Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 61.djvu/156

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Whittingham
150
Whittingham

Murray. On 3 May he was made a companion of the order of the Bath, and also knighted. On Napoleon's escape from Elba Whittingham returned to Spain, at the special request of King Ferdinand, who conferred upon him the grand cross of the order of San Fernando. He was employed as a lieutenant-general in the Spanish army under General Castaños. When the war was over he resided at Madrid, enjoying the favour of the court, and using for good such influence as he possessed with the king. In July 1819 he took leave of the Spanish court, upon accepting the lieutenant-governorship of Dominica. Sir Henry Wellesley wrote at this time to Castlereagh, expressing the sense he entertained of Whittingham's services both during the war and after, and reporting that he left Spain with the testimony of all ranks in his favour, ‘but without any other reward from the government for the valuable services rendered by him to the Spanish cause than that of being allowed to retain his rank in the Spanish army.’ His private means had been reduced by losses, and he was at this time a poor man with an increasing family. He arrived at Dominica on 28 March 1820. On his departure to take up the appointment, dated 5 Oct. 1821, of quartermaster-general of the king's troops in India, the inhabitants presented him with the grand cross of San Fernando set in diamonds, while the non-resident proprietors of estates in the island gave him a sword of honour. On his arrival in England he was made a knight commander of the Hanoverian Guelphic order.

Whittingham reached Calcutta on 2 Nov. 1822. He was busy in 1824 with the preparations for the expedition to Ava, and in November of that year with the Barrackpur mutiny. On 27 May 1825 he was promoted to be major-general, retaining his appointment as quartermaster-general until a command became vacant. He took part in the siege of Bhartpur, was slightly wounded on 13 Jan. 1826, but was present at the capture on the 18th. He was made a knight commander of the order of the Bath, military division, on 26 Dec., for his services at Bhartpur, and received the thanks of the House of Commons. In February 1827 he was appointed to command the Cawnpore division. On 1 Nov. 1830 he was transferred to the Mirat command, on exchange with Sir Jasper Nicholl. His tenure of command came to an end in August 1833, and he then acted temporarily as military secretary to his old commander, Lord William Bentinck, the governor-general, with whom he returned to England in 1835.

On arrival in England in July he was near fighting a duel with Sir William Napier, on account of the slur which he considered that Napier had cast on the Spanish troops in his ‘History of the War in the Peninsula,’ but the matter was arranged by Sir Rufane Donkin. In October 1836 Whittingham was appointed to the command of the forces in the Windward and Leeward Islands of the West Indies. He sailed for Barbados on 22 Dec., with the local, exchanged in a few months for the substantive, rank of lieutenant-general. In September 1839 he was given the command of the Madras army; he arrived at Madras on 1 Aug. 1840, and died there suddenly on 19 Jan. 1841. He was buried with military honours at Fort George on the following day, salutes being fired at the principal military stations of the presidency. A tablet to his memory was placed in the garrison church, Madras.

Whittingham married at Gibraltar, in January 1810, Donna Magdalena, elder of twin daughters of Don Pedro de Creus y Ximenes, intendant of the Spanish royal armies, by whom he had a large family, and several of his sons were in the army.

Whittingham published in 1811 ‘Primera Parte de la Táctica de la Caballeria Inglesa traducida,’ 8vo, and in 1815 ‘A System of Manœuvres in Two Lines;’ also ‘A System of Cavalry Manœuvres in Line,’ London and Madrid, 8vo. He was the author of several unpublished papers on military and political subjects, which are in possession of the family. A list of them is given in the ‘Memoir of Whittingham's Services’ (1868), which has as frontispiece a portrait engraved by H. Adlard from an original miniature.

[War Office Records; Despatches; Royal Military Cal. 1820; Gent. Mag. 1841; Memoir of the Services of Sir Samuel Ford Whittingham, &c., edited by Major-general Ferdinand Whittingham, C.B., 8vo, London, 1868, new edit. same year; Southey's Peninsular War; Watt's Bibl. Brit.; Allibone's Dict. of English Lit.; Cannon's Regimental Records of the 71st Highland Light Infantry.]

R. H. V.

WHITTINGHAM, WILLIAM (1524?–1579), dean of Durham, born at Chester about 1524, was son of William Whittingham, by his wife, a daughter of Haughton of Haughton (Hoghton) Tower, Lancashire, a county from which the Whittinghams originally came (Visitation of Cheshire, Harl. Soc. p. 248). In 1540, at the age of sixteen, he entered Brasenose College, Oxford, as a commoner, graduating B.A. and being elected fellow of All Souls' in 1545. In 1547 he became senior student of Christ Church, commencing M.A. on 5 Feb. 1547–8, and on 17 May 1550 he was granted leave to travel