The Irish Bomfords
Achmuty family
(56) Arthur Auchmuty, fifth child and second son of Samuel Auchmuty
Notes from Clare Eagle (emails Apr 2009)
Arthur Auchmuty, fifth child and second son of Samuel Auchmuty and his wife Mary King.
Dublin pedigree: “Arthur Ahmuty of Harley St, London. Col in E.I.C.S.; will dated Mar 9th 1789, proved 27 Aug 1796.” [c.f. will dated 23 Mar 1789 proved 19 Nov 1794] and married “Ursula De Cruz executrix to her husband”
[See Chapter III, page xx]
Section 2 CHAPTER 2
Arthur Ahmuty, or Col Arthur Auchmuty, second son and fifth child of Samuel Auchmuty and his wife Mary King.
Dublin pedigree: “Arthur Ahmuty of Harley St. London Col in E.I.C.S.; will dat. Mar 9th 1789. Prd 27 Aug 1796.” married “Ursula De Cruz executrix to her husband.”
Thomas Gordon Auchmuty: “Arthur Auchmuty 2nd son of Samuel of Brienstown by Mary King was in the East India Company’s service and died a Brigadier and Governor of the Fort of Dynapore, he married Ursula da Cruz the daughter of a Portugeese Merchant and by her had issue Robert Alexander Gregory his eldest son a Barrister who died without children. John who by the daughter of a Mr Warren an Att’y has many children, James a Lt Colonel in the Artillery E.I.Co married first Harriet Hollings, secondly . . . . . . Feron and has had no issue. Thomas married Barbara Jane Johnson and has one daughter Elizabeth; the daughters of Ar Ahmuty were Frances married first Vice Lumley Ward an Officer of Dragoons secondly to Mr Warren Att’y and Elizabeth married to Philip Juste Dalton both dead without issue, - that is both the daughters, the husbands survive.”
Helena Forbes Auchmuty: “Arthur 2nd son of S.A. and Mary King went to the care of Robert Gregory his mother’s cousin for whom a subscription had been made some years before by his relatives to send him to India ….. Arthur got into the Native Infantry lived many years in India so I believe made a good fortune , and married a Miss Ursula de Creause of a Portugeese family. He got interest to raise him in the Army by this match. His father had on his first going given him a large sum of money, which he spent in London and had no money to take him to India till he either borrowed it or his father sent him more which exasperated him so much he made a will leaving him only £300 as he had spent so much before.
Arthur came to Ireland in 1788 with his wife, he was a kind, goodnatured, affectionate man, a good husband, and father, and he went back to India, not being satisfied with the fortune he had made, as his family were large and expensive, 5 sons and 2 daughters. He died soon after his return partly owing to the change of climate and being unhappy at being separated from his family, and having spent much money on his coming to Europe. He purchased an estate in the Co Meath Ireland Cruisetown (?) a fine old place about £1,300 which he left to be divided, making no elderships after paying his daughters fortune. This hurt his eldest son
Robert Alexander Gregory bred to the Bar, he was well informed and agreeable, had great abilities which he abused, no person could be more pleasing in every company when he pleased. Indolence, selfishness, and an indifference to the opinion of the world, made him neglect his profession, his friends and health, he died of a few days illness, the gout in his head acquired by the life he led, in April 1787 age 37 years.
John the second son is in the Civil Service in India
Richard the 3rd son just returned from India to live in Europe I hope, with one little girl Theresa (?)
James the fourth son is in the Army in India married to a charming young English woman, Harriett Hollings who he has buried and is again married to another English woman whose name I have forgot, she is handsome.
Thomas the youngest has been in the Army in Europe. He is married to a Miss Jane Barbara Johnstone, they are both very young, they have a daughter, Eliza Ursula.
Frances the eldest daughter is the widow of an officer an Irishman ? a Mr Ward (?)
