Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 09.djvu/339

 but it is possible that he is identical with a Thomas Causton who was living about the same date at Oxted in Surrey. This individual was the son of William Causton of Orpington, by Katherine Banister, and was married to Agnes Polley of Shoreham. Their son William (d. 1638) had a numerous family, who lived at Oxted until late in the seventeenth century. On 29 Oct. 1558 Mary wrote to the mayor and aldermen of London in favour of Thomas Causton, ‘one of the gentlemen of the chappell,’ requesting that he should be admitted into the freedom of the city. In 1560 he contributed some music to John Day's rare ‘Certain Notes, set forth in four and three parts, to be sung at the Morning, Communion, and Evening Prayer.’ The same publisher's ‘Whole Psalmes in Foure Partes’ (1563) also contains no less than twenty-seven compositions by Causton. A Venite and service by him have been reprinted in the ‘Ecclesiologist,’ and a fine Te Deum and Benedictus in score are preserved in the British Museum (Add. MS. 31226). As far as can be judged from these compositions, Causton was a composer in every respect worthy of the school of which Redford and Tallis are the great lights. He died on 28 Oct. 1569, and was succeeded at the Chapel Royal by Richard Farrant.

 CAUTLEY, PROBY THOMAS (1802–1871), colonel, the projector and constructor of the Ganges Canal, was the son of the Rev. Thomas Cautley of Stratford St. Mary's, Suffolk. He joined the Bengal artillery in 1819, and after some years' service with that corps, in which he was for a time (1823 and 1824) an acting adjutant and quartermaster, he was appointed by Lord Amherst assistant to Captain (afterwards Colonel) Robert Smith of the Bengal engineers, who was at that time employed in reconstructing the Doáb Canal, an old channel of irrigation drawn from the left bank of the Jumna at the foot of the Siválik hills. In December 1825 Cautley, with the rest of the canal officers, was called to join the army engaged in the siege of Bhurtpore, under Lord Combermere, and, after serving with the artillery through that operation, rejoined his work on the canal, which was opened in 1830. In 1831 Cautley succeeded to the charge of the canal, and remained in charge of it for twelve years. The construction of the upper part of the canal was beset with difficulties, owing to a number of mountain torrents descending from the Siváliks and sometimes bringing down suddenly huge volumes of water, which traversed its alignment, and across which the canal at different relative levels had to be carried. In combating these difficulties Cautley displayed great skill and dexterity, and gradually developed the canal into an extremely efficient instrument of irrigation. It was not on a very large scale, extending with its distributaries to about a hundred and thirty miles in length and with a head flow of about a thousand cubic feet per second. While employed on this duty Cautley visited the Dehra valley, where he projected and executed the Bíjapur and Dehra watercourses, and projected also a line from the Jumna, which was carried out later.

The great work of Cautley's life was the Ganges canal. This was a purely British work. It was first contemplated by Colonel Colvin of the Bengal engineers, by whose advice Cautley examined the project, but with results so discouraging that the idea of the canal was temporarily abandoned by him (Calcutta Review, xii. 150). The severe famine of 1837–8 led to a re-examination of the project, which was reported on by Cautley in 1840, and sanctioned by Lord Auckland and eventually by the court of directors in 1841, the court directing that the projected canal should be ‘constructed on such a scale as would admit of irrigation being supplied to the whole of the Doáb, or the country lying between the rivers Ganges, Hindun, and Jumna, forming the principal part of the north-western provinces.’ Cautley's services in framing the project were acknowledged by the court by a donation of ten thousand rupees. The actual construction of the work was not commenced until 1843, and its progress was much retarded by the opposition of Lord Ellenborough, who did all that he could to discourage the project, withholding sufficient officers' assistance, and, with a strange misconception of the object for which the canal was mainly required, directing that it should be constructed ‘primarily for navigation, not for irrigation,’ and that ‘only such water should be applied to the latter object as was not required for the former.’ Until the beginning of 1844 Cautley was obliged, from the want of subordinate agency, to conduct with his own hands the drudgery of surveying, levelling, and such like work. In 1845 Cautley was compelled by ill-health to return to Europe. During his absence the work was efficiently carried on by Major (afterwards Sir William) Baker [q. v.] While in England, Cautley omitted no means of improving