Hon. Robert Boyle Walsingham (1736-80)

An officer with the most impeccable aristocratic connections and a colourful private life, he was also a Whig politician who opposed the war against America and seemed destined for high command until he lost his life in the Great Hurricanes of 1780.

Born in March 1736, he was the fifth son of the eminent Irish politician Henry Boyle, the 1st Earl of Shannon, and of his wife Lady Henrietta Boyle, the youngest daughter of Charles, the 2nd Earl of Burlington in the English peerage and the 3rd Earl of Cork in the Irish peerage. He would later become connected to the influential Cavendish family through the marriage of his mother’s niece to the 4th Duke of Devonshire.

Boyle joined the Navy at a very young age and was commissioned lieutenant on 23 March 1756 at the beginning of the Seven Years War. He was serving aboard the Revenge 70, Captain Frederick Cornewall, on 20 May 1756 when she performed with great distinction at the Battle of Minorca, breaking the line to assist the Intrepid 64 (Captain James Young) despite the fire of three French vessels.

Hon. Robert Boyle Walsingham

On 16 February 1757 he was appointed commander of the newly commissioned store-ship Crown 18, which was being fitted at Chatham, but three weeks later he transferred to the sloop Badger 10. This small vessel was assigned to escort convoys across the North Sea to Hamburg and Bremen and into the Baltic.

At about this time Boyle inherited an estate that had passed down from a great-aunt via his late brother. Accordingly, he would take the additional name of Walsingham, although for some years he would continue to be known as ‘the Hon. Robert Boyle’.

On 15 June 1757, the 21-year-old Boyle was posted captain, having progressed the two steps from lieutenant to captain in just four months. Initially he was assigned to the fifth-rate Jason 44, but with that vessel remaining anchored at Portsmouth he transferred a couple of months later to the newly commissioned frigate Boreas 28. Engaged in convoy duty to the Baltic, his new command was at Hull at the beginning of December and then went around to Portsmouth. Conveniently she stayed in port until April of 1758, allowing her captain to be elected on 14 February to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for the Duke of Devonshire’s pocket borough, Knaresborough.

In April 1758 the Boreas departed for Nova Scotia to join the fleet under the command of Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen, and it was not long before she captured a 14-gun French brig, together with a prize loaded with provisions the Frenchman had just taken. From April she participated in the successful Louisbourg campaign, capturing the frigate Diane 28 (armed en flute). Remaining on the North American station, the Boreas sent several prizes into Halifax including two French privateers; later in the summer off the south-east coast of Nova Scotia she took a richly-laden French sloop bound for Quebec. During her return to England with Admiral Hon. Edward Boscawen’s fleet, in late October the Boreas witnessed that force’s brief engagement with a French squadron from Quebec at the entrance to the Channel. She subsequently became separated from her consorts and made for Kinsale in Ireland. On arrival at Spithead, it was reported that she had taken a dozen prizes during her time away from England, most of which had been lucrative.

After undergoing a refit at Portsmouth, in February 1759 the Boreas escorted an East India convoy to a safe latitude beyond the reach of French cruisers before returning to Spithead. In April, still based at Portsmouth, she brought in a small sloop loaded with sugar from Martinique, which she had taken in the Bay of Biscay, together with a smuggling vessel. Two further prizes from San Domingo were taken in May while sailing in company with the Experiment 24, Captain John Carter Allen. In early July the Boreas served under the orders of Rear-Admiral George Brydges Rodney at the bombardment of Le Havre. Boyle appears to have taken a period of leave shortly after this event, but continued to formally command the Boreas until February of 1760.

While on leave he married (on 17 July 1759) Charlotte, the spirited daughter and wealthy heiress of Sir Charles Hanbury Williams, a diplomat and author. Residing in New Portugal Street , Grosvenor Square, London, the couple were to have a son who joined the Army, and a daughter who ultimately became a baroness in her own right. At various times Boyle and his wife had apartments in Hampton Court, Windsor Castle, and in Great Portland Street.

