Page:The Complete Peerage Ed 2 Vol 4.djvu/547

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DUNDONALD 529 John Mayne, of TefFont, Wilts, da. of Samuel Raymond, of Belchamp Hill, Essex, where she d. Dec. 1808. Will pr. 1809. He ?«., 3rdly, at Fulham, Apr. 1 8 1 9, Anna Maria, i st da. of Francis Plowden, LL.D. She d'. of a bilious fever 13 Dec. 1822, at Hammersmith, Midx. Will pr. 1823. He d. in great poverty in the Rue Vaugirard, Paris, i July 1831, aged 82. Admon. July 1841 and Oct. 1843. X. 1831. 10. Thomas (Cochrane), Earl of Dundonald, i^c. [S.], s. and h. by ist wife; b. 14 Dec. 1775, and bap. I Jan. 1776, at Annesfield, in Hamilton, co. Lanark; j/v/c^[and well known as] Lord Cochrane 1775-1831; Capt. io6th Foot, 1794, but soon quitted the Army for the Navy, serving firstly under Lord Keith. His brilliant naval career can here be only indicated; when Capt. of the brig "Speedy" (158 tons) he captured, 6 May 1800, a Spanish frigate of above 600 tons, the prisoners being 8 times the number of their captors; in the " Imperi- euse," in 1808, in the struggle between France and Spain, the havoc caused by him was terrific; but, besides the defence of Rosas, in 1809, his greatest work was the vast destruction of French ships (then blockaded by Admiral Lord Gambler) in the Basque roads, in 1809, which shattered for ever the maritime power of Napoleon. For this he was nom. K.B., and inv. 26 Apr. 1 809. He was M.P. (Radical Reformer) for Honiton 1 806-07, and for Westm. 1807-18, in wJiich capacity he opposed the vote of thanks proposed to Lord Gambler, who, he stated, had neglected to destroy the French fleet when well able to do so. The vote was, however, carried. On 8 June 1 8 14 he was convicted (') of a fraud on the Stock Exchange; was expelled the House of Commons (though immediately re-elected), struck oflF the Navy list, and from the order of the Knights of the Bath, fined

^i,ooo, and imprisoned for a year, being released 20 June 18 15. From

1817-22 he assisted the Chilians in establishing their independence from Spain, eff^ecting the hazardous capture of Valdivia, and the cutting out of the Spanish frigate " Esmeralda " from under the fortifications of Callao, being cr. Knight of the Order of Merit of Chili. In 1823 he entered the service of Brazil, establishing the naval power of that Empire, and being cr. Marquis of Maranham and Grand Cross of the Cruzero of Brazil. () (*) The account of him in Diet. Nat. Biog. speaks of his innocence as un- questionable, and seems to regard the fact that a mass meeting of Westminster electors resolved that " he was perfectly innocent " as disposing of the erdict of a jury given after a fair and careful trial by an eminent iudge — Lord Ellenborough. Doubtless he was a most gallant man and held strong radical views, but equally certainly he was at the time of the swindle in close touch with the perpetrators, his uncle, the Hon. Andrew James Cochrane-Johnstone, and a Frenchman named Berengcr; the jury found him guilty, though of course they may have been wrong. As to his rascally uncle, he disappeared, and was never heard of again. V.G. () He was author of Narrative of Services in the Liberation of Chi/i, Peru, and Brazil, from Spanish and Portuguese Dominion (1859); '^^ Autobiography of a Seaman (1860-61), which was generally attributed to him and was completed (1869) by his son, the nth Earl, is shown, in a monograph on Lord Cochrane's trial, by J. B. Atlay (1897), to have been neither written nor dictated by him. G.E.C. and V.G. 67