SINGLE CAMPAIGN MEDALS 168


The Named Medal of Approbation Presented by Earl St. Vincent to his Personal Domestic Chaplain, the Reverend Cooper Willyams, a talented artist and author who wrote Eyewitness Accounts of the Campaigns in the West Indies and the Mediterranean. At the Battle of the Nile, Willyams was on the Quarterdeck of H.M.S. Swiftsure as she engaged the French Flagship, L’Órient, and he watched as one of the largest warships in the world Caught Fire and Blew Up


EARL ST. VINCENT’S TESTIMONY OF APPROBATION 1800, silver-gilt, struck on a thick flan, contained in its original presentation gold case with glass lunettes, fitted with rings for suspension, the edge engraved in neat capitals (Given to the Revd. Cooper Willyams A.M. his Lordships Domestic Chaplain) extremely fine and exceptionally rare


£5000-7000


Provenance: Royal United Service Museum Collection (dispersed 1962-66), catalogue No. ‘715’ impressed near suspension ring; David Spink Collection, Spink Auction, December 1986; Dr A. B. King Collection, Morton & Eden, October 2003.


Commissioned privately by Earl St. Vincent, at his own expense, from C. H. Kuchler, and struck by Matthew Boulton at the Soho Mint, Birmingham, these medals were mostly presented to the officers and men of his flagship, the Ville de Paris. Named examples are extremely rare. The post-nominal ‘A.M.’ on Willyams’s medal derives from the Latin Artium Magister, or Master of Arts.


Cooper Willyams was born in June 1762, probably at Plaistow House in Essex. He was the only son of Commander John Willyams R. N. (1707-79). Cooper was educated at the King's School, Canterbury, where his contemporaries included the bibliophile and author Sir Samuel Brydges. He did well at the School and was later invited back to give the annual sermon before the King's School Feast Society (Canterbury School, Sidebotham p 24 refers). Willyams entered Emmanuel College, Cambridge, in October 1780. He graduated B.A. in 1784 and A.M in 1789. In the spring of 1784 he was in France with his friend Montagu Pennington, and later in the year he was ordained to a curacy near Gloucester, where his widowed 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. Willyams was a talented, entirely self-taught, artist, topographer and author. His illustrated account of Exning appeared in ‘The Topographer’ of September 1790 (iii. 192–4), and in 1792, when he was thirty, he published his first book, A History of Sudeley Castle, dedicated to Brydges, who aspired (vainly) to inherit the property. Poems by Brydges referring to Willyams are in ‘Censura Literaria’ (iv. 79–100, viii. 87, 91), and ‘Ruminator’ (i. 5, 209).


The West Indies Campaign


Influenced by his father, Willyams had developed a love of the sea, and on 24 November 1793 he sailed as Chaplain of H. M.S. Boyne (88 guns), the recently-built flagship of Vice-Admiral Sir John Jervis, who was commanding a naval expedition to the West Indies. In the spring of 1794, a series of effective amphibious operations mounted by Vice-Admiral Jervis and Lieutenant-General Sir Charles Grey conquered some of the richest islands in the French West Indies, including Martinique, Guadeloupe and St Lucia, despite a heavy death-toll from yellow fever. Cooper Willyams contracted yellow fever, survived it, and during the last part of the campaign was the only Chaplain left in the expedition. Guadeloupe surrendered on 22 April 1794, and Willyams was appointed Chaplain to the English troops occupying the island. The British garrisons of the captured islands were weakened by continual outbreaks of disease and by slave revolts incited by French revolutionary agents, who declared all slaves to be free, while the French planters tried to stop the British government from emancipating or arming slaves. Many of the islands, including ones that had been British, were lost to the French, while Jervis and Grey, accused of corruption, resigned in disgust and returned to England in the Boyne. In 1796 Cooper Willyams published An Account of the Campaign in the West Indies in 1794, including his own illustrations.


Earl St. Vincent’s Domestic Chaplain


In 1797 Willyams was appointed Domestic Chaplain to Admiral Sir John Jervis, now Commander-in-Chief of the Mediterranean Fleet, who had recently been created Earl St. Vincent. The domestic chaplain was effectively a spiritual Aide de Camp, an important status symbol that was part of the life of the peerage in England from the reign of Henry VIII to the middle of the 19th century (A Social History of the Domestic Chaplain W. Gibson (1997) pp 1-6 refers). Cooper Willyams had acquired an important and prominent patron. He would benefit from his connection with Earl St. Vincent for the rest of his life. Until 1840, Anglican domestic chaplains were regulated by law and enjoyed the substantial financial advantage of being able to purchase a license to hold two benefices simultaneously, while residing in neither. Willyams’s appointment to St Vincent’s personal staff was a significant and public mark of confidence from a man who was becoming one of the most influential and powerful officers in the Armed Forces of the Crown.


Admiral Sir John Jervis, Earl St. Vincent, rose in the Navy purely on merit and lived on his pay and prize money. He served with General Wolfe and Captain Cook in Canada during the Seven Years War and became known as a strict disciplinarian with a grim sense of humour, an important influence on the efficiency of the Navy, and a mentor of Nelson. His greatest victory was the destruction of the Spanish fleet at the battle of Cape St. Vincent on 14 February 1797.


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