on 1 July 1795; was present in the action off L'Orient on 23 July 1795, in the Channel cruises of 1796, and at Spithead when the mutiny broke out on 15 April 1797. When order was to some extent restored, the greater part of the fleet, under Admiral Lord Bridport, was taken to St. Helens, the Minotaur and Marlborough, which had not yet returned to their duty, being left at Spithead with the London, whose men had throughout appeared among the most moderate.
On 7 May the mutiny again broke out in the ships at St. Helens. Colpoys, on board the London, turned the hands up and desired them to let him know their grievances. They answered they had none. Colpoys then ordered them to go below and remain quiet; the officers and marines to get under arms. When, however, the boats of the fleet drew near, the men became restless and attempted to come again on deck. This the officers at the hatchways resisted; and on the men becoming more violent, called to the admiral to know if they should prevent them 'by firing on them.' 'Yes, certainly,' answered Colpoys: 'they must not be allowed to come up till I order them.' Some shots were exchanged between the officers on deck and the men in the hatchways. The marines threw down their arms and made way for the men to come up; on which Colpoys, seeing that any further struggle was useless, desired the officers to go aft. The men clustering on deck now raised a cry for the first lieutenant, Mr. Bover, to whom they attributed the recent firing and the death of five of their comrades. Bover was seized, carried forward on to the forecastle, and immediate preparations were made for hanging him. The rope was round his neck, when the admiral, having with much difficulty obtained a hearing, said that 'if anybody was culpable for what had happened it was he himself, and that Mr. Bover had only obeyed his orders.' At the time he fully believed that the result of his interference would be to remove the rope from Bover's neck and to place it round his own; and for the next twenty-four hours he considered himself in imminent danger of being hanged. The mutineers, however, having read and considered the admiralty orders, which were given up to them, merely confined the admiral and the other principal officers separately in their cabins; and on the 11th sent them on shore. On the 14th Colpoys received an order from the admiralty to strike his flag, 'judging it expedient under existing circumstances.' The order was accompanied by a highly complimentary letter from Lord Spencer, and neither on the part of the admiralty nor of the admiral does there seem to have been any suspicion of a reprimand being intended or understood.
In the following year it was arranged for Colpoys to have command of a detached squadron, with his flag in the Bellona; but on its becoming known that there was a certain feeling against him on the Bellona's lower deck, the admiralty judged it better that he should not at that time hoist his flag. He readily accepted the decision of the board, and had no further employment till, in June 1803, he was appointed commander-in-chief at Plymouth. On 1 Jan. 1801 he had attained the rank of admiral; he had also been made a knight of the Bath; and in May 1804, at the special request of Lord Melville, he gave up his command at Plymouth to take a seat at the admiralty. A few months later he was spoken of as the probable commander-in-chief in the Mediterranean (Nelson Despatches, vi. 320); but as the vacancy did not occur, he was in the following year appointed treasurer, and on the death of Lord Hood, on 27 Jan. 1816, to be governor of Greenwich Hospital, where he died 4 April 1821.
[Naval Chronicle (with a portrait), xi. 265; Ralfe's Nav. Biog. ii. 3, andiii. 167. The original pamphlet by Rear-admiral Griffith Colpoys, which Ralfe has reprinted, is A letter to Vice-admiral Sir Thomas Byam Martin, K.C.B., containing an account of the mutiny of the fleet at Spithead in 1797, in correction of that given in Captain Brenton's Naval History of the last War (1825); it is now scarce, but there is a copy in the British Museum ; Gent. Mag. (1821), vol. xci. pt. i. p. 381.]
COLQUHOUN, ARCHIBALD CAMPBELL- (d. 1820), lord clerk register, was the only son of John Campbell of Clathick, Perthshire, provost of Glasgow, by his wife Agnes, the only child of Laurence Colquhoun of Killermont, Dumbartonshire. On succeeding to the estate of Killermont upon the death of his father in 1804 he assumed the additional surname and arms of Colquhoun. He was admitted an advocate in 1768, and on the downfall of the ministry of All the Talents was appointed lord advocate on 28 March 1807. At this time most of the Scotch patronage was in the hands of the Dundas family, and William Erskine, Alexander Maconochie. and Henry Cockburn were actually chosen deputes by Lord Melville before Colquhoun had received the appointment. In the following May he was returned member for the Elgin district of burghs, but after three years resigned his seat, and in July 1810 was elected member for Dumbartonshire, which county he continued to represent until his death in 1820. Colquhoun,
