A BRIEF MEMOIR OF MAJOR-GENERAL SIR JOHN GEORGE WOODFORD, K.C.B., K.C.H. THE WOODFORD FAMILY is of great antiquity, as is shown by the "Woodford Charterlary" in the British Museum, and was in old days of great estates and influence in Northamptonshire and Leicestershire. According to the Woodford Charterlary, John of Woodford came from Sarum, and married the daughter and heiress of Walter Prest, or Preston. His son was ward of the Black Prince, and was with him in the French Wars. The Woodfords then married heiresses, such as the daughters of Brabazon, Neville, Sherard, Trussell, and became both wealthy and powerful. Sir Robert Woodford was knighted by Henry V., and was with Lord Zouch at Agincourt. He left five grandsons, among whom he divided his property, and the greater part of the estates passed away through a female, who married a Morton, and then a Smith, son of Sir Francis Smith, Baron of the Exchequor. The immediate ancestors of Sir Alexander and Sir John Woodford are said to have come from the same family, through old John of London, but this is doubtful. They seem rather to have descended from Gamuiel Woodford, whose right to bear the old quarterings is acknowledged in the Herald's Visitation in the British Museum, early in the 17th century, and who had the same Coat of Arms, as Sir Ralph Woodford afterwards used. Sir Ralph Woodford, the first Baronet, gave in a pedigree to the Herald's College, which goes up to Sarum again (a somewhat curious coincidence) to a Matthew Woodford, who lived at the end of the 17th century. His son, Matthew Woodford, Subdean and Prebendary of Chichester, married a Miss Sherer, and his only son, Matthew Woodford, of Southampton (where the Woodfords had a house), married Mary Brideoake, niece and co-heiress of her uncle, Ralph Brideoake, son of the Bishop of Chichester, and Rector of St. Mary's. They had many children, some who died in infancy, and among those who survived were:— 1. Ralph (the first Sir Ralph Woodford). 3. John, father of Sir Alexander and Sir John. Sophia, Sir Ralph, who was a well-known Diplomatist, married a Miss Rezin, a Dutch lady, and had Sir Ralph, the 2nd Baronet, who died unmarried, (Governor of Trinidad), and was buried at sea; and Eliza, who married first William Hammett, and secondly, the Vicomte de Rosonordru. The Archdeacon died unmarried at Winchester. Colonel John Woodford married first Lucy Emperor, the only daughter of an old Norfolk family, bearing the Imperial Eagle, and had two sons; Emperor, an officer in the army, who died in France in 1816, and a second son who perished at sea off Newfoundland, an officer in H.M. Navy. He married, secondly, Susan, Countess Dowager of Westmorland, eldest daughter of Cosmo George, Duke of Gordon, sister of Lord William and Lord George Gordon, and had two sons, Sir Alexander, born in 1782, and Sir John, born in 1785.* John George Woodford, the subject of this brief memoir, was born at Chartham Deanery, near Canterbury, on the 28th of *There was a John Woodford, whose name is frequently mentioned in the Calendar of the State Papers, who lived tempore James I., Charles I., who had a house at Sarum. The Woodford Arms are three leopards' heads, gules, peascent, three fleur de lys argent, field sable. There are Woodfords in Northamptonshire and Somersetshire, spelling their names with an "e," and in Hampshire and Devonshire.-A.F.A. W, February, 1785, and died on the 22nd of March, 1879, aged 94 years. His father, Colonel John Woodford, was Lieut.-Colonel of the North Fencible Highlanders (the Gordon Regiment), and Colonel of the Grenadier Guards. His mother married first John, 9th Earl of Westmorland. By this marriage she was the mother of Lady Susan Drummond, Lady Elizabeth Lowther, wife of Sir John Lowther, Bart., of Swillington; and Lady Mary Fludyer, of Ayston, in the county of Rutland. By her second marriage she had two sons, viz., Alexander, afterwards Field-Marshal Sir Alexander Woodford, K.G., and John George Woodford, our hero. His father, Colonel John Woodford, was a man of great ability and force of character. He was a soldier, a scholar, and a patriot of no common order. He learnt his duties as a soldier under General Wolfe, and at the close of the last century, he acted a distinguished part in the volunteer movement of that period. During the Gordon Riots in London, in 1780, he was the first officer who gave orders to the soldiers to fire upon the rioters when they made their attack upon Lord Mansfield's house and burnt it to the ground. Colonel Woodford took upon himself the responsibility. Horace Walpole, writing to the Countess of Ossory, speaks of the melancholy position of the Countess of Westmorland (sister of Lord George Gordon), wife of Colonel Woodford, who was forced to conceal himself, although his conduct was approved by the authorities. For twenty years after this period he was actively and prominently engaged in his professional duties. As colonel of the North Fencible Highlanders, he gave an address on October 20th, 1798, to the Kirkcaldy Volunteers, every word of which might well be listened to by the volunteers of the present day : "There is an outward form, I will acknowledge, that will give impression to military appearance; but this is a secondary object. Learn first the main and the useful, and you may then study the formal and the graceful. On this I will take another opportunity to be more explicit and pointed; in the meantime, will you allow me to observe, that you are far advanced in that which is called the drill of a regiment, and you seem every day nearer and nearer approaching to the great basis of military order, steadiness, the strongest feature of subordination; and it would be to insult your understanding to dwell on that first great military principle; for, without that, and a blind and implicit obedience to orders, as well as a ready execution of them, the service in the field will be but vainly attempted. You will bear too in remembrance, that it is of your own free accord you have now pledged yourselves to military service; and that, while others are acting under the power and coercion of authority, the honour and merit will be yours of freely submitting to all those restraints which military submission requires, and of readily acquiescing in all that may be thought necessary for your acquitting yourselves as you ought, and to the expectations your country has now a right to form of your public duty." In presenting to the Kirkcaldy Volunteers their colours March 27th, 1799, he said : 66 'By his colours every soldier is pledged and sworn; to his colours every soldier is true and faithful; by them he stands uushaken; by them he is led in the pride of exulting courage, through every danger and difficulty, to conquest and honour; from them he never shrinks; with them he advances fearless through the ranks of death; to them he flies in impetuous zeal; round them he rallies with undaunted courage, as the point to which his honour, his duty, and his fame is inseparably bound and fixed; by them he falls, like Wolfe, smiling in death, rejoicing in victory and his country's good. Troops have been beaten, and regiments have receded, but their colours have never been abandoned unless the regiment has fallen too." In the same year, June 4th, 1798, he delivered an address to the Gordon Regiment, of which he was colonel. He spoke in terms of the highest admiration of their good conduct during the time he had led them. In the course of his speech he said : : "The favourable reports made of this regiment excited in his Majesty a wish to see one so highly talked of. He reviewed us, on our march, in Hyde Park, but to mark his royal favour, he met you, who had come so far to serve, at the Horse Guards, and himself led at your head to the ground of the review, an honour most distinguished and never to be forgotten. You were the first Highland regiment too, the King ever saw; he |