomas Keppel. (D. H.)
KEPPEL, SIR HENRY (1809–1904), British admiral, son of
the 4th earl of Albemarle and of his wife Elizabeth, daughter
of Lord de Clifford, was born on the 14th of June 1809, and
entered the navy from the old naval academy of Portsmouth in
1822. His family connexions secured him rapid promotion,
at a time when the rise of less fortunate officers was very slow.
He became lieutenant in 1829 and commander in 1833. His
first command in the “Childers” brig (16) was largely passed on
the coast of Spain, which was then in the midst of the convulsions
of the Carlist war. Captain Keppel had already made himself
known as a good seaman. He was engaged with the squadron
stationed on the west coast of Africa to suppress the slave trade.
In 1837 he was promoted post captain, and appointed in 1841
to the “Dido” for service in China and against the Malay
pirates, a service which he repeated in 1847, when in command of
H.M.S. “Maeander.” The story of his two commands was told
by himself in two publications, The Expedition to Borneo of
H.M.S. “Dido” for the Suppression of Piracy (1846), and in
A Visit to the Indian Archipelago in H. M. S. “Maeander ” (1853).
The substance of these books was afterwards incorporated into
his autobiography, which was published in 1899 under the title
A Sailor’s Life under four Sovereigns. In 1853 he was appointed
to the command of the “St Jean d’Acre” of 101 guns for service
in the Crimean War. But he had no opportunity to distinguish
himself at sea in that struggle. As commander of the naval
brigade landed to co-operate in the siege of Sevastopol, he was
more fortunate, and he had an honourable share in the latter
days of the siege and reduction of the fortress. After the Crimean
War he was again sent out to China, this time in command of the
“Raleigh,” as commodore to serve under Sir M. Seymour. The
“Raleigh” was lost on an uncharted rock near Hong-Kong,
but three small vessels were named to act as her tenders, and
Commodore Keppel commanded in them, and with the crew
of the “Raleigh,” in the action with the Chinese at Fatshan
Creek (June 1, 1857). He was honourably acquitted for the loss
of the “Raleigh,” and was named to the command of the
“Alligator,” which he held till his promotion to rear-admiral.
For his share in the action at Fatshan Creek he was made K.C.B.
The prevalence of peace gave Sir Henry Keppel no further
chance of active service, but he held successive commands till
his retirement from the active list in 1879, two years after he
attained the rank of Admiral of the Fleet. He died at the age
of 95 on the 17th of January 1904.
KER, JOHN (1673–1726), Scottish spy, was born in Ayrshire
on the 8th of August 1673. His true name was Crawfurd, his
father being Alexander Crawfurd of Crawfurdland; but having
married Anna, younger daughter of Robert Ker, of Kersland,
Ayrshire, whose only son Daniel Ker was killed at the battle
of Steinkirk in 1692, he assumed the name and arms of Ker in
1697, after buying the family estates from his wife’s elder sister.
Having become a leader among the extreme Covenanters, he
made use of his influence to relieve his pecuniary embarrassments,
selling his support at one time to the Jacobites, at another
to the government, and whenever possible to both parties at the
same time. He held a licence from the government in 1707
permitting him to associate with those whose disloyalty was
known or suspected, proving that he was at that date the
government’s paid spy; and in his Memoirs Ker asserts that
he had a number of other spies and agents working under his
orders in different parts of the country. He entered into correspondence
with Catholic priests and Jacobite conspirators,
whose schemes, so far as he could make himself cognisant of
them, he betrayed to the government. But he was known to
be a man of the worst character, and it is improbable that he
succeeded in gaining the confidence of people of any importance.
The duchess of Gordon was for a time, it is true, one of his
correspondents, but in 1707 she had discovered him to be
“a knave.” He went to London in 1709, where he seems to
have extracted considerable sums of money from politicians
of both parties by promising or threatening, as the case might
be, to expose Godolphin’s relations with the Jacobites. In
1713, if his own story is to be believed, business of a semi-diplomatic
nature took Ker to Vienna, where, although he
failed in the principal object of his errand, the emperor made
him a present of his portrait set in jewels. Ker also occupied
his time in Vienna, he says, by gathering information which he
forwarded to the electress Sophia; and in the following year
on his way home he stopped at Hanover to give some advice
to the future king of England as to the best way to govern the
English. Although in his own opinion Ker materially assisted
in placing George I. on the English throne, his services were
unrewarded, owing, he would have us believe, to the incorruptibility
of his character. Similar ingratitude was the
recompense for his revelations of the Jacobite intentions in 1715;
