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 got back to Messina. On 15 Aug. Byng wrote to Craggs: ‘Captain Camocke is, as you have been informed, rear-admiral in the Spanish service, but ran early. Before your letter came to me I had given the very orders relating to him that you send; for when my first captain went ashore at Messina from me to the Spanish general, I ordered him not to suffer Camocke to be in the room, not to speak to him, nor receive any message from him, not thinking it fit to treat or have any correspondence with rebels.’ Notwithstanding this refusal of Byng's to hold any intercourse with the traitor, Camocke had the insolence to write, offering him, in the name of King James, 100,000l. and the title of Duke of Albemarle if he would take the fleet into Messina or any Spanish port. To Captain Walton he wrote a similar letter (22 Dec. 1718), offering him 10,000l., a commission as admiral of the blue, and an English peerage.

But meantime Messina was closely blockaded. Several ships tried to get out, but were captured, and among them a small frigate in which, on 25 Jan. 1718–19, Camocke tried to run the blockade; she was taken on the 26th by the Royal Oak. Camocke, however, escaped ‘by taking in time to his boat, and got safe to Catania; but so frighted that he never thought of anything, but left his king's commission for being admiral of the white together with all his treasonable papers’ (Mathews to Byng, 2 Feb. 1718–19). He succeeded in getting back to Spain, but was no longer in favour, and was banished to Ceuta, where he is said to have died a few years later in the extreme of want and degradation.

There has been a certain tendency to rank Camocke as a political martyr. From his being a native of Ireland, and from the date (falsely quoted as 12 Aug. 1714) of his leaving the English service, it has been commonly taken for granted that he suffered for attachment to the house of Stuart. Critically examined his conduct admits of no such excuse. He had served under both William and Anne, and had professed himself ready to serve with ‘zeal’ and ‘the highest obedience’ under George: his attachment to the Stuart interest was called into being solely by his summary dismissal from the English service for gross breaches of discipline and a suspicion of hiring his ship out to the service of a foreign prince. Already, in 1712, as we have seen, he contemplated entering the service of Russia; and the necessary change of religion offered no stumbling-block to his accepting service in Spain in 1715. The best that can be said for him is that, in 1715, Spain was not at war with England.

Camocke's name has been misspelt in different ways, Cammock being perhaps the most common. The spelling here given is that of his own signature.

[Official Letters and other Documents in the Public Record Office; Corbett's Expedition of the British Fleet to Sicily in the years 1718–19–20; Charnock's Biog. Navalis, iii. 221.]  CAMOYS, THOMAS, fifth baron (d. 1420), is said to have been the grandson of Ralph, the fourth baron, and to have succeeded his uncle, John de Camoys, in 46 Edward III. According to Dugdale, he served in several expeditions during the early years of Richard II, notably under his cousin,William, lord Latimer (1 Rich. II), who bequeathed him the manor of Wodeton (Test. Vet. i. 108), and in John of Gaunt's expeditions against Scotland and Castile in 1385 and 1386 (, vii. 475, 499). He next appears as one of the favourites of Richard II, from whose court he was removed in 1388, at the instance of the Duke of Gloucester and the Earl of Derby (, 2705;, 249). In 1400 he manned a ship for service against the Scotch and the French, and next year was summoned to take up arms against Owen Glendower (, viii. 127;, Proceedings and Ordinances, ii. 56). A year or two later (June 1403) he received a payment of 100l. for his expenses in conducting Henry IV's intended bride, the Princess Joan, from Brittany to England (, Exchequer Issues, 293). In 1404 he was called upon to defend the Isle of Wight against the threatened descent of the Count of St. Paul; and in November of the same year he was ordered to Calais, to treat with the Flemish ambassadors, but probably did not start till July 1405 (, viii. 375–6, 378). In December 1406 he signed Henry IV's deed regulating the succession to the crown (ib. 462), and, perhaps earlier in the same year, was sent with Henry Beaufort, bishop of Winchester, to treat with France (, viii. 432). In 1415 he accompanied Henry V on his French expedition (, ix. 222), having previously been appointed a member of the committee for the trial of the Earl of Cambridge and Lord Scrope (, Agincourt, 38), and commanded the left wing of the English army at Agincourt (Gesta Henrici Quinti, 50). Next year he negotiated the temporary exchange of the Dukes of Burgundy and Gloucester (ib. p. 101), and was made a K.G. 23 April (, Agincourt, 174). In 1417 he reviewed the muster of the earl 