In January 1760 it was announced that Boyle was to be appointed to the Modeste 64, which was under repair at Portsmouth, but in the event she was handed to another captain, Henry Speke. Temporarily on the beach, Boyle made his maiden speech in Parliament on 15 April, and it was only after Captain Speke’s death that he assumed command of the Modeste on 20 February 1761. By now he was known by the surname of Walsingham, but he was also styled ‘Boyle Walsingham’.

In March 1760 Walsingham vacated the parliamentary seat of Knaresborough. At this time the Boreas joined a squadron under Commodore Hon. Augustus Keppel that was being prepared at Portsmouth for employment in the Bay of Biscay; by the following July she was serving with Vice-Admiral Charles Saunders’ Mediterranean Fleet. The admiral detached the Boreas as part of a small squadron under the orders of Captain Charles Proby (Thunderer 74, Thetis 32, Captain John Moutray, sloop Favourite, Commander Philemon Pownall) to intercept two French warships. The Achille 64 and Bouffonne 32 were known to be sailing from Cadiz, and Proby’s squadron captured these vessels on 17 July some twenty miles off the Spanish port. Walsingham delivered 500 of the French prisoners to Cadiz, and then returned to Spithead at the end of August.

After sailing from Portsmouth for the Leeward Islands in October 1761 with Rear-Admiral George Rodney’s force, Walsingham commanded the Modeste in the capture of Martinique during the early part of 1762. He was given the honour of being sent home with Rodney’s and Major-General Robert Monckton’s dispatches, although this involved giving up command of the Modeste. He arrived in Whitehall on 9 March after a passage of six weeks aboard a frigate . Four months later he was rewarded with an appointment to the Romney 54 (a vessel considered to be a plum command), which was about to be launched at Woolwich before a distinguished audience. By November she was in Plymouth Sound, from where she went out with a cruise under the orders of Vice-Admiral Sir Charles Hardy. Walsingham retained the Romney until paying her off at the Devonshire port in February 1763 at the end of the Seven Years War.

In the meantime, in December 1761 he had been re-elected to parliament for the pocket borough of Fowey, which seat he retained until 1768 when he was once more selected to sit for Knaresborough. During this period he sat in the Duke of Newcastle’s interest, and by the middle of the 1760’s he was regarded as one of the Marquess of Rockingham’s Whig followers. (He also held the seat of Dungarvan in the separate Irish Parliament from 1758 to 1768.) Attending Parliament in 1775, he supported Edmund Burke’s motion that Britain had no right to tax the American colonies without offering them representation, and he backed the Rockingham group in its denunciation of the American Revolutionary War. He often spoke in parliament and was respected for his measured tone, thoughtfulness and moderation.

In addition to his political activities Walsingham was clearly a cultured and clubbable man. In 1776 he joined the ‘Society of Dilletanti’, a group of influential men devoted to the appreciation and study of classical art. He was elected to the Royal Society in 1778, probably more for his circle of powerful friends than for any scientific expertise. He was also high up in the hierarchy of Freemasonry, holding the post of Provincial Grand Master for Kent for four years. His interest in music was demonstrated by the fact that on a trip Germany (probably in 1757) he hired six German musicians and brought them back to entertain him in the Boreas, joining a following that also included a tailor, cook, two servants and a steward. Sometimes amusement could be combined with politics —Walsingham was a member of ‘The Noblemen and Gentlemen’s Catch Club’, a group devoted to singing and drinking, in which the Earl of Sandwich was an enthusiastic member.

