MEMORABLE MEMBERS’ BIOGRAPHIES ~ KINSFOLK

The youngest of the three children of Harry Parkes, founder of the firm of Parkes, Otway & Co, ironmasters, he was orphaned when he was only 5 years old. He was educated at boarding school in Balsall Heath and at King Edward's Grammar School (1838). His two older sisters and his uncle were living in Macao where he joined them in 1841. By the following year he was learning Chinese and working for the Rev Gutzlaff. By 1843 he had passed his Chinese exam and in 1844 was appointed Consular Interpreter at Amoy.

In 1851 he was appointed interpreter at Canton, travelling there in February 1852. While there, he acted as Consul in the absence of Sir John Bowring, and in August 1853 he was placed temporarily in charge of the Canton vice-consulate. In 1854 he was appointed Consul at Amoy from where he became joint secretary of a mission to conclude the first European treaty with Siam. He returned to England with the treaty for ratification and was received by Queen Victoria on 9th July 1855.

While in England, Parkes met and married Fanny Plumer, granddaughter of Sir Thomas Plumer, the first Vice Chancellor of England. "She was a beautiful girl" wrote a friend. However, his position in Canton brought him into conflict with Ye Mingchen which led to the Second Opium War of 1856 to 1860.

In the course of the Beijing Campaign which really started in June 1859 Parkes became involved in a number of hostile negotiations, during one of which, he and Henry Loch were taken prisoner, even though they were protected by a flag of truce, placed in chains in a common prison and tortured. Fortunately their release was negotiated two days before the arrival of their execution warrant!

During a visit home Parkes was appointed KCB in May 1862 at the unusually young age of 34. He returned to China and it was during a trip to the Yangtze ports in May 1865 that he heard of his appointment as "Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul-General in Japan" where he was to succeed Alcock.

Parkes held the post for 18 years during which he was an ardent supporter of the Liberal Party of Japan. The party's opponents soon had him a marked man and on three separate occasions attempted to assassinate him. He ran his mission in a way which greatly encouraged junior members to study Japan and Ernest Satow and William George Aston benefitted accordingly. However, Parkes was not an easy man to work with and he was generally not popular with Japanese officials. Whilst in Japan, Lady Parkes became known, in 1867, as the first non-Japanese woman to ascend Mount Fuji. Anticipating a return home she went back to England to make preparations, but became ill and died in November 1879.

By 1883 Parkes's health was beginning to fail. He was transferred to Peking where he died of a malarial infection from which he was simply too exhausted to defend himself. His body was brought home and laid to rest on 26th of June 1885 beside those of his wife and daughter, Nellie, in a vault at St Lawrence's Church, Whitchurch.


Anthony Cobbold
January 2011

Trained at the Royal Military Acadamy, Woolwich (1868-70), he had a brief period of service in the French army before being commissioned (1871) in the Royal Engineers. After duty in Palestine and Cyprus, he was attached (1883) to the Egyptian army, then being recognized by the British. He took part (1884-85) in the unsuccessful attempt to relieve Gordon at Khartoum.

He was then (1886-88) Governor-General of Eastern Sudan and helped (1889) turn back the last Mahdist invasion of Egypt. In 1892 he was made Commander in Chief of the Egyptian army and in 1896 began the reconquest of Sudan, having prepared the way by a reorganization of the army and the construction of a railway along the Nile. A series of victories culminated (1898) in the battle of Omdurman and the reoccupation of Khartoum. He forestalled a French attempt to claim part of Sudan (the Fashoda Incident) and in the same year was made Governor of Sudan.

In 1899, Kitchener was appointed Chief of Staff to Lord Roberts in the South African War. He reorganized transport, led an unsuccessful attack on Paardeberg, and supressed the Boer revolt near Priska. When Roberts returned to England late in 1900, believing the Boer resistance crushed, Kitchener was left to face continued guerrilla warfare. By a slow extension of fortified blockhouses, the use of concentration camps for civilians, and the systematic denudation of the farm lands - methods for which he was much criticized - Kitchener finally secured Boer submission in 1902.

He was created Viscount and sent to India as Commander in Chief of British forces there. He redistributed the troops and gained greater administrative control of the army in the face of serious opposition from the Viceroy, Lord Curzon. He left India in 1909, was made Field Marshal, and served (1911-14) as Cosul General in Egypt. He was made an Earl in 1914 and at the outbreak of World War I was recalled to England as Secretary of State for War.

