Lord William Bentinck

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
For ships of the same name, see Lord William Bentinck (ship).

Henry Addington
  • William Pitt the Younger
  • The Lord Grenville
    • Preceded byThe 2nd Baron Clive
    Succeeded byWilliam Petrie
    (Acting Governor)
    Personal details
    Born14 September 1774 (1774-09-14)
    Whig
    Spouse
    Lady Mary Acheson
    ​
    (m. 1803)​
    Parents
    Military service
    Branch/serviceBritish Army
    Years of service1791–1839
    RankLieutenant-General
    Commands
    Battles/warsNapoleonic Wars

    Privy Council, however the ban on Sati was upheld.[5] He reduced lawlessness by eliminating thuggee – which had existed for over 450 years – with the aid of his chief captain, William Henry Sleeman. Along with Thomas Babington Macaulay he introduced English as the language of instruction in India.[6][7][8] Mysore was annexed under his presidency.[9]

    Background

    Bentinck was born in Buckinghamshire, the second son of Prime Minister William Bentinck, 3rd Duke of Portland, and Lady Dorothy (née Cavendish), only daughter of William Cavendish, 4th Duke of Devonshire. On the marriage the family name became Cavendish-Bentinck.[10]

    He was educated at Westminster School, a boys' public school in Westminster, London.[11]

    Early career

    In 1783, at the age of 9, he was given the sinecure of Clerk of the Pipe for life.[12]

    Bentinck joined the

    major-general on 1 January 1805.[19] Although his tenure was moderately successful, it was brought to an end by the Vellore Mutiny
    in 1806, prompted by Bentinck's order that the native troops be forbidden to wear their traditional attire. Only after serious violence was order restored and the offending policy rescinded, and Bentinck was recalled in 1807.

    After service in the

    Whig, Bentinck used this position to meddle in internal Sicilian affairs, effecting the withdrawal from government of Ferdinand I of the Two Sicilies in favour of his son, Francis I of the Two Sicilies, the reactionary Queen's disgrace, and an attempt to devise a constitutional government for the troubled island, all of which ultimately ended in failure. In 1814, Bentinck landed with British and Sicilian troops[a] at Genoa, and commenced to make liberal proclamations of a new order in Italy which embarrassed the British government (which intended to give much of Italy to Austria
    ), and led, once again, to his recall in 1815.

    Bentinck in Sicily

    As conditions in Sicily began to deteriorate at the beginning of the 19th century, England began worrying about its interests in the Mediterranean. Internal dissensions in the Sicilian government, and an ever-increasing suspicion that

    Queen Maria Carolina was in correspondence with the French with the French Occupation of Sicily as its object, led to the appointment of Bentinck as British representative to the Court of Palermo in July 1811.[22] At the beginning of his time at the head of Sicilian affairs, politicians in London opposed the Bourbon rule and appealed for Sicilian annexation. Bentinck was sympathetic to the cause and plight of the Sicilians and "was quickly convinced of the need for Britain to intervene in Sicilian affairs, not so much for Britain's sake as for the well-being of the Sicilians."[23] He was also one of the first of the dreamers to see a vision of a unified Italy.[22]

    The English, however, were content to support the Bourbons if they were willing to give the Sicilians more governmental control and a greater respect of their rights. Bentinck saw this as the perfect opportunity to insert his ideas of a Sicilian constitution. Opposition to the establishment of a constitution continued to surface, Maria Carolina proving to be one of the toughest. Her relationship with Bentinck can be summed up in the nickname that she gave him: La bestia feroce (the ferocious beast).[23] Bentinck, however, was determined to see the establishment of a Sicilian Constitution and shortly thereafter exiled Maria Carolina from Palermo. On 18 June 1812 the Parliament assembled in Palermo and, about a month later, on 20 July 1812 the constitution was accepted and written on the basis of 15 articles, on the drafts prepared by Prince Belmonte and other Sicilian noblemen. With the establishment of the constitution the Sicilians had now gained an autonomy they had never experienced before. The constitution set up the separation of the legislative and executive powers and abolished the feudalistic practices that had been established and recognised for the past 700 years.[22]

