thereof in particular.' In 1733 he wrote 'An Examination of the late Archdeacon Echard's Account of the Marriage Treaty between King Charles II and Queen Catharine, Infanta of Portugal,' defending Echard against Lord Lansdowne's criticisms. In 1738 he was prosecuted by Bentley as archdeacon of Ely because he refused certain fees due to the archdeacon at his visitation. The archdeacon had ceased to visit, but the fees nevertheless were usually paid. Colbatch was defeated in the courts, but showed the justice and reason of his course of action in a pamphlet entitled 'The Case of Proxies payable to Ecclesiastical Visitors.' He died on 11 Feb. 1748. He left 30l. a year to a charity school at Orwell, and was during his lifetime a considerable benefactor to the church.
[Alumni Westmon. p. 200; Cole's MSS. ii. 75, xlv. 243, 332; Monk's Life of Bentley, passim; Carter's Cambridgeshire, p. 247; Jebb's Bentley. An unfavourable, but confessedly biassed, estimate of Colbatch's motives in his quarrel with Bentley will be found in De Quincey's Essay on Richard Bentley.]
COLBORNE, Sir JOHN, first Baron Seaton (1778–1863), general, only son of Samuel Colborne of Lyndhurst, Hampshire, was born there on 16 Feb. 1778. He entered the army as an ensign in the 20th regiment on 10 July 1794, and won every step of promotion without purchase. He was promoted lieutenant on 4 Sept. 1795, and captain-lieutenant on 11 Aug. 1799, in which year he was first engaged in war in the fruitless expedition to the Helder. In 1801 he accompanied his regiment to Egypt, where it particularly distinguished it self, and was promoted captain on 12 Jan. 1800 shortly before it sailed. From
Egypt the 20th went to Malta, and then to Sicily, and Colborne particularly distinguished himself at Maida, and shortly afterwards Sir John Moore took notice of him, secured his promotion to the rank of major on 21 Jan. 1808, and made him his military secretary. He accompanied Sir John Moore to Sweden and to Portugal, and was by his side all through the retreat to Corunna, and when the general was dying he said to Colonel Paul Anderson, 'Anderson, remember you go to and —— and tell him it is my request, and that I request that he will give Major Colborne a lieutenant-colonelcy. He has been long with me, and I know him to be most worthy of it.' The general's dying request was of course granted, and Colborne was, on 2 Feb. 1809, gazetted to the lieutenant-colonelcy of the 5th garrison battalion, from which he exchanged to the 66th regiment on 2 Nov. 1809, and to the 52nd Oxfordshire light infantry on 18 July 1811. In 1809 Colborne proceeded to the Peninsula, and was at once sent by Lord Wellington on a mission to the Spanish general Venegas, whose utter defeat at Ofanahe witnessed and reported upon. He then joined the 66th, and was present at Busaco, and in the following year temporarily commanded a brigade of the second division as senior colonel at the battle of Albuera. Directly after that battle he assumed the command of the 52nd, one of the three famous regiments which formed the light brigade and the nucleus of the famous light division. He first took them into action in storming the fort of San Francisco, an outwork of Ciudad Rodrigo, where he was so severely wounded that he was unable to be present at the storming of Badajoz. He commanded his regiment only at the battle of Salamanca, but in 1813 he again assumed the command of the left brigade of the light division, and commanded it through the three great battles of Vittoria, the Nivelle, and the Nive. He then again reverted to the command of his regiment and commanded it at the battles of Orthes and Toulouse. On the conclusion of peace he was promoted colonel on 4 June 1814, given a gold cross and three clasps, and on the extension of the order of the Bath was made one of the first K.C.B.'s, and afterwards an aide-de-camp to the prince regent. When Napoleon escaped from Elba, the 52nd, under the command of Colborne, was ordered to Belgium, and brigaded with the 71st and 95th regiments under Major-general Adam [see Adam, Sir Frederick] in the division of Lord Hill. This division was posted on the extreme right of the English position in order to keep open the communications with Hal; but when it was perceived that Napoleon was not trying to turn the English line, but to force his way through it, the brigade gradually moved forward so as to be able to pour in a flank fire on any charge in column that might be made within its reach. The opportunity arrived when the Old Guard advanced to the charge ; then Colborne, who, as Napier says, was ' a man of singular talent for war,' suddenly fired a volley into the flank of the dense column, and then charged it and routed it. Whether this charge of Colborne's really defeated the Old Guard and won the battle of Waterloo is a point which will always be disputed, but it is perfectly certain that he defeated a body of the guard, either the main body or a detached portion, and most probably the second line. Anyhow there can be no doubt that the Duke of Wellington never gave fair credit to Colborne's exploit. Colborne, however, received the orders of Maria Theresa and St. George, and directly he was promoted major-general in 1825 he
