Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/449

 brothers had left India, was accomplished under two viceroys (Mayo and Lytton) who rank as conservatives at home but as active reformers in India. Strachey's valuable literary work in connection with India shows' throughout the mind of a strong man and the pen of a ready writer.

(1858–1901), second son of Sir John, was born on 5 Dec. 1858. Educated first at Uppingham and afterwards at Charterhouse, he proceeded to Trinity Hall, Cambridge, where he graduated in 1880 with a second class in the law tripos, taking later the degree of LL.B. Among his chief friends at the university were James Kenneth Stephen and Theodore Beck. Called to the bar from the Inner Temple in 1883, he went out almost at once to India, to practise before the high court at Allahabad. In 1892 he became public prosecutor and standing counsel to the provincial government. In 1895 he was appointed judge of the high court at Bombay, in which capacity it fell to him to preside at the first trial for sedition of Bal Gangadhar Tilak in 1897. An unfortunate phrase in his charge to the jury, that 'disaffection means simply the absence of affection,' attracted much censure, but the general purport of his language on this point was approved on appeal to a full bench. In 1899 he was promoted to be chief justice of the high court at Allahabad, and knighted. He died at Simla on 14 May 1901. His remains were cremated in Hindu fashion, and the ashes brought home and deposited in the churchyard of Send, near Woking. A bronze tablet to his memory has been placed in the church of Trent, near Yeovil, where much of his boyhood was passed. On 22 Oct. 1885 he married Ellen, daughter of John Conolly, who survived him. There was no issue of the marriage.

 STRACHEY, RICHARD (1817–1908), lieutenant-general, royal (Bengal) engineers, younger brother of Sir Edward Strachey [q. v. Suppl. II for parentage], and elder brother of Sir John Strachey [q. V. Suppl. II], was born on 24 July 1817 at Sutton Court, Somerset, the seat of his uncle, Sir Henry Strachey (1772–1858), second baronet.

Educated at a private school at Totteridge, Richard entered the East India Company's military seminary at Addiscombe in 1834, and left it as the head of his term with a commission as second lieutenant in the Bombay engineers on 10 June 1836. After professional instruction at Chatham, Strachey went to India, and did duty first at Poona and then at Kandeish. On the augmentation of the Bengal engineers in 1839 he was transferred to that corps, and posted to the irrigation works of the public works department on the Jmnna Canal, under (Sir) William Erskine Baker [q. v.]. Promoted lieutenant on 24 Feb. 1841, he was appointed in 1843 executive engineer on the Ganges Canal under (Sir) Proby Thomas Cautley [q. v.], and began the construction of the head works at Hurdwar.

In December 1845 Strachey was hurried off with all the other engineer officers within reach of the Sikh frontier to serve in the Sutlej campaign. He was appointed to Major-general Sir Harry Smith's staff, was present at the affair of Badiwal, at the battle of Aliwal on 28 Jan. 1846, where he had a horse shot under him, and at the victory of Sobraon on 10 Feb. After the battle he assisted in the construction of the bridge over the Sutlej, by which the army crossed into the Punjab. Sir Harry Smith, in his despatch after the battle of Aliwal, dated 30 Jan. 1846, highly commended the ready help of Strachey and of Richard Baird Smith [q. v.], also describing them as 'two most promising and gallant officers.' Strachey drew the plan of the battle to illustrate the despatch, and he was also employed on the survey of the Sobraon field of battle. For his services he received the medal with clasp, and, the day after his promotion to the rank of captain on 15 Feb. 1854, a brevet majority.

At the end of the campaign Strachey returned to the Ganges Canal, but frequent attacks of fever compelled him in 1847 to go to Nani Tal in the Kmnaon Himalayas for his health. There he made the acquaintance of Major E. Madden, under whose guidance he studied botany and geology, making explorations into the Himalaya ranges west of Nepal for scientific purposes. In 1848 he accompanied Mr. J. E. Winterbottom, F.L.S., botanist, into Tibet, penetrating as far as lakes Rakas-tal and Manasarowar, previously visited by his elder brother. Captain Henry Strachey, in 1846. Starting from the plain of Rohilkhand at an elevation of about 1000 feet