Virtually alone in his belief that the war would last a number of years, he planned and carried out a vast expansion of the army from 20 divisions in 1914 to 70 in 1916. However, his relations with the Cabinet were strained. In 1915 when he was attacked by the newspapers of Lord Northcliffe for the shortage of shells, responsibility for munitions was taken away from him, and later in the same year he was stripped of control over strategy. He offered to resign, but his colleagues feared the effect on the British public, which still idolized him.

In 1916, Kitchener embarked on a mission to Russia to encourage that flagging ally to continued resistance. His ship, the HMS Hampshire, hit a German mine and sank off the Orkney Islands, and he drowned.


Columbia University Press
2005

"C C", as he was known throughout his life, was the third son of Rev. John Farr and Emily Caroline Cobbold. The Farr family had lived at North Cove Hall for eleven generations and Emily's father was Robert Knipe Cobbold a brewer at Eye. Born 29th May 1851 in Suffolk, CC was a restless fairhaired child with a strong predeliction for risky exploration who ran, jumped and climbed to adolescence via Haileybury School.

He arrived in Ontario in 1871 enduring a tough few years before joining the Hudson Bay Company in 1874 to become a depot manager. By 1880 he was married and had produced a daughter, his only child. His first land purchase was made at Humphrey's Depot in 1885 and a further twelve hundred acres were added (at 50 cents an acre) thereafter. When the Post Office came in 1890 Haileybury, Ontario was on the map. The mining boom arrived with the railway in 1903 and Haileybury was incorporated and officially named after CC's school. The new town also adopted the school's motto "Sursum Corda" "Be of Good Courage". Little did the Founder know how important courage would turn out to be.

Ontario law did not permit the sale of liquor within 5 miles of working mines. Conveniently Haileybury was half a mile over the limit. That's where the mining companies wanted their offices and that's where the hotels and stores were built. Expansion was underway but sadly, the business part of the town was substantially destroyed by fire in 1906; but by the following year the population was over 4000, the property assessment topped $2 million and four storey buildings were rising from the ashes to accommodate the officials, the lawyers and the bankers.

CC was influential during these developments through public office and his newspaper, The Haileyburian which left it's readers in no doubt as to which projects were favoured. For recreation CC enjoyed his motorboat the Jinnie M, often accompanied by his faithful four legged companion O'Dawg. By 1912 Haileybury was the judicial seat and CC had built his 'stately' home on West Road overlooking the lake. Two years later after a short illness he died there on November 25th. 1914. It was said at the time "In a way, part of the town died with him"


Note: Paul Alexander Cobbold (1862-1922) CC's cousin went out to Haileybury and became the Divisional Court Clerk but died with his wife and his wife's uncle in the great fire of 1922 which destroyed 90% of the town.


Anthony Cobbold 2006

Dr James William Cecil Turner. a distinguished writer on Roman and criminal law, former Fellow and Bursar of Trinity Hall, Cambridge, and university lecturer, died on Friday at Cambridge at the age of 82.

Turner was borm on October 2nd 1886 at Farnborough, Kent and educated at King Edward's School, Birmingham, and Queens' College, Cambridge. He took a First in Part I of the Classical Tripos in 1909, and then turned over to law, taking Part II of the law Tripos in 1910. Turner was called to the Bar by the Middle Temple and during ths First World War served with the Royal Field Artillery in France as a Second Lietenant and was awarded the Military Cross.

After the war Turner returned to Cambridge and taught law, with a special interest in Roman Law. He was elected to a fellowship at Trinity Hall in 1926, and two years later was appointed to a university lectureship in law. In 1930 he was appointed bursar of his college and later steward as well. He retired in 1952; in 1963 he was awarded a LL.D by Cambridge University for his contributions to the literature of the criminal law.

Turner's contribution to law studies at Cambridge, and to legal writing generally was a great one; Roman law and criminal law were his special interests. In 1953 he published Introduction to the Study of Roman Private Law. His work in the field of criminal law and criminal science, was probably one of the greatest contributions anyone has made to that subject since Kenny published his Outlines of Criminal Law in 1902. Turner edited and very substantially re-wrote the 16th, 17th, 18th and the current 19th editions of Kenny. In the same area, he edited the 10th, 11th and the current 12th editions of Russell on Crime, and in 1953, jointly with A. LI. Armitage, he brought out an entirely new volume of Cases on Criminal Law.

