Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 59.djvu/455

This page has been validated.
Waters
449
Waters

parole, and was sent to Salamanca under a guard of four gendarmes. He was better mounted than they, and, having watched his opportunity, he put spurs to his horse. He was on a wide plain, with French troops before and behind him; and as he rode along their flank some encouraged, others fired at him. Passing between two of their columns he gained a wooded hollow, and baffled his pursuers. Two days afterwards he reached the British headquarters, ‘where Lord Wellington, knowing his resolute, subtle character, had caused his baggage to be brought, observing that he would not be long absent’ (Napier, book xii. ch. 5). On 15 April Wellington appointed him (subject to confirmation) an assistant adjutant-general, and on 30 May he was made brevet lieutenant-colonel.

He served throughout the war, being present at Talavera, Busaco, Ciudad Rodrigo, Badajoz, Salamanca, Vittoria, the battles of the Pyrenees (during which he was wounded while speaking to Wellington), the Nivelle and Nive, Orthes and Toulouse. At Badajoz and Salamanca he acted as adjutant-general, and was mentioned in Wellington's Salamanca despatch. He received the gold cross with four clasps, and was made C.B. in 1815. He was at Waterloo, and again acted as adjutant-general after Sir Edward Barnes was wounded, and signed the returns of the battle, though he was himself wounded also. He received the Russian order of St. Anne (2nd class). After being for a time on half-pay, he became captain and lieutenant-colonel in the Coldstream guards on 15 May 1817. He was promoted colonel on 19 July 1821, and was again placed on half-pay on 15 Feb. 1827. He became major-general on 22 July 1830, was made captain of Yarmouth Castle, Isle of Wight, on 22 April 1831, and K.C.B. on 1 March 1832. He was given the colonelcy of the 81st foot on 15 June 1840, and was promoted lieutenant-general on 23 Nov. 1841. He died in London on 21 Nov. 1842, at the age of sixty-eight, and was buried at Kensal Green.

[United Service Magazine, January 1843; Gent. Mag. 1843, i. 201; Nicholas's Annals and Antiquities of the Counties and County Families of Wales, p. 602; Wellington Despatches; Napier's War in the Peninsula.]

WATERS, LUCY (1630?-1658), mother of the Duke of Monmouth. [See Walter.]

WATERTON, CHARLES (1782–1865), naturalist, eldest son of Thomas Waterton and his wife Anne, daughter of Sir Henry Bedingfeld of Oxburgh in Norfolk, was born at the family seat of Walton Hall in Yorkshire on 3 June 1782. His family was one of the most ancient in the north of England, and, besides having the honour of mention in Shakespeare (‘Richard II,’ act ii. sc. 1), his ancestors distinguished themselves at Agincourt and at Marston Moor, after which battle Mrs. Waterton held Walton Hall for the king against the attack of a parliamentary force.

Charles was educated as a Roman catholic, and in 1792 was sent to a school kept at Tudhoe, four miles from Durham, by a priest named Arthur Storey. He wrote for a cousin, George Waterton, some amusing recollections of the discipline and events of his school-days (Norman Moore, Life, p. 9). In 1796 he was sent to Stonyhurst College in Lancashire, and remained there till 1800. His master, Father Clifford, advised him never to drink wine or spirits, and having made in 1798 a promise to follow this advice, he kept it throughout life. He always retained a warm affection for the jesuits, and visited Stonyhurst nearly every year. In 1802 he went to Cadiz and thence to Malaga, where he stayed for more than a year with two maternal uncles who had settled in Spain, and witnessed the great fever epidemic, known as the plague of Malaga. He returned in 1803, and enjoyed a season's hunting in Yorkshire, but his health was not good, and he decided to try a warm climate, and visit some family estates in Demerara. On the way he visited his uncle, Sir John Bedingfeld, in London, and they dined with Sir Joseph Banks, who became a firm friend of Waterton. He sailed from Portsmouth on 29 Nov. 1804, and, after a voyage of six weeks, landed at Stabroek, now George Town, in what had just become British Guiana. He stayed till 1813, with occasional visits to England, managing the estates, a duty which he gave up in April 1812, and then started on an expedition into the forests with the object of obtaining some of the wourali or arrow poison of the Indians, then thought likely to be a remedy for hydrophobia. On this occasion he penetrated to the savannahs on the frontiers of Brazil. He was successful in his quest, but illness obliged him to return home, and a severe tertian fever forced him to decline in May 1813 a commission from Lord Bathurst, then secretary of state for the colonies, to explore Madagascar. In March 1816 he sailed from Liverpool for Pernambuco, and there collected the birds of the district, went on to Cayenne, and thence to Demerara, where he spent six months in the forest observing birds and beasts. At the end of 1817 he visited Rome, and, with an old schoolfellow, climbed to the top of the lightning conductor of St. Peter's,