Royal Naval Biography/Eliot, Henry Algernon
HENRY ALGERNON ELIOT, Esq.
[Captain of 1830.]
Is descended from Sir William de Aliot, a Norman knight, of whom the following anecdote has been traditionally related.
When William the Conqueror first set foot on English land, he stumbled and fell; “but,” says Hume, “he had the presence of mind, it is said, to turn the omen to his advantage, by calling aloud that he had taken possession of the country; and a soldier, running to a neighbouring cottage, plucked some thatch, which, as if giving him seizin of the kingdom, he presented to his general.” Upon this. Sir William de Aliot, then holding a distinguished rank in the invading army, drew his sword, and swore, by the honor of a soldier, that he would maintain, at the hazard of his blood, the right of his lord to the sovereignty of the country. For this, the conqueror gave him an honorable addition to his coat of arms, viz. a baton or, on a field azure, an arm and sword as a crest, with the motto, par saxa, per ignes, fortiter et recte.
From this valiant knight are likewise descended the Earls of Minto and St. Germains, Sir William Francis Eliot, Bart., and the family of the celebrated Lord Heathfield.
Captain Henry Algernon Eliot’s more immediate ancestor, however, was Sir John Eliot, Knt. of Port Eliot, co. Cornwall, who, in the third year of Charles I., represented the borough of St. Germains, and rendered himself conspicuous in parliament, as a strenuous opponent of the court, and a zealous assertor of the ancient liberty of the subject. Being an active man of business, and a decided enemy to favorites and their encroachments, this Sir John Eliot was appointed by the House of Commons one of the managers of the impeachment of the Duke of Buckingham; for which, with Sir Dudley Digges, his colleague, he was committed to the Tower, but soon afterwards released. In 1(528, he was again sent thither, with other members of the same house, for refusing to answer before the privy council for parliamentary conduct; and on the 29th of May, in that year, an information was exhibited, in the star chamber, against him and his fellow prisoners, for their undutiful speeches; upon which charge, being afterwards arraigned before the Court of King’s Bench, they were adjudged to be imprisoned during the monarch’s pleasure, and to give security for their good behaviour: in addition to this general sentence, Sir John Eliot was also fined 2000l, These gentlemen were subsequently offered their freedom, upon the terms of making submission; but they rejected the proposition, and Sir John Eliot died in the Tower, Nov. 27th, 1632. His family afterwards received a parliamentary grant of 5000l., in consideration of his loss and sufferings.
The heir of Sir John Eliot died in 1685, leaving an only son, Daniel, whose sole daughter, Catherine, married the learned antiquary Brown Willis, of Whiddon Hall, co. Buckingham. Daniel Eliot, dying without male issue, passed over his two senior uncles, Richard and Edward (from the former of whom Captain Henry Algernon Eliot is lineally descended) and bequeathed a considerable portion of his properly to Edward, grandson of Nicholas, the fourth son of Sir John Eliot. On the death of Edward, without issue, in 1722, the family estate of Port Eliot devolved upon his brother, Richard, from whom it has regularly descended to its present proprietor, the Earl of St. Germains.
Captain Eliot’s great-grand-father was General Roger Eliot, uncle-in-law to Lord Heathfield, the gallant defender of Gibraltar, he having married his lordship’s mother’s sister. This gentleman served under the Prince of Hesse, in the expedition to Spain, temp. Queen Anne, and was present at the capture of the above rock. He shortly afterwards succeeded to the command of that place, and was the first English governor who declared it a free port[1].
Granville, son of General Roger Eliot, was originally an officer in the English army, but retired from it early in life, to study military tactics at the university of Leyden, in company with his afterwards so highly distinguished cousin. Having married one of the Empress of Germany’s ladies of honor, he was induced to accept an appointment in the service of the Emperor, who afterwards conferred on him the rank of a Count of the Empire, together with the appointment of Chamberlain to his Majesty. Being esteemed an officer of considerable merit, he was, in the year 1758, called back into the English service, with the rank of Major-General, appointed Colonel of the 61st regiment, and immediately placed on the staff, in command of a brigade of the army, under the Duke of Marlborough, then about to proceed against St. Maloes, escorted by Admiral Lord Anson[2]. In the following year, the Major-General was appointed to the staff of the allied army in Germany, under the command of Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick; but having been urged to proceed on this service at a period when his health was in a very precarious state, he was soon afterwards suddenly taken ill at Rotheim, the headquarters of his Serene Highness, where he died, and was buried with very distinguished military honors. By his first wife he left one son, also a general officer, who died in France, without issue, in the year 1816; and was succeeded in his titles (Count Eliot and Morhange) by his eldest half-brother, Percival, who, however, did not think proper to assume them, and only survived him two years. The mother of this latter gentleman was a daughter and co-heiress of Colonel William Duckett.