His great interest in this branch of the law and in its practical application found expression in a great deal of social work outside the university. He was an early and devoted sponsor of the Deartment of Criminal Science at Cambridge, of which he was for many years the Secretary. His untiring efforts on behalf of that department, particularly as joint editor with Professor Radzinowicz of the Cambridge Studies in Criminal Science, played a very large part in its rapid development into the present Institute of Criminology.

Turner was a magnificent teacher in the great Cambridge tradition of Henry Bond, Frank Carr, David Oliver and Percy Winfield. he had a wonderfully sympathetic understanding of the vagaries of the youthful mind and to those who knew him it was no surprise that he loved every moment of his lengthy tenure as University Proctor. Many will remember his untiring efforts to help any person or any cause in which he believed and his sharp and subtle wit, always just the right amount of tartness and always totally devoid of malice.

His interests in life were manifold and various. In his time he seems to have kept as a pet almost every animal from a horse to a hummimg-bird and in later life he derived great pleasure from his garden. For a considerable period he was treasurer of the Cambridge University Cricket Club and the former Department of Estate Management in the University owed much to his guidance as its chairman over many years. Cecil Turner married Beatrice Maud Stooke in 1924 and they had six children.

Obituary
The Times
2nd December 1968

Footnote.

The obituary above correctly records that Turner was awarded a Military Cross during World War I.
With typical modesty he never collected nor talked about his MC. It is thought that he felt he simply did what was expected of him, that is to look after his men. He went back to rescue his wounded battery sergeant after they had been trapped and he had got the rest out.

Anthony Cobbold, 2011, based on the views of his son, David.

Lady Hilaria Gibbs owed her distinctive Christian name, a continuingly popular choice in her family, to her ancestor, Hilaria de Cotehele, a ward of the Black Prince whose marriage in 1353 brought the medieval manor house Cotehele in southeast Cornwall into the possession of the Edgcumbe family, with whom it remained for almost 600 years.

Lady Hilaria, known as "Laire" to her family and friends, was one of four children of the 6th Earl of Moune Edgcumbe, Kenelm Edgcumbe, who inherited the title from his second cousin in 1944. It was he who arranged in 1947 that Cotehele should become the first historic house to pass to The National Trust in lieu of death duties.
Yet at the end of her long life Lady Hilaria, who knew the property all her life and lived there in 1944 and 1945, had established a strong claim to be a second Hilaria de Cotehele. Even as a centenarian she was a frequent visitor to the house and its estate, regaling visitors with her memories of the house. It was at Cotehele that she celebrated her 100th birthday in 2008 with a lunch party attended by 180 relatives.

She also provided Cotehele and The National Trust with the recipe for its traditional stoneground wholemeal bread; although she was brought up in a family accustomed to liveried servants, she was an excellent breadmaker, and her recipe uses dark brown sugar and molasses to impart a rich, soft crumb.
Cotehele is one of the least altered medieval houses in the country, because from the 16th century the family seat of the Edgcumbes moved to Mount Edgcumbe overlooking Plymouth Sound. Cotehele was retained as the family's country estate, with a tower from which servants could exchange signals with Mount Edgcumbe regarding the family's movements and requirements.

Mount Edgcumbe was wrecked by German incendiary bombs in the air attacks on Plymouth in 1941, but Lady Hilaria's father eventually rebuilt it from 1958 and reoccupied the house in 1961. The mansion was sold to Plymouth City Council and Cornwall County Council in 1971 but was celebrated at Lady Hilaria's 100th birthday party at Cotehele in the shape of a specially commissioned cake, and in the following summer itself became the scene of an even larger celebration, a picnic for 250 family and friends.

Hilaria Agnes Edgcumbe was born in London in 1908. Her father was en electrical engineer with an interest in powering early cars and aircraft: one of her earliest memories was seeing Louis Bleriot take off, powered by one of her father's engines. During the First World War her father's company, Everett Edgcumbe, was involved in providing the seachlights protecting Plymouth, so her childhood was spent at Widey Court, Plymouth, a house in which Charles I held court in 1644 during the siege of Plymouth, and neighbouring Widey Grange.
Her education was the business of governesses until, in 1923, she was sent to finishing school at Vaucresson, west of Paris, with Madamoiselle Roblin, who taught her fluent French, and for whom Lady Hilaria retained a warm appreciation in later life.

