“Having recently seen this statement again in print while these pages were in preparation, and Sir James Macdonell having about ten years ago mentioned to me that he had never received the money, I made further inquiries, from which I ascertained that Sergeant-Major Ralph Fraser is now a bedesman in Westminster Abbey. Considering that the above legacy might possibly have been since received, I called upon the sergeant-major, who lives at 18 West Street, Pimlico, and is now in his 79th year, in order to ascertain the fact, and found that it had not. This gallant and intelligent veteran is in the full possession of his faculties, and, in addition to his having aided in closing the gate at Hougomont, can look with becoming pride on his having shared in the following services:—He was enlisted in the 3d Foot Guards in 1799, and was embarked for Egypt in 1801. In the landing at Aboukir Bay, on the 8th of March of that year, the boat in which Corporal Fraser was contained sixty persons, officers included; all except fifteen were destroyed by the resistance of the enemy. He was present at the battles of the 13th and 21st March; and in the expedition to Hanover, 1805; bombardment of Copenhagen, 1807; and from 1809 to 1814 in the Peninsula, being present at the capture of Oporto, battles of Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onor (wounded in the leg and thigh), sieges of Ciudad Rodrigo, Burgos (again wounded in the leg), Badajoz, and St Sebastian; battles of Salamanca, Vittoria, passage of the Nivelle and Nive. He received, in addition to the Waterloo medal, that for the Peninsular war, with bars for Egypt, Talavera, Busaco, Fuentes d’Onor, Ciudad Rodrigo, Salamanca, Vittoria, Nivelle, and Nive. Sergeant-Major Fraser was discharged in December, 1818.” This account, doubtless, may be traced to the following circumstance mentioned by Colonel Siborne in his valuable History of the Waterloo Campaign:—“Early in August of that year, and while the Anglo-allied army was at Paris, the Duke of Wellington received a letter from the Rev. Mr Norcross, rector of Framlingham, in Suffolk, expressing his wish to confer a pension of ten pounds a year, for life, on some Waterloo soldier, to be named by his Grace. The Duke requested Sir John Byng (the late Lord Stafford) to choose a man from the second brigade of Guards, which had so highly distinguished itself in the defence of Hougomont. Out of numerous instances of good conduct evinced by several individuals of each battalion, Sergeant James Graham, of the light company of the Coldstreams, was selected to receive the proffered annuity, as notified in brigade orders of the 9th of August, 1815. This was paid to him during two years, at the expiration of which period it ceased, in consequence of the bankruptcy of the benevolent donor.”