Eliza the youngest is married to a Mr Philip Tuite D’Alton of New Castle, Co Meath”
From Bengal Past and Present (?) [May be Bengal, past & present : journal of the Calcutta Historical Society, but can't find this information in there]
Arthur Achmuty:
Cadet, 1760
Lieutenant, 26 August 1763
Captain, 20
December 1764
Major, 3 September
1768
Lieut.- Colonel, 13 Sept 1779
Colonel, 28 May 1786
Died at Dinapore 6 December 1793
Married at Calcutta 25 July 1767 to Miss Ursula DeCruz.
Prof James J Auchmuty wrote:
“This … Arthur Auchmuty was born 1729/30: the second son of Samuel Auchmuty of Brienstown. He was the younger brother of that Thomas who had died at the Battle of Havana in 1762, so both had travelled a long way from their ancestral home in County Longford. As a cadet, Arthur sailed to India on the Royal Duke in February 1759/60 to the care of his mother's cousin, Robert Gregory, who made an immense fortune in India and whose son, Robert later married Arthur's daughter Maria. Arthur's life was always exciting, the archetypal Irish soldier of fortune, even before he had left London for his career in the magical East. His father Samuel had given him a considerable sum of money to start life in India; no junior officer or writer could live on the initial pay, which in the case of a writer could be as low as £5 per year. All were expected to engage in trade, for which some capital might be needed, but Arthur managed to spend his all in London before embarkation and had to borrow in order to join his colleagues on the ship at all. This incident angered his father, so much so that in his final will (Samuel of Brienstown died in 1766) he left Arthur only £300. Any possible deprivation Arthur may have suffered from this was brief, for on 16th July 1767 he married a considerable heiress with influence in the higher direction of the East India Company, named Ursula da Cruz. The marriage was apparently one of considerable distinction, solemnified in both the Anglican and Roman Catholic churches (which might have invited further disapproval in Ireland); later it would appear that all the family conformed at least nominally to the Church of England, both in India and in England, where Ursula resided after her husband's death in 1793, and she herself remained until her death on 31st October 1814 [? - Gentleman's Magazine records her death as 1818 - see below].
As we have mentioned earlier, despite some slowing of promotion because of the arguments over batta, Arthur rose steadily: Cadet 1760; Ensign 18th September 1761; Lieutenant 16th August 1763; Captain 20th December 1764; Major 3rd December 1768; Lt. Colonel 13th September 1779; Colonel 28th May 1786; he also on occasion acted as a Brigadier-General when on military service in the field. In 1768 he was granted leave on the full pay of a Colonel and established a home for his large family, at least five sons and three daughters, in Harley Street, London, and also purchased an estate at Cruisetown, County Meath in Ireland near his various Irish relatives. Helena Forbes Auchmuty saw Arthur and his wife during one of their stays in Ireland in 1788 and described him as a "kind, good natured, affectionate man, a good husband and father." Although his leave on full pay had only been granted for three years, she felt he would not have gone back to India had he not considered his resources inadequate to establishing so large a family in the way he wished.
It had not been without difficulty that Colonel Auchmuty had obtained his leave, because the Court of Directors had decided that there was no supernumary to act in his place. The Colonel showed his mettle by immediately resigning the Company's service when the leave was initially refused; he was immediately re-appointed on his own terms. He had at that time been involved in one of the more difficult problems of Indian administration of the time, possibly it was considered prudent by the Company to ensure his continuance on any terms.
The dual role played by the British Crown and the East India Company presented a number of problems, the principles of which were theoretically settled in London but the actual application of which had to be exercised in India between the authorities of the Government, the Company, and the Nawabs, who might be for or against any given degree of acquiescence. Crown and Company sought to extend the respective influence of each sector, tighter controls over trade and commercial enterprises, including land ownership at all levels, proved an area of contention, Clive's reforms in the late seventeenth century were largely devoted to attempting to produce some Court uniformity. Prior to the 1770s the jurisdiction of the British courts in the Fort William Presidency had been restricted to British subjects currently or formerly resident within Bengal, Bihar or Orissa and to persons employed directly or indirectly in the service of the Company or of British subjects. The original intention was to exclude natives generally as subjects of the Nawab or a local Indian ruler; these were to be judged in native courts under local law. There was a tendency for the courts administering English law to bring every native within the Presidency within the power of the British courts, a procedure which the overwhelming majority of the native population regarded with the utmost horror: the poor because the courts were too expensive, and the rich who regarded them as so oppressive as to be more dreadful than death, especially as the Chief Justice of the time, Sir Elijah Impey, was both vigorous and rigorous in his judgements.