Back in England, the young Hilaria decided to teach dancing. In 1933 she married Denis Gibbs, an officer in the Queen's Royal Regiment, and she accompanied him on prewar postings to Italy, Portsmouth, the Isle of Wight and Ireland.
Her brother Piers, who it had been assumed was to inherit the Mount Edgcumbe title, died at Dunkirk. Denis Gibbs was captured at the battle of El Alamein and for two years his wife, with their three young daughters, did not know whether he was still alive. But after the Italian surrender in 1943 Gibbs was able to flee his Italian prison and walk the length of the Apennines through German-occupied Italy, arriving home in time to join in the D-Day landings in 1944.

After victory Lieutenant-Colonel Gibbs was sent as commanding officer on the Isle of Man, where he and Lady Hilaria welcomed an official visit by George VI and Queen Elizabeth. The Queen is said to have asked Lady Hilaria: "How many children do you have?" Lady Hilaria told her and, in an aberrent moment, inquired politely:"And how many have you got?"
Lady Hilaria was, though, a model army wife while her husband was commanding officer of Officer Cadet Training Units at Mons House, Aldershot, and Eton Hall in Cheshire, and of the battalion stationed in Singapore. She also gained a reputation as a fierce tutor in Scottish reels. "Who's that bossy little woman in the green dress?", someone asked at a party. "Oh, do you mean my mother?" said one of Lady Hilaria's daughters.

Family was of foremost importance to her, and she overcame all crises in a spirit of unifying enlightenment. Two of her daughters divorced and remarried, but typically Lady Hilaria's response was: "I have four daughters and six sons-in-law."
After Gibbs left the Army the couple ran a successful market gardening business at Roborough House in Devon, before building their retirement home, Aldenham Grange, in Tavistock.

Gibbs died in 1984. For the last eight years of her life Lady Hilaria lived with her youngest daughter in Plymouth, close to Cotehele, Mount Edgcumbe and her childhood Widey homes. Throughout her life she chronicled her experiences and thoughts in flowing rhyming verse, which she modestly dismissed as "doggerel" but which the family now hope to collect and print.
Lady Hilaria is survived by three of her daughters; a fourth daughter predeceased her.

Lady Hilaria Gibbs was born on January 16th 1908. She died on November 19th, 2009, aged 101

Obituary, 4th December 2009
Copyright: The Times

At the age of 22 Simon, bearing the currently favoured name for Chiefs of the Clan Fraser, succeeded his father. Legally, he became the 15th Lord Lovat but for reasons unknown to sassanachs he was commonly known as the 17th Lord Lovat! He was schooled at Ampleforth College and went on to Magdalen College, Oxford.

He was commissioned as a second lietenant in the Lovat Scouts in 1930 and transferred to the Scots Guards in 1931. He was promoted lieutenant in 1934 but transferred to the Reserve in 1937 and married in 1938 forming a union that was to give him 6 children over the next 14 years.

On the outbreak of war Lord Lovat was mobilized as a Captain in the Lovat Scouts but a year later joined No 4 Commando, in which unit he took part in the famously successful raid on the German-occupied Lofoten Islands. In addition to capturing encryption equipment and code books which proved of great value to Bletchley Park the raid destroyed fish-oil factories, fuel dumps, 11 enemy ships and captured 216 German troops.

As a temporary major he was awarded the Military Cross on 7th July 1942 for a daring raid on the French village of Hardelot. He subsequently took command of No 4 Commando and led the unsuccessful Dieppe Raid. It did however destroy a battery of six 150mm guns for which he won his DSO.

Later Lord Lovat, now a Brigadier, commanded 1st Special Service Brigade which landed at Sword Beach during the invasion of Normandy on 6th June 1944. He instructed his personal piper, Bill Millin to pipe the men ashore which he duly did, striding up and down the beach to the sound of 'Hieland Laddie', giving the troops a much needed morale boost. Pipers had been banned by the War Office after losses in the Great War. On querying the instruction Bill relished his commander's reply. "Ah, but that's the English War Office, you and I are both Scottish and that doesn't apply."

