The Simcoes Make A Map (2): Friends and Family
- kmabel6
- Feb 6
- 14 min read
Residents of Belleville, Ontario, have inherited a forest of Simcoe names. Here, a single friend provided a full list: Hastings County, the Moira River, and the townships of Rawdon, Huntingdon, and Hungerford. While the 2nd Earl Moira may have had more places named for him in Upper Canada than any other in the Simcoe circle, Ontarians today are surrounded by Simcoe family and friends. Some are well-known and remembered as the Simcoes wished, while others are less familiar. This blog entry looks at a few of both.
First, the family.
Nearly all commemorate Elizabeth Simcoe’s family – only two are connected to her husband (and we will note these in Part 3 of this story, coming in March). Gwillimbury Township plays on Mrs. Simcoe’s maiden name. Whitchurch is named for the parish in which the Gwillim family’s home (Old Court) is located in Herefordshire. Bertie Township likely commemorates Lord Robert Bertie (1721-1782), the colonel of Mrs. Simcoe’s father’s first regiment, the Royal Fusiliers (later the 7th Regiment of Foot), which was known as Lord Bertie’s Regiment.
Pickering and Montague townships honour distinguished ancestors on her mother’s side. And a whole constellation of names at the west end of Lake Ontario commemorates the Spinckes and Elmes families, more of Elizabeth’s maternal ancestors: Lincoln (for Lincolnshire), the Welland River (for the river that forms Lincolnshire’s border with Northamptonshire), Stamford Township (for the town associated with her Elmes ancestors) etc. Of course, it might be argued that Stamford was John Graves Simcoe’s mother’s maiden name, but given the context, it seems more likely to have been chosen for its Elmes connection. And finally, we ought to note Wolford Township at the eastern end of the province, named for the property in Devon that the vice-regal couple had left behind.[1]
And now, the friends.
John Graves Simcoe met FRANCIS RAWDON (as he then was) after the battle at Bunker Hill when both were young officers in their late teens. They forged a bond that lasted long after Simcoe’s death when Lord Moira (as he now was) took the Simcoe’s eldest son (named Francis after him) under his wing to help the widowed Mrs. Simcoe launch her son’s army career. So who was Moira?
Francis Rawdon (1754-1826) was the eldest son of the 1st Earl Moira and his third wife, Elizabeth Hastings. The earldom was a title in the Irish peerage, named for the Rawdon family seat at Moira, County Down. The Rawdons had been in Down since the days of Charles II, rising through the ranks of the Anglo-Irish gentry largely with judicious marriages. Francis’s father was unlucky in his first two marriages (with both wives dying young) but was otherwise successful at improving the family’s status and wealth through his third marriage - and producing a son/heir. The first earl was fascinated by the emerging science of agriculture. He advocated for Irish interests in politics and the comfort of his tenants at home. He was a fervent supporter of early Methodism but also donated to Roman Catholic causes. He was a noted patron of the arts and a collector of books.
Francis’s mother was a cousin of his father’s, the daughter of the 9th Earl Huntingdon (in the English peerage). She brought the baronetcies of Hastings and Hungerford into the marriage. And she also brought a spirit of independence and public service. Her mother, Selina, was one of the leading members of the religious revival movement of the eighteenth century in England – funding chapels and chaplains, encouraging the early Methodists, and establishing a network of Evangelicals in England and Sierra Leone known as “Lady Huntingdon’s Connexion.”
Although Simcoe and Rawdon did not serve in the same units in the American war, they crossed paths regularly and had similar experiences of the brutal raids and vicious small engagements that characterized much of that bloody war (Simcoe in New Jersey and Rawdon in South Carolina) as both became commanding officers of volunteer militia units. When Rawdon was appointed aide-de-camp to the new commander-in-chief Henry Clinton, Simcoe saw a great deal more of him; as commanding officer of the Queen’s Rangers, Simcoe reported directly and regularly to Clinton, including in connection with the handling of turncoat Benedict Arnold and the spy networks in which Simcoe became embedded. Rawdon took Simcoe’s side in a disagreement with Clinton over the rank due to officers of the “irregular” militias such as the Queen’s Rangers. And both men returned to England in very poor health, worn out in body and soul from their war service.