    Bentinck's success in establishing a Sicilian constitution lasted only a few years. On 8 December 1816, a year after

    1848.[23]

    Italian adventure

    Elisa Bonaparte; whom Bentinck would not countenance retaining the Principality of Lucca and Piombino, first granted to her by Napoleon in 1805.
    Territory of the Grand Duchy of Tuscany in 1796
    Northern Italy in 1814
    Portrait of Napoleon as King of Italy. He renounced the Italian throne, along with the French, on 11 April 1814.

    Sailing from Sicily on 30 January 1814, Bentinck first made for Naples. There he reluctantly signed an armistice with Joachim Murat; whom he personally detested as being a man whose "whole life had been a crime," yet whom Britain found it expedient to detach from his brother-in-law, Napoleon, by guaranteeing his Kingdom of Naples in return for an alliance.[24] Having instructed the forces under his command in Sicily to make a landing at Livorno, Bentinck then travelled north, with a day's stop in Rome, to join them. [25] The disembarkation at Livorno began on 9 March and took three days to complete, Murat's Neapolitans already having occupied the port beforehand.[26]

    Napoleon's sister Elisa, though having now abandoned her Grand Duchy of Tuscany, had nevertheless not given up completely in attempting to salvage something out of the collapse of her brother's Empire. Having obtained from Murat - husband of her sister Caroline - the guarantee that he would obtain the consent of the Coalition he had just joined to her retention of the Principality of Lucca and Piombino in return for having rendered up Tuscany without a fight, she had, by the time of Bentinck's appearance at Livorno, retired to Lucca. Upon hearing of his landing, she sent a delegation to gain assurances that Murat's pact would be respected. Bentinck replied that it would not. If she did not depart immediately, he said, she would be arrested. With 2,000 British troops dispatched towards the city to carry out this threat, the heavily pregnant Elisa had no choice but to abandon the last of her territories and flee north, where she eventually fell into allied hands at Bologna.[27]

    Elisa quit Lucca on 13 March. The next day, Bentinck issued a proclamation from Livorno calling on the Italian nation to rise in a movement of liberation. "Italians!" he declared, "Great Britain has landed her troops on your shores; she holds out her hand to you to free you from the iron yoke of Buonaparte...hesitate no longer...assert your rights and your liberty. Call us, and we will hasten to you, and then, our forces joined, will effect that Italy may become what in the best times she was".[28] In thus attempting to bring about his long-nurtured dream of an independent Italian nation-state in the north and centre (he did not consider the Neapolitans and Sicilians 'Italians'),

    King of Sardinia re-established in Piedmont. For the next month, Bentinck was therefore operating as effectively an independent actor representative of Britain only, as Rosselli says, in the widest sense: in that he held himself to be furthering Britain's true interests, regardless of whether the current Government recognised them or not.[30]

    Ordering his troops north to besiege

    Ferdinand IV if Murat did not give way, Bentinck was quickly reprimanded in a firm note from Castlereagh reminding him that he was instructed to co-operate in every way with Murat and Austria. At which he reluctantly withdrew his bid for Tuscany - which he had likely been hoping to turn into the nucleus of a free Italian state under his own aegis - and left for Genoa.[32] There had, in any case, been no discernable response from the Tuscans to Bentinck's proclamation, while in Genoa he would find a welcoming audience at last.[33]

    Bentinck had been ordered to take and occupy Genoa in the name of the

    Mediterranean.[36] In Genoa meanwhile, on the 24th, he received representations from the provisional government in Milan beseeching Britain's support for the maintenance of an independent Kingdom of Italy rather than the restoration of Austria's rule over Lombardy. With Napoleon's abdication of both the French and Italian thrones on 11 April, the government in Milan was in search of a new sovereign who would better bolster their chances of survival and, in seeking to bind Britain to their cause, the suggestion was put to Bentinck that Prince Adolphus, Duke of Cambridge, the seventh son of George III, would be a welcome candidate.[36] Though Bentinck recommended they might look to Archduke Francis of Este as a more realistic candidate in order to mollify the Austrians
    .

