very severe loss upon them. The most recent and most discriminating accounts of the transaction will be found in Sir F. Hamilton's ‘Hist. Grenadier Guards,’ vol. ii., and Burrows's ‘Life of Lord Hawke.’ Like other unsuccessful commanders of the period, Lieutenant-general Bligh was bitterly censured for his conduct of the affair, and soon after the return of the expedition to England resigned all his commissions and retired to his property in Ireland. His name is omitted from the Army Lists of 1759 and subsequent years. Some time after his retirement Bligh married a second wife, Frances, daughter of Theophilus Jones, of Leitrim, by whom he had no issue. He died at Brittas, near Dublin, in the summer of 1775, at the age of ninety, and was buried at Rathmore. His ample fortune of 100,000l. he bequeathed to his younger brother, the Dean of Elphin.
Collins's Peerage (ed. 1812), vii. 60–1; Cannon's Hist. Records 4th Dragoon Guards, 4th Dragoons, 12th Dragoons, 20th Foot; Chatham Corresp. vols. i. and ii.; Brit. Mus. Gen. Cat., see B——h; Entick's Hist. of the War, vol. iii.; Hamilton's Hist. Grenadier Guards, vol. ii.; Burrows's Life of Hawke; Hist. MSS. Com. Reps. 2, 3; Cal. State Papers (Home Off. 1766–69), pp. 340, 344; Scots Mag. xxxvii. 525.]
BLIGH, RICHARD (1780–1838?), chancery barrister, the son of John Bligh, cousin of Admiral William Bligh [q. v.], by his wife, Lucy Shuter, was educated at Westminster School and Trinity College, Cambridge. He graduated B.A. 1803, M.A. 1806, and became an equity draughtsman at the chancery bar. He had some practice, but was chiefly engaged in reporting in the House of Lords for several years. He married a daughter of his cousin, Admiral William Bligh.
His works, in the order of their publication, are: 1. ‘A Report of the Case of Bills of Exchange made payable at Bankers, as decided in the House of Lords,’ London, 1821. 2. ‘Reports of Cases heard in the House of Lords on Appeals and Writs of Error,’ 10 vols., 1823. 3. ‘A Digest of the Bankrupt Law,’ 1832. 4. ‘Bellum Agrarium; a Foreview of the Winter of 1835, suggested by the Poor Law Project, with Observations on the Report and the Bill,’ 1834. 5. ‘Reports of Cases in Bankruptcy’ (a work in which Bligh was aided by Basil Montagu), 1835.
[Welch's Alumni Westmonasterienses, p. 452; Brit. Mus. Catal.; Davy's Grad. Cantab. with manuscript additions, i. 49.]
BLIGH, RICHARD RODNEY (1737–1821), admiral, a native of Cornwall, is said to have been a godson of Lord Rodney, a statement which is highly improbable, as in 1737 Mr. Rodney was only nineteen years of age, and was in Newfoundland (Mundy, Life of Rodney, i. 38). He entered the navy about 1751, and was a midshipman of the Ramillies with Admiral Byng in the battle of Minorca, 20 May 1756. He was made lieutenant some time afterwards, and went out to the West Indies with Sir George Rodney, by whom he was promoted to the rank of commander, 22 Oct. 1762. He was posted on 6 Dec. 1777, and in 1782 commanded the Asia under Lord Howe at the relief of Gibraltar. In 1793 he was appointed to the Alexander, which during the early summer of 1794 was one of the squadron in the Bay of Biscay with Rear-admiral Montagu [see Montagu, George]. In the autumn the Alexander, accompanied by the Canada, had convoyed the Lisbon and Mediterranean trade well to the southward, and was returning, when on 6 Nov. the two fell in with a French squadron of five 74-gun ships, three frigates, and a brig. The Canada succeeded in getting away, but the Alexander, after a stout resistance, and in an almost sinking condition, was captured and taken into Brest (James, Naval Hist. (ed. 1860), i. 203).
A very sensational account of the brutal ill-treatment to which the prisoners were subjected is given by Captain Brenton (Nav. Hist. i. 364), and Ralfe has described Bligh as suffering great privations. But Brenton's unsupported statements are not to be fully trusted, and Ralfe's story is distinctly contradicted by Bligh's own letter (23 Nov.), in which he states that he was treated by his captors with great kindness and humanity. He had already been advanced to the rank of rear-admiral, 4 July 1794, but had not received any official intimation of it. At the time of his capture he was thus in the simple capacity of captain, though the French not unnaturally described him as a rear-admiral. On his return to England in May 1795 he was tried by court-martial for the loss of the Alexander, but was honourably acquitted.
From 1796 to 1799 Bligh was at Jamaica as second in command. He became a vice-admiral 14 Feb. 1799, and in 1803 commanded in chief at Leith, an appointment which he quitted on his promotion to the rank of admiral, 23 April 1804. This was his last service afloat. In January 1815, when the order of the Bath was largely extended, and eighty naval officers were made K.C.B., Bligh was passed over. He felt himself aggrieved, and wrote several letters urging his claims, which were principally his sixty-four years' service, and his stout, although unsuccessful, defence of the Alexander. The admiralty
