medal with three clasps, the Sardinian and Turkish medals, and the Medjidie (fifth class).
He commanded the regiment from 30 June 1855. It returned to England in July 1856, embarked for Madras in August 1857, and went on to China in March 1860. He had become colonel in the army on 9 March 1858, and on 28 April 1860 he was made brigadier-general, and was given command of a brigade in Michel's division during the Anglo-French expedition to Peking. He was present at the capture of the Taku forts, was mentioned in despatches (ib. 4 Nov. 1860), and received the medal with clasp. On 18 Jan. 1861 he was given one of the rewards for distinguished service.
He was left in command of the British troops remaining in China in 1862. The Taeping insurrection was then in full career. The rebels had broken their promise not to come within thirty miles of Shanghai, and were threatening that city itself. In April Staveley marched against them with a force of about two thousand men, of which about one-third consisted of French and English seamen and marines. He shelled them out of their entrenched camp at Wongkadze, and stormed Tsipu, Kahding, Tsingpu, Nanjao, and Cholin in the course of April and May. But the Chinese imperial troops were unable to hold all the towns recovered, and he had to withdraw the British garrison from Kahding (ib. 18 July and 5 Aug. 1862). In the autumn Kahding and Tsingpu were again taken, and the thirty-mile radius cleared of the rebels.
In December he was asked by Li Hung Chang to name a British officer to replace the American Burgevine as commander of the disciplined Chinese force which had been formed by Frederick Townsend Ward. Staveley named Charles George Gordon [q. v.], who had been chief engineer under him in the recent operations, and had surveyed all the country round Shanghai. They had served together before Sebastopol, and Staveley's sister was the wife of Gordon's brother. The appointment had to be approved from England, and was not taken up till the end of March 1863. At that time ill-health obliged Staveley to resign his command and go home.
In March 1865 he was made K.C.B. and was appointed to the command of the first division of the Bombay army. On 25 Sept. 1867 he was promoted major-general, and in November, by Sir Robert Napier's desire, he was given command of the first division of the force sent to Abyssinia. He showed his energy to good purpose in the organisation of the base at Annesley Bay, and he conducted the fight on the Arogye plain, which immediately preceded the capture of Magdala. Napier said in his despatch that Staveley had afforded him most valuable support and assistance throughout the campaign (ib. 16 and 30 June 1868). He received the thanks of parliament and the medal.
Staveley commanded the troops in the western district for five years from 1 Jan. 1869, and in the autumn manœuvres of 1871 round Aldershot one of the three divisions was under him. He was commander-in-chief at Bombay from 7 Oct. 1874 to 7 Oct. 1878, with the local rank of lieutenant-general, which became his substantive rank on 29 April 1875. On 1 Oct. 1877 he became general. He was given the colonelcy of the 36th foot on 2 Feb. 1876, and transferred to his old regiment, the 44th (which had become the first battalion of the Essex regiment), on 25 July 1883. He received the G.C.B. on 24 May 1884. He had been placed on the retired list on 8 Oct. in the previous year.
He died at Aban Court, Cheltenham, on 23 Nov. 1896, and was buried at Brompton cemetery on the 27th. In 1864 he married Susan Millicent, daughter of Charles William Minet of Baldwyns, Kent. She survived him with several children.
[Times, 24 Nov. 1896; Carter's Historical Record of 44th Regt.; Royal Engineers' Papers, new ser. xix. 109; Boulger's Life of Gordon; Markham's History of the Abyssinian Expedition.]
STAVELEY, THOMAS (1626–1684), antiquary, son of William Staveley, rector of Cossington, Leicestershire, by his wife Anne, daughter of Thomas Babington of Rothley, was born at East Langton, Leicestershire, in 1626. He was educated at Peterhouse, Cambridge, admitted of the Inner Temple on 2 July 1647, and called to the bar on 12 June 1654. He resided the greatest part of his life at Belgrave, but a few years before his death removed to Leicester; he there held the office of steward of the court of records, to which he was appointed in 1672, probably by the Earl of Huntingdon. The stimulus given to protestant opinion by the conversion of James, duke of York, to Romanism (avowed in 1669), the Declaration of Indulgence (1672), and the countermove of the Test Act of 1673, elicited from Staveley in 1674 the work by which he is best known, ‘The Romish Horseleech: or an Impartial Account of the Intolerable Charge of Popery to this Nation’ (London, 8vo). To the 1769 edition of this work is annexed