    With Napoleon's double abdication on 11 April however - though the news took time to cross the

    Emperor still raging, all was still to a great extent up in the air, largely came to an end. As did his Government's motive for toleration. His erratic behaviour over the recent months had led the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool
    to brand him simply "mad", and his scope of authority was sharply reduced; though he was not finally dismissed from his grand post as Commander-in-Chief in the Mediterranean until April the following year.

    First Governor-General of India

    Lord William Bentinck was the first governor general of British-occupied India. Everyone else before him was the

    Governor-General of Bengal in 1828. His principal concern was to turn around the loss-making East India Company
    , to ensure that its charter would be renewed by the British government.

    Lady William Cavendish-Bentinck (c 1783–1843) (Ellen Sharples)

    Bentinck engaged in an extensive range of cost-cutting measures, earning the lasting enmity of many military men whose wages were cut. Although historians emphasise his more efficient financial management, his modernising projects also included a policy of westernisation, influenced by the Utilitarianism of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill, which was more controversial. He also reformed the court system.

    Educational reforms

    Bentinck made English the medium of instruction

    Calcutta Medical college which offered western medical education and opening of this college is seen as Introduction of Western Science into India. It was the first western medical college in Asia and it was open to all without discrimination of caste or creed. James Ranald Martin compares the foundation of this college to Bentinck's other acclaimed act of abolishing Sati.[38][39][40][41][42][43]

    Social reforms

    Abolition of Sati

    Bentinck decided to put an immediate end to

    Horace Hayman Wilson and Raja Ram Mohan Roy cautioned Bentinck against abruptly ending the practice and suggested that the practice might be gradually stopped by increasing checks. After observing that the judges in the courts were unanimously in favor of the ban, Bentinck proceeded to lay the draft before his council. Charles Metcalfe, the Governor's most prominent counselor, expressed apprehension that the banning of Sati might be "used by the disaffected and designing" as "an engine to produce insurrection." However these concerns did not deter him from upholding the Governor's decision "in the suppression of the horrible custom by which so many lives are cruelly sacrificed."[44]

    Thus on Sunday morning of 4 December 1829 Lord Bentinck issued Regulation XVII declaring Sati to be illegal and punishable in criminal courts. It was presented to William Carey for translation. His response is recorded as follows: "Springing to his feet and throwing off his black coat he cried, 'No church for me to-day... If I delay an hour to translate and publish this, many a widow's life may be sacrificed,' he said. By evening the task was finished."[45]

    On 2 February 1830 this law was extended to

    Privy Council in London. Along with British supporters, Ram Mohan Roy presented counter-petitions to parliament in support of ending Sati. The Privy Council rejected the petition in 1832, and the ban on Sati was upheld.[48]

    Ban on female infanticide and human sacrifice

    Bentinck prohibited female infanticide and the custom of certain of newly born girls to be killed and against human sacrifices. Although his reforms met little resistance among native Indians at the time, Indian enemies repeated a story to the effect that he had once planned to demolish the Taj Mahal and sell off the marble. According to Bentinck's biographer John Rosselli, the story arose from Bentinck's fund-raising sale of discarded marble from Agra Fort and of the metal from the Great Agra Gun, the largest cannon ever cast, a historical artefact which dated to the reign of Akbar the Great.[49] [50] Bentinck removed flogging as a punishment in the Indian Army.[51]

    Saint Helena Act 1833

    The

    Saint Helena Act 1833
    , also called the Charter Act of 1833, was passed during Bentinck's tenure and, accordingly, the monopoly of the East India Company was abolished. The Governor-General of Bengal became the Governor-General of India. This Act added a law member to the executive council of the governor general. Bishops of Bombay, Madras, and Calcutta were to be appointed for the benefit of the Christians in India.

