she nursed him. On his partial recovery his services were required at the attack of Ticonderoga; but at the express injunction of her husband she remained behind. During the conflict he received a dangerous wound, and his heroic wife hastened to join him, and to bestow upon the sufferer the most devoted care and attention. Her husband commanded the British grenadiers, and his corps was often at the most advanced post of the army. On one of these occasions the tent in which they were sleeping caught fire, and both of them had a narrow escape of their lives. A few weeks afterwards the troops under the command of General Burgoyne were defeated in the second battle of Saratoga (7 Oct. 1777), when Major Acland was badly wounded in both legs and taken prisoner. With the protection of a letter from Burgoyne to General Gates, and in the company of an artillery chaplain and two servants, she proceeded in an open boat up the Hudson River to the enemy. When she arrived at the outposts of the American army, the sentinel threatened to fire into the boat if its occupants stirred, and for eight ‘dark and cold hours,’ according to one account, though this is denied in the American papers, she remained waiting for the break of daylight, and for permission to join her husband. On her return to England, says the ‘Gentleman's Magazine,’ her portrait, as she stood in the boat with a white handkerchief in her hand as a flag of truce, was exhibited at the Royal Academy and engraved. Some copies of the print are still in the possession of the Acland family. The story that her husband died in a duel, that she became temporarily insane, and afterwards remarried, has no foundation in fact. She was left a widow in 1778 with two surviving children, her son, John, succeeding to the baronetcy, and her daughter, Elizabeth Kitty, marrying Lord Porchester, afterwards second earl of Carnarvon. By this marriage the Acland property near Dulverton and Taunton ultimately passed to the Earl of Carnarvon family. Lady Harriet Acland died at Tetton, near Taunton, on 21 July 1815. Her remains were interred at Broad Clyst on 28 July. Her portrait, painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds in 1771–72, and the property of the present head of the Acland family, was engraved by S. W. Reynolds. The painting was exhibited at Burlington House, at the Winter Exhibition, 1882, and the face was that of a woman of great determination of character. Several years before, whilst a little girl, aged seven, she had been painted by the same artist standing at her mother's knee.
[Gent. Mag. 1815, pt. ii. p. 186; Burgoyne's State of the Expedition from Canada (1780); Mag. of American Hist. vol. iv. p. 49; Leslie and Taylor's Life of Sir J. Reynolds, i. 439; Lippincott's Mag. xxiv. 452–8 (1879); E. B. de Fonblanque's Political and Military Episodes from Correspondence of Gen. Burgoyne (1876), pp. 301–302; Travels in America by an Officer (i.e. Lieut. Anburey), 1789, ii. 61–63.]
ACLAND, Sir JOHN (d. 1613), was the second son of John Acland, of Acland in Landkey, Devonshire, who married Mary, daughter and coheir of Hugh Redcliff of Stepney. From his mother he obtained considerable landed property in the neighbourhood of London, and increased his fortune by marrying Elizabeth, the daughter of George Rolle, of Stevenston, in Devon, and the widow of Robert Mallet, of Woolleigh in the same county. On her death he took another rich widow as his second wife, Margaret, a daughter of Sir enry Portman of Somerset, who had been previously married to Sir Gabriel Hawley. He was knighted by James I on 15 March 1603–4 in the Tower of London, and at a bye-election (27 Jan. 1606–7), in the first parliament of that monarch, became knight of the shire for Devon. His charitable gifts were numerous. He settled on the mayor and town council of Exeter the rectorial endowments of two parishes in that part of his native county which is known by the name of the South Hams, in order that the annual proceeds might be distributed among the poor of several parishes in Exeter and in other parts of the county. When he acquired the estate of Columb-John, in Broad Clyst, about four miles from Exeter, he built in the mansion a chapel for the use of the tenantry, and endowed it with a rent-charge for the support of the minister. A new hall, with cellars underneath, was erected by Exeter College, Oxford, shortly before his death, at a cost of about 1,000l., and Sir John Acland gave towards the expenditure the large sum of 800l. Two scholarships, each of the annual value of 8l., were founded by him at the same college. He died in 1613, and lies buried in Broad Clyst church, where a richly carded monument, with the figures of himself and his wives, preserves his memory.
[Prince's Worthies of Devon; Visitations of Devon and Somerset; Boase's Exeter College.]
ACLAND, JOHN (fl. 1753–1796), author of a pamphlet on pauperism, was the second son of John Acland, of Woodly, Yorkshire, M.P. for Callington, and the younger brother of Sir Hugh Acland, sixth baronet of Columb-John, co. Devon. He was instituted to the vicarage or rectory of Broad Clyst (Polwhele's History of Devonshire, 1793, ii. 197),
