Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/254

This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

was spoken of as making Trollope a knight banneret, and was apparently so intended by the king; but it is said to have been afterwards decided, as a question of precedence, that a knight banneret could only be made on the field where a battle had actually been fought; or presumably, in the case of a naval officer, on the quarterdeck of one of the ships actually engaged (Marshall).

During the two following years Trollope continued in command of the Russell as one of the Channel fleet, for the most part off Brest. In 1800 he was appointed to the Juste, still off Brest, and on 1 Jan. 1801 was promoted to the rank of rear-admiral. Shortly before this he had had a difference with Lord St. Vincent, then commander-in-chief, and, as a flag-officer, declined to serve under him. St. Vincent shortly afterwards became first lord of the admiralty, and did not offer Trollope any appointment, which, on his part, Trollope would probably not have accepted. Before St. Vincent left the admiralty Trollope's health had broken down, and a violent attack of gout had deprived him of the use of his limbs. In 1805 he drew up a memorial, setting forth his services, in command of the Kite, of the Rainbow, and of the Glatton, especially in the matter of the mutiny, as also while in command of the Russell and the Royal Charlotte, when he had been knighted ‘under the royal standard.’ As he ‘possessed no means of supporting the honour of the title other than his half-pay,’ he prayed that, in consideration of his circumstances, ‘his Majesty would bestow on him some mark of his royal bounty.’ The memorial was referred to the admiralty, who reported that the exceptional service described was the quelling the mutiny in the Glatton, and that there was no instance of any such service being rewarded otherwise than by promotion. They were therefore unable to recommend the king to grant a pension ‘upon the ordinary estimate of the navy’ (Admiralty, Orders in Council, 30 May, 6 June 1805).

The gout, which so disabled him, continued its violence for upwards of ten years; but in 1816 he appeared to have entirely recovered. He had been promoted to be vice-admiral on 9 Nov. 1805, and admiral on 12 Aug. 1812. But after his recovery in 1816 the peace offered no inducement to him to serve. On 20 May 1820 he was nominated a K.C.B., and a G.C.B. on 19 May 1831. Some time after this the fits of gout returned, and later on affected his head. He was then living at Bath. His prevailing idea was that somebody was going to break in and rob him. He converted his bedroom into an armoury, with a blunderbuss, a big knife, and several brace of pistols. Nobody seems to have supposed that this was anything more than a harmless eccentricity; but one day, 2 Nov. 1839, he retired to his room, locked himself in, and blew his brains out. He was buried in St. James's Church, Bath. He had been for many years a widower, and left no children.

Trollope's half-brother, George Barne Trollope (d. 1850), served under his command in the Prudente and the Hussar. He was afterwards in the Lion and the Triumph with Sir Erasmus Gower [q. v.], was made a lieutenant in 1796, and was one of the Triumph's lieutenants in the battle of Camperdown. He was made commander in 1804, and, after serving actively through the war, principally in the Mediterranean and on the coast of France, was posted in 1814 and made a C.B. in 1815. In 1849 he was promoted to be rear-admiral on the retired list, and died at Bedford on 31 May 1850. He was married and left issue. His eldest son, John Joseph Trollope, prebendary of Hereford, died 8 Jan. 1893.

[The memoir in Ralfe's Naval Biogr. (ii. 311) appears to be based on an autobiographical communication from Trollope; that in Marshall's Roy. Nav. Biogr. (i. 145) is much less full; the memoir in United Service Journal (1840, i. 244) is by Admiral W. H. Smyth. See also Naval Chronicle (with a portrait), xviii. 353; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs; James's Naval History; Troude's Batailles navales de la France; Lord Camperdown's Admiral Duncan; O'Byrne's Nav. Biogr. Dict.; Gent. Mag. 1850, ii. 659.]

J. K. L.

TROLLOPE, THEODOSIA (1825–1865), authoress, born in 1825, was the only daughter of Joseph Garrow (d. 1855), by his wife the daughter of Jewish parents, and the widow of a naval officer named Fisher. Her father was a grand-nephew of Sir William Garrow [q. v.], and a son of an Indian officer who had married a high-caste Brahmine. From her mother she inherited skill as a musician, and she became an excellent linguist. By Landor's encouragement she became a contributor to Lady Blessington's annual, entitled ‘The Book of Beauty,’ and later she wrote for Dickens's ‘Household Words,’ and for the ‘Athenæum’ and other papers. The delicate state of her health prevented any extended literary toil, but she translated some of Dall' Ongaro's patriotic poems, and in 1846 produced a skilful metrical translation of Giovanni Battista Niccolini's ‘Arnaldo da Brescia.’ On 3 April 1848, at the British legation in Florence, she married Thomas Adolphus Trollope