Late in 1782, Rawdon was appointed aide-de-camp to the king, giving Simcoe a new kind of access to power. Both men also became Masons. And both went into politics. Rawdon was elected to the Irish parliament in 1781 and Simcoe to the English in 1790. Both began their political careers as supporters of William Pitt, although Rawdon was rather more independently minded, to put a charitable spin on it. Less kind was Lady Elizabeth Holland (wife of a leading opposition politician) who wrote of him in 1797, “… he is a conceited, solemn coxcomb, with as much ambition as the coldness of his disposition allows.” She went on, “His politics he conducts so that he may be in power on either side.” Others were kinder. Bluestocking Hester Piozzi once referred to him as “charming.”[2]
While the Simcoes were in Upper Canada, Rawdon-Hastings (as he now was) returned to active military service in the French war and attempted to make himself useful by leading expeditions into France to either reinforce or support the Duke of York’s flailing efforts there. He also became increasingly intimate with the duke’s older brother George, Prince of Wales, a friendship that apparently began when Rawdon-Hastings provided the heir to the throne with assistance during the Regency Crisis of 1788/9.
After the Simcoes returned from Upper Canada, the General (as Simcoe now was) renewed his friendship with Moira (as he now was). The Simcoes visited at Donington, his magnificent newly built residence in Leicestershire. Simcoe also spent a great deal of time with Moira in London, meeting through him people who were useful in Simcoe’s campaigns for military preferment. The two men shared an admiration for, and eventually acquaintance with, the rising naval hero, Horatio Nelson. They also shared a friendship with the Duke of Northumberland (dating from their service in the American Revolutionary War).
Simcoe envied his friend’s active military service in the war with France; Moira envied Simcoe’s marriage. Simcoe eventually persuaded him to find a bride (for all the “consolations” personal and pecuniary she could provide) and in 1804, Moira married Flora Mure Campbell, the 24-year-old Countess of Loudoun. The groom was nearly 26 years her senior. He was pleased to report to Simcoe that the married state very much agreed with him.
After Simcoe’s death, Moira continued to be active as a senior army officer and as a politician with a particular interest in defending Irish interests. He did his best to help Elizabeth Simcoe with her eldest son (and his namesake), Francis. He served as governor general of India (1812-1821) during which time he saw active military service once again. In 1824, he was appointed governor and commander-in-chief of Malta. He died in Mediterranean service in 1826.
Second in important to Moira in Simcoe’s life was HENRY ADDINGTON (1757-1844) for whom the lieutenant governor named a county in Upper Canada – and later, a son.
Addington was born into minor Oxfordshire gentry; his father had been William Pitt the Elder’s physician. Addington rose to eventually become prime minister through a combination of good timing and a pleasant, undemanding demeanour. He was part of William Pitt the Younger’s circle (they met studying law at Lincoln’s Inn) and entered parliament in 1784. Ironically, for a man who apparently never spoke in the House of Commons for two years, and then only a few times afterward, he was elected speaker in 1789. It appears that he and John Graves Simcoe met at that point and bonded over their shared politics and mutual admiration.
After the Simcoes returned from Upper Canada, the friendship deepened as Addington became increasingly influential in the halls of power and thus of increasing potential to assist the ever-ambitious Simcoe. Addington became prime minister following Pitt’s resignation in 1801, then resigned himself in 1804 over his handling of the war with France. Nevertheless, he was created Viscount Sidmouth in 1805 and joined Pitt’s Ministry of All Talents (alongside Lord Moira).
Addington was then out of office for five years, during which time his long-suffering wife died. He became Home Secretary in Lord Liverpool’s government, a post that he held for a decade. He resigned one last time in 1824 and retired to a quiet life (and a second wife) at Upottery in Devon and Richmond Park in London. He died there in 1844.
History has not been kind to Henry Addington. He is remembered at best as ineffective (“Pitt is to Addington as London is to Paddington”) and at worst as an arch Tory with backward ideas and repressive policies. Nevertheless, he and some of his children were a valued part of Simcoe family life for decades.
Another important Simcoe friendship was immortalized (to considerable mirth in later years) in two townships in Leeds County: Bastard and Kitley. JOHN POLLEXFEN BASTARD (1756-1816) was a member of a family with deep roots in Devon. Their seat, at a house called Kitley (near Yealmpton/Plymouth) had come to the Bastard family in 1710 through a marriage with another Devon family of landed gentry, the Pollexfens, who claimed ancestry there from Tudor times.
