Cornish Characters and Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Cornish Characters and Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Cornwall (England : County) -- Biography; Cornwall (England : County) -- History; Legends -- England -- Cornwall (County)
He appealed to the official report made to the Admiralty at the time
by Sir A. Cochrane: "Be pleased to consider attentively the statement
made by this official communication; contrast it with the letter of
Thomas, and then decide whether he was warranted in asserting that
Robert Jeffery had perished through the inhumanity of one whom he has
thought proper to describe as a 'titled murderer.'"
The court-martial pronounced sentence: "Pursuant to an order from the
Right Honourable Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, dated 3rd
February instant, and directed to the President, setting forth that a
letter had been addressed to their Lordships by the Right Hon. Charles
Bathurst, enclosing a letter to him from Mr. Charles Morgan Thomas,
dated 24th March, 1809 ... and having heard evidence produced in
support of the charge, and by the said Hon. Warwick Lake in his
Defence ... the Court is of opinion, That the charge has been proved
against the said Hon. Warwick Lake, and doth adjudge him to be
dismissed from His Majesty's service; and the said Hon. Warwick Lake
is hereby dismissed from His Majesty's service."
In 1836 the Hon. Warwick Lake succeeded to the viscounty, and died in
1848, leaving behind him only two daughters, one unmarried, the other
married to a Gloag. He was certainly very hardly treated, and as
certainly an utterly worthless scoundrel was exalted into a hero.
Jeffery returned to Polperro, where he was received with curiosity.
There his antecedents were well known, and the value of his statements
of terrible privation taken for what they were worth. Elsewhere he
received an enthusiastic ovation. He hired himself out to be "run" by
speculators at some of the minor theatres in London as "Jeffery the
Sailor." After a few months he returned to Polperro with money enough
in his pocket to enable him to purchase a small schooner for the
coasting trade.
The speculation did not answer his expectations. He fell into
consumption, and died in 1820, leaving a wife and daughter in great
penury. He was a mean, not to say a despicable creature, who was used
for political purposes, and when he had served these was allowed to
drop into his proper insignificance.
Authorities are a _Life of Robert Jeffery_, published by B. Crosby,
1811. An _Account of R. Jeffery_, published by J. Pitt, 1811.
_A Narrative of the Life of Robert Jeffery_, with portrait, 1810.
Couch, J.: _History of Polperro_, edited by J. Q. Couch, 1870.
James's _Naval History_, 1876, Vol. IV.
Cobbett's _Political Register_, 1810, pp. 396-415, 459-464.
Cobbett gives a report of the courts-martial.
The story was also given in Chambers's _Edinburgh Journal_, 1848, pp.
147-51.
ADMIRAL RICHARD DARTON
THOMAS
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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