purpose and attacking his leadership. As long as President Johnson promised severe treatment of the conquered South, Wade supported him, but when the President definitively adopted the more lenient policy of his predecessor, Wade became one of his most bitter and uncompromising opponents. In 1867 he was elected president pro tem. of the Senate, thus becoming acting vice-president. He voted for Johnson’s conviction on his trial for impeachment, and for this was severely criticized, since, in the event of conviction, he would have become president; but Wade’s whole course before and after the trial would seem to belie the charge that he was actuated by any such motive. After leaving the Senate he resumed his law practice, becoming attorney for the Northern Pacific railway, and in 1871 he was a member of President Grant’s Santo Domingo Commission. He died at Jefferson, Ohio, on the 2nd of March 1878. His son, James Franklin Wade (b. 1843), was colonel of the 6th United States (coloured) cavalry during the Civil War, and attained the rank of major-general in the regular army in 1903, commanding the army in the Philippines in 1903–1904.
See A. G . Riddle, Life of Benjamin F. Wade (Cleveland, Ohio, 1886).
WADE, GEORGE (1673–1748), British field marshal, was the son of Jerome Wade of Kilavally, Westmeath, and entered the British army in 1690. He was present at Steinkirk in 1692, and in 1695 he became captain. In 1702 he served in Marlborough’s army, earning particular distinction at the assault on the citadel of Liége, and in 1703 he became successively major and lieutenant-colonel in his regiment (later the 10th Foot). In 1704, with the temporary rank of colonel, he served on Lord Galway’s staff in Portugal. Wade distinguished himself at the siege of Alcantara in 1706, in a rearguard action at Villa Nova in the same autumn (in which, according to Galway, his two battalions repulsed twenty-two allied squadrons), and at the disastrous battle of Almanza on the 25th of April 1707. He had now risen to the command of a brigade, and on the following 1st of January (1707/8) he was promoted brigadier-general in the British army. His next service was as second in command to James (1st earl) Stanhope in the expedition to Minorca in 1708. In 1710 he was again with the main Anglo-allied army in Spain, and took part in the great battle of Saragossa on the 20th of August, after which he was promoted major-general and given a command at home. The Jacobite outbreak of 1715 brought him into prominence in the new rôle of military governor. He twice detected important Jacobite conspiracies, and on the second occasion procured the arrest of the Swedish ambassador in London, Count Gyllenborg. In 1719 he was second in command of the land forces in the successful “conjunct” military and naval expedition to Vigo. In 1724 he was sent to the Highlands to make a thorough investigation of the country and its people, and two years later, having meantime been appointed commander-in-chief to give effect to his own recommendations, he began the system of metalled roads which is his chief title to fame, and is commemorated in the lines—
“Had you seen these roads before they were made,
“You would lift up your hands and bless General Wade.”
In the course of this engineering work Wade superintended the construction of no less than 40 stone bridges. At the same time, slowly and with the tact that came of long experience, he disarmed the clans. In 1742 he was made a privy councillor and lieutenant-general of the ordnance, and in 1743 field marshal. In this year he commanded the British contingent in Flanders, and was associated in the supreme command with the duke d’Aremberg, the leader of the Austrian contingent. The campaign, as was to be expected when the enemy was of one nation, superior in numbers and led by Saxe, was a failure, and Wade, who was seventy years of age and in bad health, resigned the command in March 1744. George II. promptly made him commander-in-chief in England, and in that capacity Field Marshal Wade had to deal with the Jacobite insurrection of 1745, in which he was utterly baffled by the perplexing rapidity of Prince Charles Edward’s marches. On the appointment of the duke of Cumberland as commander-in-chief of the forces, Wade retired. He died on the 14th of March 1748.
