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Bard, Henry, first Viscount Bellomont [Bellamont] (1615/16–1656), royalist army officer and diplomat, came of an old-established Lincolnshire family, and was the younger son of George Bard (d. 1616), vicar of Staines, Middlesex, and his wife, Susan, daughter of John Dudley. A scholar at ...

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Blount, Sir Christopher (1555/6–1601), soldier and conspirator, was the second son of Thomas Blount (b. before 1523, d. 1568) of Kidderminster, Worcestershire. Blount's early life was profoundly shaped by two key influences: devout Catholicism (especially on the part of his mother, Margery, ...

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Bolron, Robert (fl. 1665–1682), informer and perjurer, was born in Newcastle upon Tyne. Apprenticed to a jeweller in London, he left after a year to become a foot soldier at Tynemouth Castle. During the Second Anglo-Dutch War (1665–7) he served on a frigate. In 1674 ...

Article

Jennett Humphreys

revised by Margaret D. Sankey

Bradshaw, James (1717–1746), Jacobite army officer, was born in Manchester, the only son of a wealthy Roman Catholic family in trade. He attended the Manchester Free School, where he studied classics, before being apprenticed in 1734 to Charles Worral, a Manchester factor who traded at the ...

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Buchan, Thomas (c. 1641–1724), Jacobite army officer, was the third of four sons, of the eight children of James Buchan of Auchmacoy (d. c.1659) and Margaret, daughter of Alexander Seton of Pitmedden. He was descended of a family who had been proprietors of ...

Article

Calvert [formerly Lazenby Calvert], Charles (c. 1688–1734), army officer and colonial governor, may have been the illegitimate son of Charles Calvert, third Baron Baltimore (1637–1715), proprietor of Maryland. The reasons for his former name Lazenby are uncertain, but most likely it indicates a connection with the ...

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Sir Arthur Coningham (1895–1948) by Howard Coster, 1940s © National Portrait Gallery, London

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Coningham, Sir Arthur (1895–1948), air force officer, was born in Brisbane, Australia, on 19 January 1895, the eldest of the three children of Arthur Coningham (1863–1939), variously a chemist, tobacconist, bookmaker, and book salesman, who played cricket once for Australia against England, in 1894–5, and his wife, ...

Article

Cowans, Sir John Steven (1862–1921), army officer, was born on 11 March 1862, at Woodbank, St Cuthbert Without, Carlisle, the eldest son of John Cowans and his wife, Jeannie (née Steven). His father was a prominent civil engineer, who founded Cowans, Sheldon & Co....

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Dillon, Thomas, fourth Viscount Dillon (1614/15–1673x5), royalist army officer, was the second son of Sir Christopher Dillon (d. 1624), Irish administrator, and Lady Jane, daughter of James Dillon, first earl of Roscommon. His father, of Ballylagham, co. Mayo, was president of Connaught...

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Dormer, Robert, first earl of Carnarvon (1610?–1643), royalist army officer, was the only son of Sir William Dormer, baronet (d. 1616), and Alice, daughter of Sir Richard Molyneux of Sefton, Lancashire. The Dormer family had risen to power and influence under the ...

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Dugdale, Stephen (d. 1683), informer, may have come from a minor gentry family of Staffordshire, but his parentage is unknown. He later claimed that as a young man he was converted to Roman Catholicism by a priest named Knight, and was in his care until ...

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Embry, Sir Basil Edward (1902–1977), air force officer, was born in Longford, Gloucestershire, on 28 February 1902, the youngest of the three children and the second son of James Embry, an Anglican clergyman, and his wife, Florence Ada Troughton. In conversation he always claimed to be Irish, though only his paternal grandfather is traceable to ...

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Everard, Edmund (fl. 1673–1711), informer, is of obscure origins, but may have been of Irish descent. He was apparently employed as an agent to the French court, and was also employed for a time as an assistant secretary to the duke of Monmouth...

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H. M. Chichester

revised by James Lunt

Fitzgerald, Sir John Forster (1784/5–1877), army officer, was a younger son of Edward Fitzgerald (d. 1815) of Carrigoran, co. Clare, who sat for that county in the Irish parliament and was a colonel of Irish Volunteers in 1782, and his second wife, the daughter and coheir of ...

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Simon Fraser, eleventh Lord Lovat (1667/88–1747) by William Hogarth, pubd 1746 © National Portrait Gallery, London

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Fraser, Simon, eleventh Lord Lovat (1667/8–1747), Jacobite conspirator, army officer, and outlaw, was the second but first surviving son of Thomas Fraser (1631–1699), sometimes styled 'of Beaufort' (the third son of Hugh Fraser, seventh Lord Lovat), and Sybilla Macleod (...

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Hamerton, Atkins (bap. 1804, d. 1857), army officer and first British consul in Zanzibar, was baptized on 29 April 1804 in St Thomas's Church, Marlborough Street, Dublin, the son of Edward Hamerton, clerk of ships' entries at the port of Dublin, and his wife, ...

Article

Harvey, Frederick William (1888–1957), poet and army officer, was born on 26 March 1888 at Murrel's End, Hartpury, Gloucestershire, the eldest of the five children of Howard Frederick Harvey (1853–1909), a farmer and horse dealer, and his wife, Cecilia Matilda (Tillie), née Waters (1862–1943)...

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Higgins, Francis [called the Sham Squire] (1746–1802), newspaper proprietor and spy, was born in Dublin, the son of Patrick Higgins, an attorney's clerk, and his wife, Mary; his parents had moved there from Downpatrick, co. Down. Higgins passed his early years in menial employments, became an attorney's clerk, by report converted to protestantism, though his name is not found in the official list of converts (and his later reconversion to Roman Catholicism is alluded to), and, through deception, married an heiress, ...