Simcoe and Bastard had known each other since childhood. They were at Eton together, then they shared a brief connection to the Inns of Court. Later, they served together in the House of Commons where Bastard was already the MP for the constituency of Devon when Simcoe was elected for St. Mawes (Cornwall). Bastard did not serve in the regular army but in the 1780s, became lieutenant colonel of the East Devonshire militia and was a strong proponent of the idea of a volunteer militia for home defence; he and Simcoe worked together to promote the idea. He and Simcoe were also active supporters of the abolition of slavery. Unlike Simcoe, though, he was (in the words of historian R.G. Thorne), “tenaciously independent” in his politics, proclaiming at one point that he “had no predilection for one party more than another.”[3] He came by that independence honestly. His father (Colonel William Bastard) had been given a baronetcy for services to the crown in 1779 but had refused to assume it.
Political differences, however, never interfered with the Simcoe-Bastard friendship. Simcoe named Bastard one of the three trustees of his will and when Bastard died in 1816, Eliza Simcoe (the eldest daughter) lamented his loss as the loss of a valued and important link to her father.
Another Devon neighbour who was immortalized (if personally forgotten) in Canada was SIR GEORGE YONGE (1732-1812), a politician who mentored Simcoe and offered his residence at Escot near Ottery St. Mary for the newly married Simcoes to rent at extremely generous terms. Yonge Township, Escott Township (as it is now spelled), and of course, Yonge Street in Toronto are named for him.
Sir George, the 5th Baronet, was related to the Reverend James Yonge, rector of Newton Ferrars in Devon and an immediate neighbour of the Bastards at Kitley, who would later have an even more direct connection to Upper Canada. The Rev. Yonge's daughter Elizabeth married army officer John Colborne who was appointed lieutenant governor in 1828 (and was replaced by Simcoe protégé Francis Bond Head in 1836).
The Yonges were a long-established Devon family. Generations had served crown and church while amassing considerable property. Sir George added to the pile with his marriage in 1765 to Ann Cleeve, heiress to the massive fortune of a London pewter manufacturer. Yonge then spent most of what he had inherited and married in a failed attempt to establish a woolen mill at Ottery St. Mary and in fabulously expensive election campaigns to woo the voters of the constituency of Honiton. He sat as its MP from 1754 to 1761 and again from 1763 to 1796.
When Simcoe was appointed lieutenant governor, Yonge was Secretary of War and a supporter of the Canada Bill. He was also a member of both the Royal Society and the Society of Antiquaries, among whose fellows he enjoyed a modest reputation as a student of Roman camps and roads – likely the reason that Simcoe chose his name for his dream of Yonge Street. It was to be a road that (like the Roman roads) would serve a dual purpose of defence and colonization.
When the Simcoes returned from Upper Canada, they found the Yonges in serious financial straits. Well-placed political friends (likely with the support of George III) tried to help in obtaining an appointment for him in 1799 as the governor of Cape of Good Hope. He lasted only two years there before he was accused of financial wrongdoing and recalled. A failed attempt to return to parliament in the 1802 election at Honiton was his last appearance on the public stage. He died in penury at the age of 80 in 1812.
A rather happier story accompanies the explanation for the name of Burges Township in Leeds County (now spelled “Burgess”). It was named for JAMES BLAND BURGES (1752-1824) who came into Simcoe’s life through Elizabeth Simcoe’s intimate friendship with his younger sister, Mary Ann Burges.
In the summer of 1792, Simcoe promised Burges that “I … shall give you, the first opportunity, your township.” Burges was delighted and replied jocularly, “I will do my best not to disgrace my namesake.” He went on (tongue-in-cheek) to discuss its value:
Can you give me a grant of land in my new township?
It may perhaps be a good thing to have in case of accidents;
for, at the rate the Empress of Russia and the King of Prussia
are going on, there is no saying how soon we may have a visit
from them here … I have … no wish either that I or my posterity
should be governed by Russians, and therefore a good American
freehold may be worth having in case of necessity.[4]
The story of the Burges-Simcoe friendship is told in detail in Mrs. Simcoe. Just to note here, however, that James Bland Burges was the eldest of three remarkable children born to George Burges (an army officer and administrator) and Ann Whichnour Somerville (daughter of the 13th Lord Somerville). He obtained an Oxford degree, took the required European tour, then began his adult life with a London legal firm. Along the way, he met and mingled with the leaders of his generation and parlayed that political and social network into a fascinating career.