On 23 February 1778, with the French showing signs of entering the American Revolutionary War, Walsingham was appointed to recommission the Thunderer 74, though he not been to sea for fifteen years. After some weeks fitting out at Woolwich she went around to Spithead, from where the ship departed in the second week of July to join the Grand Fleet at sea under Admiral Hon. Augustus Keppel. By now her crew were so sickly with what was reported as smallpox that it was believed she would have to return to port. When the flagship Victory 100 lost her main yard in a gale, she claimed the Thunderer’s main yard in its place. Despite these handicaps, the Thunderer fought at the Battle of Ushant on 27 July where, despite being heavily engaged, she only suffered seven casualties. However, in the confusion of battle, the Thunderer accidentally fired into another British ship, the Egmont, causing several casualties. When she did return to Portsmouth with the fleet on 26 October it was reported that she had suffered so many deaths to sickness that only fifty men were fit enough to work the ship.

Despite their political differences, Walsingham was a close friend of the first lord of the Admiralty, the Earl of Sandwich.

During the political fall-out that followed the Battle of Ushant, Walsingham sought a middle path to help promote harmony in the service. Given his political loyalties, he would be expected to support the Whig, Admiral Hon. Augustus Keppel. While he gave evidence at Keppel’s court martial in January 1779, Walsingham spoke against a Parliamentary motion demanding a court-martial on the Tory, Vice-Admiral Sir Hugh Palliser, whom he considered had no cause to face censure over his part in the battle. When Palliser was nevertheless court martialled in April 1779, he gave evidence to that effect. In the House of Commons, Walsingham also spoke in support of the Earl of Sandwich when the leading Whig, Charles James Fox, demanded the First Lord of the Admiralty’s removal from office. Meanwhile he continued to command the Thunderer, being present in the Channel Fleet’s retreat in August, though he privately criticised Admiral Hardy for his caution. He apparently took some leave late in the year when Captain James Bradby was appointed to act for him.

On 18 February 1780 Walsingham was ordered to hoist the broad pennant of commodore aboard the Thunderer, with his nephew, Robert Boyle Nicholas, serving as his flag captain. He was placed in command of a troop convoy that was to be sent out to the Leeward Islands to reinforce Admiral Sir George Rodney. Unfortunately, contrary winds delayed his sailing, and although he departed Portsmouth on 8 April with a convoy of three hundred ships, he put back to Plymouth three days later after receiving intelligence that the Brest Fleet was out. A second attempt to depart days later saw him return again on a report that the French were off the Scilly Isles, and when the convoy got away from Torbay on 1 May, contrary winds caused it to return once more, remaining wind bound until 29 May. The convoy finally arrived at Barbados on 13 July, having ironically enjoyed a most pleasant voyage in which not a single seaman had died and only seven soldiers had passed away. Four days later, Walsingham’s squadron was detached by Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley to join Vice-Admiral Sir Peter Parker at Jamaica, which station they reached on 1 August.

A month later Walsingham and his small squadron joined Rear-Admiral Joshua Rowley’s squadron to escort the homeward-bound Jamaica convoy to safety out of the Caribbean. On 5 October several of these ships, including the Thunderer were caught north-east of San Domingo in a very large hurricane, one of which came to be known as ‘the Great Hurricanes of October 1780‘. Walsingham, the Thunderer, and all her crew were lost without trace – the ship must have foundered in the enormous seas and howling winds. If Walsingham had lived he would have become a rear-admiral in 1787, and been well-placed to take on senior posts in the French Revolutionary Wars a few years later. In 2000 his portrait (showing the town of Louisbourg in the background), by the Irish artist Nathaniel Hone the elder, sold for a quarter of a million pounds.

Despite their opposing political opinions, Walsingham was a close friend of the Earl of Sandwich; so close that the morning after the murder of the First Lord’s mistress, Martha Ray, it was Walsingham, ‘his ‘real friend’, whom the bereft Sandwich requested to keep him company. The rumour in London was that in return for being appointed colonel of marines (with its £500 salary) Walsingham had agreed to vote with Sandwich and the government rather than the opposition. However, he was also said to have wished to resign his seat: when he informed the Duke of Devonshire who controlled the constituency of his decision, the Duke allowed him to stay on in Parliament, despite his political defection. Walsingham was also well-known to be the long-term ‘protector’ of the courtesan Ann Sheldon, who was said to have wished to live with him on board the Thunderer in 1779.