Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 27.djvu/262

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Black Rock, saw thirteen of the enemy's ships at anchor and five under way in the outward roads (Log of the Royal George). The next day they were no longer there; the Nymphe frigate had seen the tail of them going round the Saintes in the early morning; and Bridport, without any intelligence to guide him, and suspecting a new attempt on Ireland, fell back to Cape Clear, and for the next month ranged along the coast of Ireland from Mizen Head to Achill Head, while the French fleet was harmlessly traversing the Mediterranean [see Elphinstone, George Keith, Viscount Keith; Jervis, John, Earl of St. Vincent]. In August it returned to Brest, and was again blockaded by Bridport till April 1800, when he was relieved by Lord St. Vincent. On 10 June 1801 he was advanced to the dignity of viscount in the peerage of Great Britain. He accepted no further command, and died 2 May 1814.

Hood's first wife was Mary, daughter of the Rev. Richard West, D.D., prebendary of Winchester, by Maria, daughter of Sir Richard Temple, thus forming a direct connection with the families of Lyttelton and Grenville, with which he had long been associated in friendly relations. It is said that he received a handsome fortune with Miss West. The date of the marriage given in Burke's and Foster's peerages is 1761; but as Hood was in active service during the whole of that year, some time after April 1763, when the Africa was paid off, would seem a more probable date. After the death of his first wife in 1786 he married in 1788 Maria Sophia, daughter of Thomas Bray of Edmonton. She survived him several years, and died at the age of eighty-five in 1831. By neither wife had he any issue, and on his death the English titles became extinct; the Irish barony passed, by the terms of the patent, to the younger branch of his brother's family, in favour of which the viscountship was recreated in 1868.

A portrait of Hood in 1764 by Reynolds is in the Painted Hall at Greenwich; it represents a handsome man, young-looking for his age, then thirty-seven. Another portrait, also by Reynolds, belongs to Lord Hood, by whom it was lent to the exhibition at South Kensington in 1867; another by Abbott, in the National Portrait Gallery, is engraved in Jerdan's ‘National Portrait Gallery,’ vol. iv. Sir William Hotham [q. v.] describes him as ‘about the middle size, with a very good figure and pleasing countenance, and with much both the appearance and manner of a gentleman. In chief command,’ he says, ‘he was supposed to have been cautious, and had not perhaps that spirit of enterprise or general professional talent which marked Lord Hood. The brothers were not like each other, excepting in their voice. They differed also in their general habits, for Lord Bridport was rather penurious and rich, and Lord Hood quite the reverse and very poor’ (Hotham MS.)

[Charnock's Biog. Nav. vi. 153; Naval Chronicle, i. 265; Ralfe's Nav. Biog. i. 202; official letters and other documents in the Public Record Office; Beatson's Nav. and Mil. Memoirs; James's Naval Hist. (ed. 1860); Schomberg's Naval Chronology; Patton's Account of the Mutinies at Spithead and St. Helens; Chevalier, Hist. de la Marine française sous la Première République; Troude's Batailles Navales de la France, toms. i. ii. iii.]

J. K. L.

HOOD, CHARLES (1826–1883), major-general, born in 1826, was educated at the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, and obtained an ensigncy by purchase in the 3rd buffs, 26 June 1844. In 1846 he acted as secretary to the mission sent to the Argentine Republic to arrange certain differences between the combined powers of Great Britain and France and General Rosas, governor of Buenos Ayres. He became lieutenant in the buffs in 1846, and captain in 1851. He was senior officer of his regiment in the trenches before Sebastopol, and led the ladder party in the attack of the Redan on 8 Oct. 1855. In both engagements he was wounded. He was in command of the regiment from 13 Sept. to 27 Dec. 1855, and was at its head when it marched with colours flying into the Karabelnaia suburb after the fall of the city, these being the first British colours carried within Sebastopol. Hood was rewarded with a brevet of major, English and Turkish medals, and fifth class of Medjidie. After serving as major of the depôt battalion at Templemore, Hood became lieutenant-colonel 58th foot on 23 Nov. 1860, and for some years commanded that regiment in Bengal. He became a major-general in 1870, and honorary lieutenant-general (retired list) in 1877. He died on 8 Feb. 1883.

[Foreign Office Lists; Hart's Army Lists.]

H. M. C.

HOOD, EDWIN PAXTON (1820–1885), nonconformist divine, son of an able seaman who served under Nelson in the Téméraire, was born at the residence of Bishop Porteous, Half Moon Street, Piccadilly, where his mother was in service, on 24 Oct. 1820. Losing both parents before he was seven years old, he was brought up at Deptford by an heraldic painter named Simpson, began to lecture on temperance and peace about 1840, and in 1852 entered the congregational minis-