bringing them with their backs to the enemy. Some of the other officers shouted to the men to wheel to the right, thereby causing some confusion. General Richard Hamilton [q. v.] took advantage of the disorder and charged. Some fifty of Wolseley's men were cut down, and the others, being pressed by the Irish cavalry, were routed. Their retreat was checked by the timely advance of the king with some Dutch cavalry. William rallied the fugitives, who again faced the enemy, and this time with better success.
Wolseley rendered valuable service during the remainder of the Irish campaign, and was present with his regiment at the dearly bought victory of Aughrim (12 July 1691). His services were rewarded in August 1692 by his being appointed master-general of the ordnance in Ireland, in room of Lord Mountjoy. On 22 March 1693 Wolseley was made brigadier-general over all the horse, and in May 1696 was appointed one of the lords justices in Ireland and a privy councillor. He died, unmarried, in December 1697.
[Dalton's English Army Lists and Commission Registers, 1661–1714; Hist. MSS. Comm. 11th Rep. App. vii. 28; Andrew Hamilton's True Relation of the Actions of the Inniskilling Men; London Gazettes, especially the number for 4 March 1690; Luttrell's Brief Relation of State Affairs, passim; Macaulay's Hist. of England (for the battle of Newtown-Butler); Captain John Richardson's Account of the Battle of the Boyne, quoted from in Colonel Walton's Hist. of the British Standing Army, 1660–1700; Story's Impartial History of the Wars in Ireland, pt. ii. (for the account of the battle of Cavan); Somers Tracts, ed. Scott, vol. xi.; An Historical and Descriptive Guide to Scarborough, p. 65; Wolseley's Despatches quoted from in London Gazettes; Burke's Peerage and Baronetage.]
WOLSELEY, WILLIAM (1756–1842), admiral, of the Irish branch of the old Staffordshire family of Wolseley, was born on 15 March 1756 at Annapolis in Nova Scotia, where his father, Captain William Neville Wolseley, of the 47th regiment, was then in garrison. His mother was Anne, sister of Admiral Phillips Cosby [q. v.] In 1764 the family returned to Ireland; and in 1769 William, who had been at school in Kilkenny, was entered on board the Goodwill cutter at Waterford, commanded by his father's brother-in-law, Lieutenant John Buchanan. Two years later, when the Goodwill was paid off, Wolseley was sent by his uncle Cosby to a nautical school in Westminster, from which, after some months, he joined the Portland, going out to Jamaica. He returned to England in the Princess Amelia, and in September 1773 joined the 50-gun ship Salisbury, with Commodore [Sir] Edward Hughes [q. v.], commander-in-chief in the East Indies. The Salisbury came home in the end of 1777, and Wolseley, having passed his examination, was promoted, 11 June 1778, to be junior lieutenant of the Duke, one of the fleet with Keppel in July, though on the 27th she had fallen so far to leeward that she had no part in the action [see Keppel, Augustus, Viscount]. When the autumn cruise came to an end, Wolseley, at the suggestion of Sir Edward Hughes, going out again as commander-in-chief in the East Indies, effected an exchange into the Worcester, one of his squadron. After some service against pirates in the Indian seas, he commanded a company of the naval brigade at the reduction of Negapatam in October 1781, and again at the storming of Fort Ostenberg, Trincomalee, on 11 Jan. 1782, when he was severely wounded in the chest by a charge of slugs from a gingal, and left for dead in the ditch. Happily he was found the next day and carried on board the Worcester. He was shortly afterwards moved into the Superb, Hughes's flagship, and in her was present in the first four of the actions with the Bailli de Suffren. After the last of these, 3 Sept. 1782, he was promoted to be commander of the Combustion fireship, and on 14 Sept. was posted to the Coventry frigate, which on the night of 12 Jan. 1783 ran in among the French fleet in Ganjam Roads, mistaking the ships for Indiamen, and was captured. Wolseley was civilly treated by Suffren, who sent him as a prisoner to Mauritius. He was shortly afterwards transferred to Bourbon, where he was detained till the announcement of peace. He then got a passage to St. Helena in a French transport, and so home in an East Indiaman.
In 1786 he was appointed to the Trusty, fitting out at Portsmouth for the broad pennant of his uncle, Phillips Cosby. After a three years' commission in the Mediterranean, the Trusty came home and was paid off. In 1792 Wolseley was appointed to the Lowestoft frigate, in which in the early months of 1793 he was employed in convoy duty in St. George's Channel. He was then sent out to join Lord Hood in the Mediterranean; was present at the occupation of Toulon, and on 30 Sept., while detached under Commodore Linzee, occupied the celebrated Mortella Tower, which, being handed over to the Corsicans, was retaken by the French some three weeks later, and on 8 Feb. 1794 beat off the 74-gun ship