    Bentinck returned to the UK in 1835 and refused a peerage, partly because he had no children and partly because he wanted to stand for Parliament again. He again entered the House of Commons as a Member for Glasgow.[52]

    Personal life, death and legacy

    Memorial at the Bentinck family vault in St Marylebone Parish Church, London

    In August 1791, Bentinck played in a non-first-class cricket match for Marylebone Cricket Club against Nottingham Cricket Club at King's Meadow, Nottingham.[53][54]

    Bentinck married Lady Mary, daughter of Arthur Acheson, 1st Earl of Gosford, on 18 February 1803.[55] The marriage was childless. He died in Paris on 17 June 1839, aged 64. Mary died in May 1843.[56] They are buried together in the Bentinck family vault in St Marylebone Parish Church, London.

    Explorer

    Richard Wellesley, 2nd Earl of Mornington. In 1803, the two men had acted as interceded on Flinders' behalf to persuade the French to release Flinders after he had been imprisoned by them on Mauritius.[60]

    Notes

    1. ^ Many of the British troops were redeployed at the end of the campaign to North America. They included 'four sound units -- 1/27th, 1/44th, 1/58th, and 1/81st Foot -- derived from Bentinck's "East Coast" army which carried out independent operations in Spain and northern Italy in 1813-1814...The 1/21st and 1/62nd Foot had seen active service in the Mediterranean in 1813 when they had participated in the successful siege of Genoa, of which they formed part of the garrison when they departed for points west.'[21]