WADE, THOMAS (1805–1875), English poet and dramatist, was born at Woodbridge, Suffolk, in 1805. He early went to London, where he began to publish verse of considerable merit under the inspiration of Byron, Keats and especially Shelley. He wrote some plays that were produced on the London stage with a certain measure of success, owing more perhaps to the acting of Charles and Fanny Kemble than to the merits of the dramatist. Wade frequently contributed verses to the magazines, and for some years he was editor as well as part-proprietor of Bell’s Weekly Messenger. This venture proving financially unsuccessful, he retired to Jersey, where he edited the British Press, continuing to publish poetry from time to time until 1871. He died in Jersey on the 19th of September 1875. His wife was Lucy Eager, a musician of some repute.
The most notable of Wade’s publications were: Tasso and the Sisters (1825), a volume of poems, among which “The Nuptials of Juno” in particular showed rare gifts of imagination, though like all Wade’s work deficient in sense of melody and feeling for artistic form; Woman’s Love (1828), a play produced at Covent Garden; The Phrenologists, a farce produced at Covent Garden in 1830; The Jew of Arragon, a play that was “howled from the stage” at Covent Garden in 1830 owing to its exaltation of the Jew; Mundi el cordis carmina (1835), a volume of poems, many of which had previously appeared in the Monthly Repository; The Contention of Death and Love, Helena and The Shadow Seeker—these three being published in the form of pamphlets in 1837; Prothanasia and other Poems (1839). Wade also wrote a drama entitled King Henry II., and a translation of Dante’s “Inferno” in the metre of the original, both of which remain in manuscript; and a series of sonnets inspired by his wife, some of which have been published.
See Alfred H. Mills, The Poets and Poetry of the Century, vol. iii. (10 vols., London, 1891–1897); Literary Anecdotes of the 19th Century, edited by Sir W. Robertson Nicoll and T. J. Wise (2 vols., London, 1895–1896), containing a number of Wade’s sonnets, a specimen of his Dante translation and a reprint of two of his verse pamphlets.
WADE, SIR THOMAS FRANCIS (1818–1895), British diplomatist, born in London on the 25th of August 1818, was the son of Major Wade of the Black Watch, by his wife Anne, daughter of William Smythe of Barbavilla, Westmeath. In 1838 his father purchased for him a commission in the 81st Regiment. Exchanging (1839) into the 42nd Highlanders, he served with his regiment in the Ionian Islands, devoting his leisure to the congenial study of Italian and modern Greek. On receiving his commission as lieutenant in 1841 he exchanged into the 98th Regiment, then under orders for China, and landed in Hong-Kong in June 1842. The scene of the war had at that time been transferred to the Yangtze-kiang, and thither Wade was ordered with his regiment. There he took part in the attack on Chin-kiang-fu and in the advance on Nanking. In 1845 he was appointed interpreter in Cantonese to the Supreme Court of Hong-Kong, and in 1846 assistant Chinese secretary to the superintendent of trade, Sir John Davis. In 1852 he was appointed vice-consul at Shanghai. The Tai-ping rebellion had so disorganized the administration in the neighbourhood of Shanghai that it was considered advisable to put the collection of the foreign customs duties into commission, a committee of three, of whom Wade was the chief, being entrusted with the administration of the customs. This formed the beginning of the imperial maritime customs service. In 1855 Wade was appointed Chinese secretary to Sir John Bowring, who had succeeded Sir J. Davis at Hong-Kong. On the declaration of the second Chinese War in 1857, he was attached to Lord Elgin’s staff as Chinese secretary, and with the assistance of H. N. Ley he conducted the negotiations which led up to the treaty of Tientsin (1858). In the following year he accompanied Sir Frederick Bruce in his attempt to exchange the ratification of the treaty, and was present at Taku when the force attending the mission was treacherously attacked and driven back from the Peiho. On Lord Elgin’s return to China in 1860 he resumed his former post of Chinese secretary, and was mainly instrumental in arranging for the advance of the special envoys and the British and French forces to Tientsin, and subsequently towards Peking. For the purpose of arranging for a camping ground in the neighbourhood of Tungchow he accompanied Mr (afterwards Sir) Harry Parkes on his first visit to that city, where on the next day Parkes with
