So many complaints reached the secretary of state, Henry Dundas (afterwards Viscount Melville) [q. v.], that in January 1801 a letter was sent out directing him to hand the charge of affairs over to General Dundas and to come home by the first opportunity. A letter to Dundas at the same time directed him to act as governor till the new governor arrived. Yonge wished that the supersession should take place after a short delay, giving him time to wind up affairs; but whether in consequence of private instructions from his uncle, or from personal ill-feeling, Dundas insisted on the immediate transfer of the authority, and the proclamation was issued within a few hours after the arrival of the letters. Yonge then applied to Sir Roger Curtis [q. v.] for a ship of war to take him to St. Helena, but this Curtis refused; and Yonge was left, waiting at an hotel, till he could find a passage. He did not arrive in England till towards the end of the year.
Meantime Lord Hobart, who had succeeded Dundas as colonial secretary, had written to the general desiring him to send home a report as to various abuses said to have taken place under Yonge's government, so that he might be able to judge ‘how far it might be advisable to institute an enquiry of a very serious nature’ into Yonge's conduct. Dundas, on receiving this, appointed a commission at Cape Town to examine the various charges mentioned in Hobart's letter; and this commission, after hearing evidence, not, apparently, on oath, nor subjected to cross-examination, and in the absence of Yonge, Blake, and Cockburn, put their hands to a report charging Blake and Cockburn with many and gross malpractices, and Yonge with being more or less cognisant of them. What steps Hobart took on receiving this report are not known. Cockburn denied the charge; possibly Blake did so too; and neither of them seems to have been tried in any way. If anything was officially done or said to Yonge, it did not abash him. On 26 July 1802 he wrote to Hobart that he had been paying his respects to the king at Weymouth. ‘I flatter myself,’ he said, ‘the justness of your lordship's mind will make you learn with pleasure the gracious reception I met with, such as was equal to my utmost wishes. … I found his Majesty perfectly well informed of every particular concerning the state of the colony, and had the happiness to be assured of his entire approbation of my conduct and services.’ It is quite possible that Yonge somewhat exaggerated the graciousness of his reception; but he could scarcely have waited on the king or have written this to Hobart if he had been tried and found guilty of conniving at a trade in licenses, monopolies, and permissions to sell slaves in the colony. A few months later he again wrote to Hobart, claiming payment of his expenses for the journey home, for the passage, diet, and hotel charges at Cape Town and at St. Helena, which seem to have amounted to about 1,000l. It does not appear that this was ever paid him, but he was given apartments at Hampton Court, where he died, at the age of eighty-one, on 25 Sept. 1812 (European Mag. 1812, ii. 330). He married, in 1765, Elizabeth, daughter of Bouchier Cleeve of Foot's Cray, but, as he left no issue, the baronetcy became extinct. The Great House at Colyton was conveyed by the last baronet to Sir John de la Pole, bart. Yonge also parted with the estates he held at Coplestone in Devonshire. His widow continued to reside at Hampton Court, and died there on 7 Jan. 1833 (Gent. Mag. 1833, i. 92, where she is named Anne). His portrait, painted by M. Brown, was engraved by E. Scott in 1790 (Bromley, p. 353).
[Vivian's Visitations of Devon; Theal's Hist. of South Africa, iii. 52–60, and Records of the Cape Colony, vols. iii. and iv. passim (index in vol. v.); Wotton's Baronetage, 1771, ii. 233.]
YONGE, JAMES or JOHN (fl. 1423), translator, belonged to an English family settled in the Irish pale. William Yonge, archdeacon of Meath from 1407 to 1437, was possibly his brother (Cotton, Fasti Eccl. Hib. iii. 127). Both James and John Yonge occur in the Irish patent and close rolls early in the fifteenth century. James Yonge was in prison in Trim Castle from January to October 1423, being removed in the latter month to Dublin Castle, and being pardoned on 10 May 1425 (Cal. Rot. Pat. et Claus. Hiberniæ, pp. 234 b, 236 b, 252 b). A John Yonge was serjeant of the county of Limerick in the reign of Richard II, held a lease of various lands, and was convicted of unspecified felonies (ib. pp. 116, 128, 148). The translator was servant to James Butler, fourth earl of Ormonde [q. v.], at whose request, about 1423, he translated into English the ‘Secreta Secretorum’ attributed to Aristotle. It was a book in much request in the middle ages, and translations were made in the early fifteenth century by Hoccleve, John Shirley (1366?–1456) [q. v.], Lydgate, and Burgh, and Gower used it in his ‘Confessio Amantis.’ Yonge's translation appears to have been made from a French version by one Gofroi of Waterford; it was dedicated to Ormonde and is ‘perhaps the only lengthy