    References

    1. ^ "Lord William Bentinck | British government official". Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 30 May 2019.
    2. ^ Padmashri Dr Meenakshi Jain; interview with Debdas Mukhopadhyay, 29 febr 2020
    3. ISBN 978-81-317-2133-9
      . Retrieved 2 May 2018.
    4. ISBN 978-1-108-02104-3
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    9. ^ Rice, B.L. (1897). Mysore. A Gazetteer Compiled for Government. Revised Edition. Volume 1. London: Archiband Constable and Company.
    10. ^ Boulger 1897, p. 9.
    11. ^ "Imperial India". www.britishempire.co.uk. Retrieved 27 May 2019.
    12. ^ Taylor, Charles. The Literary Panorama, Volume 10. p. 1411.
    13. ^ "No. 13278". The London Gazette. 29 January 1791. p. 64.
    14. ^ "No. 13446". The London Gazette. 31 July 1792. p. 606.
    15. ^ "No. 13516". The London Gazette. 2 April 1793. p. 269.
    16. ^ "No. 13635". The London Gazette. 25 March 1794. p. 264.
    17. ^ "No. 13686". The London Gazette. 19 July 1794. p. 748.
    18. ^ "No. 14080". The London Gazette. 6 January 1798. p. 23.
    19. ^ "No. 15770". The London Gazette. 8 January 1805. p. 47.
    20. ^ "No. 16460". The London Gazette. 2 March 1811. p. 406.
    21. ^ Graves, Donald E. (2001). "The Redcoats are Coming!: British Troop Movements to North America in 1814". Retrieved 9 October 2022.
    22. ^
      doi:10.1093/ehr/xlii.clxvii.371
      .
    23. ^ a b c Hearder, Harry (1983). Italy in the Age of the Risorgimento 1790–1870. New York: Longmans.
    24. ^ Gregory, Sicily: The Insecure Base, 119; Rosselli, Lord William Bentinck, 175.
    25. ^ Rosselli 1974, p. 173.
    26. ^ Nafziger & Gioannini 2002, p. 209.
    27. ^ Williams, The Women Bonapartes, II, 299–302.
    28. ^ The Parliamentary Debates from the Year 1803 to the Present Time, Volume 29, 729.
    29. ^ Rosselli 1974, p. 151.
    30. ^ Rosselli 1974, p. 174.
    31. ^ Nafziger & Gioannini 2002, p. 210.
    32. ^ Gregory, D., Sicily: The Insecure Base, 120.
    33. ^ Gregory, D., Napoleon's Italy, 183.
    34. ^ Rath, J. R., The Fall of the Napoleonic Kingdom of Italy, 1814, 186.
    35. ^ Gregory, Sicily: The Insecure Base, 120.
    36. ^ a b Boulger 1897, p. 52.
    37. ISBN 0-313-29366-X
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    38. ISBN 978-0-521-56319-2
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    39. ISBN 978-81-317-2818-5
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    40. ISBN 978-1-317-62445-5
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    41. PMID 24426482
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    42. ^ Krishnendu Bandyopadhyay (30 January 2018). "Students demand restoration of the old name of Calcutta Medical College". The Times of India. Retrieved 3 May 2018.
    43. PMID 11621593
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    44. ^ H. H. Dodwell (1932). The Cambridge History of the British Empire. CUP Archive. pp. 140–142. GGKEY:ZS3NURDNRFH. Retrieved 7 May 2020.
    45. ISBN 978-81-208-0464-7
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    46. ISBN 9788187139690
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    47. ^ H. H. Dodwell 1932, p. 141.
    48. ISBN 978-0791428382
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    49. ^ Cooper, Randolf (2003). The Anglo-Maratha Campaigns and the Contest for India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 198.
    50. ^ Rosselli 1974, p. 283.
    51. ISBN 978-81-85044-32-3
      . Retrieved 3 May 2018.
    52. ^ Boulger 1897, p. 208.
    53. ^ Britcher, Samuel (1791). A list of all the principal Matches of Cricket that have been played (1790 to 1805). MCC. p. 22.
    54. ^ Haygarth, Arthur (1862). Scores & Biographies, Volume 1 (1744–1826). Lillywhite. p. 123.
    55. ^ Boulger 1897, p. 17.
    56. ^ Boulger 1897, p. 148.
    57. ^ Milton, Vanessa (19 February 2022). "Bentinck Island's 'last people' fight for their homeland after a lifetime of dispossession". ABC News (Australian Broadcasting Corporation). Retrieved 24 February 2022.
    58. State Library Of Queensland
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    59. ISBN 978-1-922270-74-0
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    60. ^ "Mornington Shire". Queensland Places. Centre for the Government of Queensland, University of Queensland. Retrieved 26 February 2022.

    Further reading

    External links

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    Parliament of Great Britain
    Preceded by Member of Parliament for Camelford
    1796–1796
    With: William Smith     		Succeeded by
    Preceded by Member of Parliament for Nottinghamshire
    1796–1800
    With: Evelyn Pierrepont     		Succeeded by
    Parliament of the United Kingdom
    Parliament of the United Kingdom
    Preceded by
    Parliament of Great Britain
    		 Member of Parliament for
    1801–1803
    With: Evelyn Pierrepont 1801
    Lord Pierrepont
    1801–1803     		Succeeded by
    Preceded by Member of Parliament for Nottinghamshire
    1812–1814
    With: Viscount Newark     		Succeeded by
    Preceded by Member of Parliament for Nottinghamshire
    1816–1826
    With: Frank Sotheron     		Succeeded by
    Preceded by
    Lord John Bentinck
    		 Member of Parliament for King's Lynn
    1826–1828
    With: John Walpole     		Succeeded by
    Preceded by Member of Parliament for Glasgow
    1836–1839
    With: James Oswald 1836–1837
    John Dennistoun 1837–1839     		Succeeded by
    Government offices
    Preceded by Governor-General of India
    1828–1835     		Succeeded by
    Military offices
    Preceded by Colonel of the 20th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons
    1810–1813     		Succeeded by
    Preceded by Colonel of the 11th Regiment of (Light) Dragoons
    1813–1839     		Succeeded by
    Lord Charles Manners
    Preceded by Commander-in-Chief, India
    1833–1835     		Succeeded by
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