A stray shell wounded Lord Lovat on 12th June and although he subsequently made a complete recovery he saw no more active service. In 1945 he became Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs and later Minister of Economic Warfare until Winston Churchill's election defeat. He remained active in the House of Lords and in local politics but suffered terrible financial and family losses prior to his death in 1995.

Bill Millin played the lament at Lord Lovat's funeral and has donated his pipes to the National War Museum in Edinburgh. The mayor of Colleville-Montgomery, a town on Sword Beach, has offered a site for a life-size statue of Millin opposite the place where he landed on D-Day. Bill died on 17th August 2010 and his statue is to be unveiled in 2011.

Anthony Cobbold
2011

More than 2000 people are expected at the funeral today of Lord Runcie, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, who died last week of cancer. As the choir sings a Russian kontakion for the dead and the coffin is borne from St. Alban's Cathedral for internment nearby, the man who knew Lord Runcie as tutor, bishop, archbishop and, foremost, as an unfailingly amusing friend, will say a prayer of commendation.

It is a role that the Bishop of London, the Rt Rev and Rt Hon Richard Chartres, describes modestly as "a walk-on part," yet it was he whom Robert Runcie's family summoned to anoint and pray over the former Primate at his deathbed. For Bishop Chartres it was the final chapter, in this world at least, of a 32 year friendship.

"The family phoned and I was happy to go," says Bishop Chartres who was Bishop Runcie's Domestic Chaplain at St Albans from 1975 to 1980, and Archbishop's Chaplain at Lambeth from 1980 to 1984. Bishop Chartres was quickly on his feet last week to praise "the gold" of Lord Runcie's character, but now he is settling his gangly frame into a tiny arm chair at the Old Deanery, near St Paul's Cathedral, and taking as his text Donald Coggan's prunes.

This, it turns out, is an anecdote Lord Runcie liked to tell. Archbishop Coggan, his predecessor at Lambeth, turned up at a garden party lured by the promise of a strawberries and cream tea and was handed a slip as he approached the gate which said "Owing to the unseasonable unavailability of strawberries, prunes will be served." "Lord R was in huge demand for memorial services," Bishop Chartres says, "and often began his remarks with this story as his way of saying, 'Well, youknow, I'm just a substitute really.' It put people on his side." It was typical, he says, both of Lord Runcie's ability to draw humour from life and his modesty.

On the face of it, the bishop's friendship with Lord Runcie was a strange pairing. Robert Runcie presided over the introduction of the Alternative Service Book and paved the way for women priests; Bishop Chartres is a traditionally-inclined, Prayer Book bishop who will not ordain women. "That was the great thing about him. He never used his power to marginalise those with whom he disagreed."

The men first met in 1968 when the fresh-faced Bishop Chartres was interviewed by Robert Runcie, then Principal of Ripon College, Cuddesdon, Oxon. Towards the end of his stay, Lord Runcie was called to be Bishop of St Albans, the diocese sponsoring Bishop Chartres as ordinand. "We kept in touch, and in 1975 he asked me to be his Domestic Chaplain. It was a role many had turned down. He already knew me, knew the worst. I was always described in those days as opinionated."

Over the next eight years, Bishop Chartres saw Archbishop Runcie tested to breaking point. There were the clashes with the Thatcher government over the miners' strike, the "Marxist" 'Faith in the City' report on inner-city deprivation, and the Falklands thanksgiving service in which Archbishop Runcie included prayers of reconciliation.

Did Archbishop Runcie court controversy? "No, I think it was inescapable in role. For instance, the Falklands service, he had to do it, really, it was a national thanksgiving. "What he said was immensely patriotic and understanding because he was, after all, somebody who had very unusual experience for an archbishop - of the battlefield. "I was with him at the time of the Falklands and at no point did he say to me, "Well, that was a mistake'."

But the criticism wounded Archbishop Runcie more than the public realised. "He was a sensitive person," says Bishop Chartres, "so, of course, it hurt, but less so on areas like 'Faith in the City', where he was so clear it was the right thing to do. "He was the right man at the right time; a man of extraordinarily wide sympathies and an appropriate and modern archbishop for an age when people were spiritually hungry."


The Bishop of London talking to P J Bonthrone on 22nd July 2000.