Beschreibung:

EARL ST. VINCENT'S TESTIMONY OF APPROBATION 1800, gold, contained in its original glazed case, the gold rim fitted with rings for suspension, the edge inscribed (Given to the Revd. Cooper Willyams A.M. his Lordships Domestic Chaplain) extremely fine and rare Footnote Ex. R.U.S.I. Collection Cooper Willyams (1762-1816), topographer and artist, was the only son of Commander John Willyams R.N. He was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, where he was contemporary with Charles Abbott, first Lord Tenterden, Bishop Marsh, and Sir S.E. Bridges. Willyams was entered in October 1780 at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, and graduated B.A. in 1784 and M.A. in 1789. In the spring of 1784 he was in France with his friend Montague Pennington, and in that year he was ordained to a curacy near Gloucester, where his mother lived. He was appointed in 1788 to the vicarage of Exning, near Newmarket, and in 1793 to the rectory of St. Peter, West Lynn, Norfolk. In early life Willyams had imbibed a love of the sea and it therefore seemed natural that he should serve aboard the ships of His Majesty's Royal Navy. For intelligent, well-educated men who were incarcerated for long periods in their 'wooden cities', the ability to write journals, or memoranda for works to be published when seafaring was ended, was an appropriate natural endowment. Among the best known chaplains possessing this talent was Cooper Willyams whose first ship was the Brunswick in 1793. While in the flagship Boyne soon afterwards he prepared his Account of the Campaign in the West Indies in the year 1794, which is a vivid and detailed description of the combined operations against the French islands of Martinique and Guadeloupe under the command of Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis and Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey Willyams had a very observant eye, and his reporting of events is a first-class record of the expedition. He landed with his shipmates and risked all the hazards, including yellow-fever, which claimed the life of 'Chaplain Ruxton' of the 56th Regiment. Willyams generally did not refer to his own participation, but he was clearly an eye-witness of a great deal of the action which he described: ’On Feb. 7th the Admiral sent Lieutenant Miln of the Boyne, accompanied by Lieutenant James of the fifteenth regiment and the Chaplain of the Boyne, with a letter for the municipality or Governor of Maran.Williams was greatly interested in topography, and this probably contributed to his skill as an artist. The Account has some fine illustrations by his own hand, and his experience as he sought to land at Maran in Martinique led to an illustration of the incident, the caption to which, as given in the Appendix of the book, reads:The Boyne's boat bearing a flag of truce, fired on by the enemy, and a shot falling into the water near itThus we owe to the pencil of Willyams a rare example of an illustration showing a naval chaplain landing under fire. Just over a month later he described how he conducted the funeral of Lieutenant Miln in the garden of the hospital of St. Pierre. Miln had died of lockjaw after losing a leg. The chaplain was with him several times up to the moment of death, but there are few descriptions of his spiritual ministrations, and none are recorded concerning two soldiers found guilty of plundering, who were 'hanged in view of the whole army'. The book was published in 1796, the year in which Willyams returned to England and his country living. The 'candid and favourable reception' which this book received led him to write another a few years later-A Voyage up the Mediterranean in His Majesty ~r Ship the Sw:ftsure with a Descr~tion of the Battle of the Nile, which was published in 1802, and which is an even more important contribution to naval history. In the Introduction he stated he was 'placed in the midst of a battle as splendid and extraordinary as the page of history has ever recorded', and was an attendant of the chase which preceded it'. In this seco