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The Napier Papers THE NAPIER PAPERS PHILIP V. BLAKE-HILL A. THE FIRST SERIES IN 1956 the Department of Manuscripts incorporated in its collections a series of papers of various members of the Napier family which had been bequeathed by Miss Violet Bunbury Napier, youngest daughter of General William Craig Emilius Napier. They commence with those of the Hon. George Napier, 6th son of Francis, 6th Baron Napier of Merchiston, and continue with those of four of his sons, Charles, George, William, and Richard, and Sir Charles's daughter, Emily. They have been arranged in eighty- eight volumes of papers (Add. MSS. 49086-49172) and twenty-four charters, mostly army commissions (Add. Ch. 75438, 75767, 75769-75790). The first series is divided into sub-sections: (i) the Hon. George Napier, (2) Sir Charles James Napier, (3) Emily Cefalonia^ and William Craig Emilius Napier, (4) Sir George Thomas Napier, (5) Sir William Francis Patrick Napier, and (6) Richard Napier. The relationship between them is shown in the genealogical table. At the end is a section consisting of papers of other members of the family. I. Papers of George and Lady Sarah Napier The Hon. George Napier married en secondes noces Lady Sarah Bunbury, daughter of Charles, 2nd Duke of Richmond, and divorced wife of Sir Thomas Bunbury: she was the famous beauty to whom George III had once proposed. Although some of her corre- spondence is included in this section, the majority of the papers are the official documents and letters of Napier in his capacities as Comptroller of the Royal Laboratory, Woolwich (1782-3),^ Deputy Quartermaster General of the Army (1794 8), and Comptroller of Army Accounts, Ireland (1799-1804). The D.Q,M.G. papers mostly relate to the French emtgre troops at Netley, Hampshire, while the Irish papers to a large extent refer to the inquiry, set up by order of the Lord Lieutenant and conducted by Napier, on the expendi- ture of public moneys by the Board of Works. One of the most interesting volumes in this section is Add. MS. 49092, a small vellum- bound book containing the journal of George Napier from 15 March to 29 August 1779. It gives a day-to-day account of the voyage from Leith to New York, to which his company, the Grenadiers Company of the 80th Foot, was bound as reinforcements for General Clinton. His solicitude for his men and his terse comments on the lack of consideration 25 n9 T3 be U biioo I E UJ o* ^ S C L ui ^ u - .i2 oo 3 - u Q Xi c c au O :: •—lOG shown by his superiors for the comfort and health of the soldiers and their families remind one of his son. Sir Charles James Napier, and it is quite clear from whom the latter inherited these same qualities. The journal also possesses some interest for the military historian in that it includes lists of provisions for the voyage on a daily basis^ and of the numbers of troops engaged on various operations in America during 1779. The remainder of this section comprises Napier's notebooks. Most cover his Woolwich period and describe experiments with gunpowder samples and methods of manufacturing gunpowder, shot, etc. Of the other two notebooks the first was compiled during the period of his appointment as D.Q.M.G. and consists of a resume of part of Sir David Dundas's Principles of Military Movements (2nd edition, published in 1795), and the second, written up in the early years of his Irish period, 1799-1801, contains memoranda of matters to be attended to, copies of letters, etc. 2. Papers ofLieut.-Gen. Sir Charles James Napier This section is supplemented by Add. MSS. 54510-63, incorporated in 1968, which will be briefly described later. In the present series, most of the special correspondence, apart from family letters, relates to Napier's Indian service, the earlier years being repre- sented to a greater extent in the second series. Two Governors-General of India are included. Lords Ellenborough and Dalhousie, as are such well-known soldiers as Sir Colin Campbell (afterwards Lord Clyde) and Sir Walter Ralegh Gilbert. The remainder of the special correspondence consists of Napier's correspondence with his sister Lady Bunbury and other members of his family, except for that with his daughter Emily and her husband, which is included in the next section. Sir Charles always regarded the conquest of Sind in 1843 as the highlight of his military career: indeed, 17 February was 'Meeanee Day' to him for the remaining years of his life. He gives a full account of the battle of Miani in two interesting letters, one to Sir George Arthur, the Governor of Bombay, written