Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/378

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Gurwood
370
Gutch

who had recently returned from India, came to reside with him. The house was then licensed as a place of worship, and during four years Carey and other ministers held Sunday evening services in the drawing-room. Gurney died at Denmark Hill, Camberwell, on 25 March 1855. He married in March 1803 Miss Benham, who died at Muswell Hill in 1830. His eldest son, Joseph Gurney, is noticed separately. Gurney was author of ‘A Lecture to Children and Youth on the History and Characters of Heathen Idolatry. With some references to the effects of Christian Missions,’ 1848. He edited the fifteenth and sixteenth editions of his grandfather's ‘Brachygraphy,’ 1824 and 1835.

[Baptist Mag. (1855), pp. 529–32, 593–600; Watson's First Fifty Years of the Sunday School (1873), pp. 69–75; T. Anderson's Hist. of Shorthand (1882), 87–91, 135–7, 302, &c.; Encycl. Brit. (1886), xxi. 837, 841.]

G. C. B.

GURWOOD, JOHN (1790–1845), colonel unattached, editor of the 'Wellington Despatches,' born in 1790, was the second son of one Gurwood, whose widow remarried H. Okey. He began life in a merchant's office, but after a love disappointment he entered the army as ensign, 52nd light infantry, 30 March 1808, and served with the first battalion of that corps, as ensign and lieutenant, in all the Peninsular campaigns down to the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo on 19 Jan. 1812. There he led one of the forlorn hopes, and received a severe skull wound. Wellington afterwards presented to Gurwood the sword of the French governor of the place, whom he had taken prisoner, a light scimitar, which Gurwood was afterwards permitted to wear instead of a sword of regulation pattern. He was promoted to a company in the Royal African corps, and served for a while as aide-de-camp to Lord Edward Somerset. He exchanged to the 9th light dragoons, and was appointed brigade-major of the household cavalry on the arrival of the service squadrons of the life guards and blues in the Peninsula. Thence he was transferred as brigade-major to Lambert's brigade of the 6th division, of which particular mention was made in the despatches at Nivelle, Nive, Orthez, and Toulouse (Lond. Gaz. 1813-14). He was one of the officers brought into the 10th hussars after the court-martial on Colonel Quentin in 1814. Gurwood served as aide-de-camp to Sir Henry Clinton when second in command under the Prince of Orange in the Netherlands, and was for a short time deputy assistant quarter-master-general at the prince's headquarters, He had received three wounds in the Peninsula, and was again very severely wounded at Waterloo. He became a brevet-major in 1817, was retired on half-pay 1st West India regiment in 1822, obtained an attached lieutenant-colonelcy in 1827, and became brevet-colonel in November 1841. Gurwood was for many years private secretary to the Duke of Wellington, and was entrusted with the editing of the duke's general orders and selections from his despatches. The work, a monument of accuracy and editorial industry, occupied Gurwood many years (1837-1844), the last volume of the despatches with the indexes to the entire series being just ready for the press at the time of his death. For his literary service he received a civil pension of 200l. a year.

Gurwood was a C.B., and was appointed deputy-lieutenant of the Tower of London at the death of Earl Munster. His health, impaired by excessive mental strain and the effects of his old wounds, had for some time been failing. He died by his own hand at Brighton, on Christmas day 1845, leaving a widow and family.

[Philippart's Roy. Mil. Cal. 1820, v. 336; Preface to Gurwood's Wellington Desp.; Gent. Mag. 1846, pt. i. 208-9. For details of the storming of Ciudad Rodrigo see Captain C.R. Moorsom's Hist. Rec. 52nd Light Infantry, pp. 150-8. A notice of Gurwood will be found in Greville Memoirs, vol. ii.; and a lengthy correspondence relative to Gurwood's share in the capture of Ciudad Rodrigo, arising out of statements made in vol. vi. pp. 224-33 of Napier's Hist. of the Peninsular War, appeared in Colburn's United Service Mag. 1845, and was afterwards published separately.]

H. M. C.

GUTCH, JOHN (1746–1831), antiquary and divine, was son of John Gutch, gentleman, of Wells, where he was born 21 Jan. 1746. When nineteen years of age he matriculated at All Souls, Oxford. In 1766 he began 'looking after the museum,' and in the same year on 7 Nov. was appointed a clerk of his college. He became B.A. in 1767, M.A. in 1771, and in 1768 was ordained and took charge as curate of Wellow and Foxcote, near Bath. In 1770 he was appointed chaplain of All Souls, and became successively curate of Cumnor and Wootton, Berkshire, and rector of Waterstock, Oxfordshire, and of Kirkby, Lincolnshire. In 1778 he was made chaplain of Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and became a notary public at Oxford in 1791, and registrar of the university in 1797. He married in 1775 Elizabeth Weller, by whom he had a large family, lived in Oxford, and was rector of St. Clement's in that city from 1795 to his death, 1 July 1831, at the age of eighty-five.

Seldom quitting home, and leaving behind him no correspondence, Gutch, besides being