The subject of the following memoir is a son of the said Percival Eliot, Esq. formerly Colonel of the Stafford militia, and many years a Commissioner for auditing the public accounts. He was born at Shenstone Hall, near Litchfield, in the above comity, Aug. 23d, 1790; and appears to have entered the royal navy, in Dec. 1802, as midshipman on board the Belleisle 74, then commanded by the late Captain John Whitby, at Plymouth, but subsequently by the present Sir William Hargood, and attached to the fleet under Lord Nelson, on the Mediterranean station, from whence she accompanied that hero to the West Indies in pursuit of the combined forces of France and Spain. On her return home, in 1805, Mr. Henry Algernon Eliot joined the Quebec 32, Captain (now Rear-Admiral) the Hon. George H. L. Dundas; with whom he removed into the Euryalus 36, and again sailed for the Mediterranean station, early in 1806. During a long cruise on the south coast of France, we find him frequently employed in the boats of the latter frigate, attacking and capturing vessels under the enemy’s batteries.
Early in 1808, Mr. Eliot was removed from the Euryalus to the Royal William, flagship of Sir George Montagu, at Spithead; and in July following, he joined the Christian VII. Captain Sir Joseph Yorke, employed in the North Sea. Before the end of the same year, we find him on board the Thisbe 28, bearing the flag of the late Sir Henry Edwin Stanhope, in the river Thames; and in Sept. 1809, having previously passed his examination at Somerset House, he was appointed acting lieutenant of that frigate. On the 8th June 1810, he was confirmed into the Ferret sloop. Captain Richard Wales, then on the North American station, which vessel he only joined a few days before she was paid off, at Portsmouth. He then immediately received an appointment to the Tonnant 80, Captain Sir John Gore, employed in the river Tagus.
Soon after his arrival at Lisbon, Lieutenant Eliot was entrusted with the command of the Tonnant’s boats, sent with a division of gunboats, under Lieutenant (now Captain) M. F. F. Berkeley, of the Barfleur 98, to co-operate with Lord Hill’s division of the British array, occupying the lines of Torres-Vedras, at Alhandra.
Whilst on this service, the flotilla was almost constantly engaged with the enemy’s advanced guard, near Villa Franca; and Lieutenant Eliot having landed between the outposts of the two armies, and incautiously approached rather too near those of the French, had the mortification to be suddenly pounced upon, and taken prisoner, by a piquet of five or six men. However, after remaining a few weeks at the headquarters of Marshal Massena, he was again set at liberty, and enabled to rejoin his ship before she left the Tagus.
The Tonnant was afterwards employed in-shore off Brest, and Lieutenant Eliot continued in her until Jan. 1812, between which period and Dec. 1813, he served in the Pylades sloop, successively commanded hy Captains George Ferguson and James Wemyss, on the Mediterranean station; and Cornwall 74, under Captain John Broughton and his successor, Commodore (now Sir Edward) Owen, employed in the Channel and off Flushing. His subsequent appointments were, – July 13th, 1814, to the Scylla sloop, Captain George B. Allen, under whom he served on the Channel station until Jan. 1815, when he was ordered a passage in the Phoenix frigate. Captain C. J. Austen, to join Lord Exmouth, on promotion; – In May following, to the Boyne 98, bearing his lordship’s flag; – Dec. 31st following, to the flag-ship of Rear-Admiral Penrose, who had then resumed the chief command on the Mediterranean station; from whence Lieutenant Eliot was obliged to return home, for the recovery of his health, in Nov. 1816; – and, July 29th, 1818, to the Creole frigate, fitting out at Sheerness for the broad pendant of Commodore Bowles, on the South American station; where he was promoted, Sept. 2d, 1819, to the command of the Icarus sloop.
On the 26th May 1821, Commander Eliot arrived at Portsmouth from Rio Janeiro; and early in the following month was put out of commission. In 1823, he married Jane, only daughter of that distinguished scholar the Rev. Dr. Alexander Crombie, LL.D., F.R.S., &c. &c. by which lady he has one child, a son, born in Feb. 1824. His promotion to the rank of captain took place July 22d, 1830.
Agents.– Messrs. Maude & Co.
- ↑ See Drinkwater’s History of the Siege of Gibraltar.
- ↑ See Vol. I. Part I. note at p. 154 et seq.