A case concerning a zeminder, a debt collecting officer, who had been found guilty in a British rather than a native court, involved the army. A Sheriff's officer and sixty sepoys and European seamen were sent to sequester the land of the zeminder. An appeal was made to the Governor-General in Council, Warren Hastings had been a school-fellow of Elijah Imprey, that the supreme court had exceeded its powers and that the forces of the Crown could not be employed to implement the decision. Colonel Auchmuty, then commanding at Midnapore, was directed to intercept the Sheriff's officer and his men - one of the many issues raised at Westminster when Warren Hastings was impeached and Impey recalled.
On his return to India Colonel Arthur Auchmuty is usually described in family papers as Governor, which presumably implies Resident or Officer Commanding, at Dinapore, where he died on 6th September 1793. There are some very amusing references to the Colonel in William Hickey's Diary of British Social Life in India 1608-1807:
"This season (winter 1793) we lost Colonel Auchmuty an uncouth, strange wild Irishman. He amassed a large fortune in the Company's employ which, by his will, he distributed among a numerous offspring of children . . . of his peculiarities I shall say more bye and bye . . . One was often surprised by a party of guests descending on one unexpectedly . . .But Colonel Auchmuty had the unusual foible of inviting guests to supper and then forgetting all about it. When the guests arrived he would be bland and hospitable. He would explain that he was not expecting them, there was little to eat, but the cellar was, fortunately, full. But when they took him at his word and continually asked for fresh supplies of wine he would exclaim: 'By Jesus, my choice ones, I am apt to think you have been for some time without a taste of the true stuff. The Devil burn me, but I believe you imagine yourselves in some kind of wine merchant's cellar!' But as he drank with his guests his early reserve would vanish. He would leap up from the table and shout to his wife who prudently remained upstairs: 'Sheila my jewel, why Sheila I say (that being the name by which he constantly approached his wife) - take care of the spoons and the silver forks, count them up carefully, my honey, for by the Holy Jesus we have got some tight boys here tonight'."
Hickey goes on to tell at length of an occasion when the Colonel told the Governor-General, Lord Cornwallis, the friend and patron of Sir Samuel Auchmuty, of how he had paid no less than 5,000 guineas at Leadenhall Street, the headquarters of the East India Company, to buy appointments for his sons - a wholly illegal transaction. At first Cornwallis found the Irish Colonel's remarks quite incomprehensible and when their true purport finally dawned on him he realised their total incompatibility with his official responsibilities and hurriedly and indignantly turned away; the Irishman, not realising how he had offended. The story does, however, show how wealthy the Colonel had become and how devoted to his family.”
Index to The Gentleman’s Magazine: Biographical & Obituary notices:
Ahmuty, Ursula, r, col. A. of Crusetown, Meath; Dublin [aged 74]. 25 Jan 1818 G i.186.
The National Archive at Kew, London holds documents relating to Arthur, including letters written to his senior officers and theirs to him.
Arthur and Ursula had six sons and three daughters: -
- Frances who married Vere L Ward
- Robert Alexander Gregory, Attorney
- John, a judge of the Bengal Civil Service
- Richard of the Hon East India Company
- James of the Bengal Army
- Samuel
- Thomas of 17th Light Dragoons, married and separated
- Maria who married Robert Gregory [doubtful: Maria and Robert m 1752, b c 1734: Arthur was b c1729, so not Maria's father]
- Elizabeth who married Philip Tuite-Dalton
Arthur's will of 23 Mar 1789 was first proved on 6 Oct 1794, but the next month that probate was voluntarily revoked and the will proved on 19 Nov 1794. Typed transcript of the latter.
Correspondence with Governor General
Transfer of 33 Harley St