Henry Clinton and Sir William Erskine at the battle of Brooklyn, served at the capture of New York and the battle of White Plains, and was promoted major in his regiment on 3 July 1778. With this rank he covered the retreat of Knyphausen's column in Clinton's retreat from Philadelphia, and was present at the battle of Monmouth Court-house, and in temporary command of the 17th dragoons, which was the only cavalry regiment in America (Cornwallis Correspondence, i. 38), he commanded the outposts in front of the New York lines from the middle of 1778 to the end of 1779. De Lancey then went upon the staff as deputy quartermaster-general to the force sent to South Carolina, and after serving at the capture of Charleston he became aide-de-camp to Lord Cornwallis, and eventually succeeded Major André as adjutant-general to the army at New York. He was promoted lieutenant-colonel of the 17th dragoons on 3 Oct. 1781, and retired to England with his father on the conclusion of peace and the recognition of the independence of the United States of America. The king appointed De Lancey, on Lord Sydney's recommendation, to settle the military claims of the loyal Americans, and head of a commission for settling all the army accounts connected with the American war; and on 18 Nov. 1790 he was promoted colonel and made deputy adjutant-general at the Horse Guards. In 1794 he received the post of barrack-master-general, with an income of 1,500l. a year, and on 20 May 1795 George III gave him the colonelcy of the 17th dragoons, ‘spontaneously, to the great surprise of the said De Lancey, and I believe of every other person’ (ib. ii. 288). On 3 Oct. 1794 he was promoted major-general, and in September 1796 he entered parliament as M.P. for Maidstone, a seat which he held till June 1802. On 1 Jan. 1801 he was promoted lieutenant-general, but in November 1804 the commissioners of military inquiry found serious mistakes in his barrack accounts, and defalcations amounting to many thousands of pounds. He was removed from his post as barrack-master-general, but in spite of the violent attacks of the opposition, headed on this question by John Calcraft, he was not prosecuted, and was treated rather as having been culpably careless than actually fraudulent. He remained a member of the consolidated board of general officers, and was promoted general on 1 Jan. 1812, and he eventually retired to Edinburgh, where he died in September 1822.
[Royal Military Calendar; Drake's Dictionary of American Biography. See also, on his defalcations, his Observations upon the Reports of the Commissioners of Military Inquiry.]
DE LANCEY, OLIVER, the younger (1803–1837), Christinist officer, was the only son of General Oliver De Lancey [q. v.], barrack-master-general from 1792 to 1804, and was born in Guernsey in 1803. He entered the army as a second lieutenant in the 60th rifles on 30 March 1818, and joined the 3rd battalion of the regiment in India in the same year. He was promoted first lieutenant on 17 June 1821, and after serving as aide-de-camp to Lieutenant-general Sir Charles Colville, G.C.B., commander-in-chief at Bombay, was promoted captain on 7 Aug. 1829, and joined the 3rd battalion at Gibraltar, where he learnt Spanish and took a keen interest in Spanish politics and in the crisis which was rapidly approaching. His battalion returned to England in 1832, but De Lancey still kept up his interest in Spain, and was one of the first English officers who volunteered to join the Spanish legion which was being raised to serve under the command of Major-general Sir De Lacy Evans, K.C.B., against the Carlists. He sailed for Spain in 1835 with one of the first drafts from England, and on the way out showed his courage and presence of mind when his ship struck in a fog on the rocks off Ushant. On landing he was placed at the head of a regiment of the legion, and, after serving as acting adjutant-general at the action of Hernani, accompanied Lieutenant-colonel Greville in command of the expedition to relieve Santander, which was then hard pressed by the Carlists. The expedition was completely successful, and De Lancey received the cross of San Fernando and was appointed deputy adjutant-general to the legion. He distinguished himself throughout the defence of San Sebastian, and especially in the action of 1 Oct., and was sent on a delicate mission to Madrid, which he carried out to the satisfaction of his general. Not long after his return to San Sebastian the Carlists made a determined attack upon the town, on 15 March 1837, and in repelling it De Lancey was killed at the head of his regiment, just as his more famous cousin, Sir William Howe De Lancey, Wellington's quartermaster-general, was killed at Waterloo. His tomb is on the fort at San Sebastian.
[Gent. Mag. May 1837.]
DE LANCEY, Sir WILLIAM HOWE (1781?–1815), colonel, quartermaster-general's staff, belonged to a family of New York loyalists of Huguenot descent. He was son of Stephen De Lancey, who was clerk of the city and county of Albany in 1785, lieutenant-colonel of the 1st New Jersey loyal volunteers in 1782, afterwards chief justice