only two days later (Add.MS. 49115, fol. 49) and the other, embellished by a sketch-map, to his brother. Sir George Napier, on 24 February (Add. MS. 49168, fol. 22). Five weeks later, on 24 March, came the battle of Doaba, and in a letter of 30 March 1843 to his sister, Lady Bunbury, he describes the condition of the province of Sind under the Amirs and the course of that decisive battle (Add. MS. 49109, fol. 144). Two maps are of some interest. Both are of the country around Peshawar and the first, which is engraved and hand-coloured, shows the route taken in 1833 by James Gilbert Gerard, the Bengal surgeon and explorer, from Herat to Peshawar and on to Husun Abdul. The other is a sketch-map of the southern Eusofyze territory, drawn in ink by Captain Edward Barry Conolly, of the Bengal cavalry, assisted by Sergeant Cameron. It seems to have been made about 1840, the year in which Barry was killed near Cabul, since in 1841 there appeared from his pen a posthumous article in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal on the subject of the Eusofyze tribes. Turning to the general correspondence, we find that it includes a number of interesting • 27 topics, the saga of the £n.). 135.9^. being particularly worth recording. On 27 July 1821 the War Office wrote to Napier to the effect that, according to their records, he was overpaid by this amount between 29 May 1806 (when he was appointed to the Cape Corps as Major) and 24 June of the same year. They therefore requested him to reimburse it to Greenwood, Cox & Co., the War Office bankers. Napier was furious. He endorsed the letter, 'An infamous surcharge at a distance of 16 years', and added an avowal that not only did he not receive double pay but also that he clearly remembers having refused to do so. This letter took nearly six months to reach the Ionian Islands and the unreliability of the postal system only served to complicate an already difficult situation between Napier and his masters in London. On 14 February 1822 the War Office, apparently failing to realize the postal difficulties, sent a reminder, which did not arrive until 6 June."* Napier replied on the same day, but unfortunately the reply is not now extant in either this or the second series. On 29 June Palmerston himself took up the matter and wrote to Sir Thomas Maitland, the Lord High Commissioner of the Ionian Islands, requesting him to order Napier to remit the money and 'further desire that officer to explain the cause of his inattention to the instructions already communicated to him under my directions from this Office'. On 23 December Palmerston wrote to Sir Frederick Adam, the new High Commissioner, saying that the letter which Napier was said to have written in June had not been received and that Napier had still not remitted the sum to Greenwood, Cox & Co. Palmerston therefore asked Adam to order Napier to 'pay immediate attention to the instructions he had received'. On 4 April 1823 Napier forwarded to Palmerston a copy of his June letter with a covering note saying, ironically, that he was 'not able to secure the regularity of the post' and that Palmerston 'will surely acquit him of inatten- tion or delay'. He ended by requesting Palmerston either to counter the charge or to allow him to postpone further reply until after his return to England. On 9 August Palmerston returned to the attack with a letter to Adam, in reply to one which Adam had written on 16 April, fixing a date, 24 December, before which the sum must be paid or proof given that Napier had accounted for it. The copy of this letter, presumably supplied by Adam, was endorsed by Napier with a typical comment, 'I will see you damned first! I never drew the money and won't pay it.' The year 1824 opened with both sides reiterating the old arguments. Palmerston wrote to Adam (8 January), noting that no reply had been received to his letter of 9 August and asking to be informed as to what steps had been taken. The War Office clearly still had not realized the length of the delay in the post, but by the time that this letter reached Adam, Napier was in London and on 11 April 1824 wrote to Palmerston with copies of various documents from the Colonial Audit Office which proved that he had not received double pay. The final communication from Palmerston, dated 26 May, is in the second series of papers (Add.MS. 54540, fol. 153). It is in reply to Napier's letter of 11 April and curtly informed him that the War Office had had a further report from Messrs. Greenwood, Cox & Co. and that 'repayment of the sum ..
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