He was a bankruptcy commissioner before entering politics. He became the MP for Helston (Cornwall). He was an ardent opponent of slavery. As under-secretary of state for the Foreign Department, he played important (if unpublicized) roles in the defence of the realm from subversion within as the country faced the challenges of the French Revolution. He became a regular at court and was appointed knight marshall of the household in 1795, the year that he retired from politics and was made a baronet. He then became a minor literary celebrity, known particularly for his Birth and Triumph of Love (1796 and 1823), a lengthy allegorical poem illustrated by “an illustrious personage” (according to the publisher) whose identity was apparently well known at the time as being the king’s seventh child, Princess Elizabeth.
Cupid finds his arrow: Illustrations from Burges's allegorical poem.
Left is the version that appeared in the 1796 edition and right is the 1823 new edition.
Burges’s home life was a series of tragedies. His first wife (Elizabeth Noel) died in childbirth after just eighteen months of marriage. He continued to assist her family, and through them, became embroiled in the mess that Lord Byron left behind in the wake of his marriage to Burges’s late wife’s niece. His second marriage (to Anne Montolieu) produced ten children of whom two died as infants. One son was killed in the Peninsular War and another was maimed at Waterloo. His second wife died at the age of 54. Throughout it all, Burges seemed to maintain his zest for life and fine sense of humour.
His third marriage seems to have brought some lasting happiness. He and Lady Margaret Fordyce (née Lindsay), daughter of the 5th Earl Balcarres, had been childhood friends. She had fallen in love with him but her mother apparently wanted a better match and so she married a wealthy banker. James and Margaret remained friends and were finally able to marry in 1812, after she had been widowed and two years after the death of Burges’s second wife.
Lady Margaret’s sister Anne wrote a poem about their ill-fated love that was set to music and became a popular song of enduring appeal called “Auld Robin Gray.” It was the subject of at least two sentimental paintings and an arrangement by Joseph Hayden. Burges appears in the lyrics as “Jamie”:
Young Jamie lo’ed me weel, and sought for me his bride,
But saving ae crown-piece he had naething beside;
To make the crown a pound my Jamie gaed to sea,
And the crown and the pound – they were baith for me.[5]
Finally, brief mention must be made of WILLIAM CROSBIE, if only because I once enjoyed a decade’s residence in his township (now spelled “Crosby”). I have been unable to trace Crosbie’s family history, but he was an army officer in the Simcoe-Rawdon circle during the American Revolutionary War when he served for a time alongside Rawdon as an aide-de-camp to Henry Clinton. Crosbie counted both Simcoe and the much-lamented spy, John André, among his particular friends. After the war, Crosbie returned to England and assisted Simcoe and Clinton in their pamphlet campaigns about the war. In 1790, Crosbie and Clinton ran for election in the borough of Newark (more on that in Part 3 of this story). Afterwards, Crosbie seems to disappear from the historical record.
Several sources in Canada have wrongly asserted that Crosby Township was named for Brass Crosby, lord mayor of London (from 1770) and MP for Honiton (in 1771). The idea is absurd; Brass Crosby was a radical who supported John Wilkes and his campaigns in support of the American revolutionaries. John Graves Simcoe would have been appalled at the idea. His desire to curry favour was certainly not so elastic as that!
Perhaps, however, Simcoe might have approved of the undoubtedly apocryphal claim that Mayor Brass Crosby was the original honoree of the expression “As bold as brass.”
[1] For more about these people and places, see chapter 1 of Mrs. Simcoe.
[2] Holland remarks from Earl of Ilchester (ed.), The Journal of Lady Elizabeth Holland (1791-1811), vol. 1 (London: Longmans, Green, 1906), pp .165-6 and Piozzi to Penelope Pennington, 2 December 1793, in Oswald G. Knapp (ed.), The Intimate Letters of Hester Piozzi and Penelope Pennington, 1788-1821 (London, NY, Toronto: John Lane, 1914), p. 101.
[3] R.G. Thorne, The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (London: Martin Secker & Warburg, 1986), p. 153.
[4] In James Hutton (ed.), Selections from the Letters and Correspondence of Sir James Bland Burges, Bart., (London: John Murray, 1885), pp. 221 and 233.
[5] The story is recounted in Stephen Taylor, Defiance: The Life and Choices of Lady Anne Barnard (London: Faber and Faber, 2017). See also Madeleine Masson, Lady Anne Barnard (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1948).
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