Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 29.djvu/312

 its relations with the British government were determined by a treaty drawn up by himself. In 1827, after publishing at Calcutta ‘A Report on the Territories of the Rajah of Nagpore,’ he returned to England. On 1 May 1828 he retired on the annuity fund, and went to live on his estate at the Abbey-Foregate, Shrewsbury. He was chosen deputy-chairman of the East India Company in 1838, and chairman in 1839. On 20 July 1838 he was made a knight grand cross of the Bath, an honour, as the Marquis of Wellesley pointed out in a letter to Jenkins, then first conferred on a civil servant of India below the rank of governor. Jenkins represented the borough of Shrewsbury in the conservative interest in the parliaments of 1830 and 1831. He retired during the two succeeding parliaments of 1833 and 1835, was elected again in 1837, and finally retired at the dissolution in 1841. The university of Oxford created him D.C.L. on 13 June 1834. He was a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for Shropshire and a magistrate for Middlesex. He died 30 Dec. 1853 at his residence, Gothic Cottage, Blackheath, and was buried in his family vault at Bicton, near Shrewsbury. On his return from India Jenkins married Elizabeth Helen, daughter of Hugh Spottiswoode, esq., of the East India Company's civil service. He had three sons: Richard, born 8 Sept. 1828, Charles, born 20 May 1831, and Arthur, born 20 Jan. 1833; and two daughters, Emily and Cecilia Harriet Theophila. 

JENKINS, ROBERT (fl. 1731–1738), master-mariner, was in 1731 master of the brig Rebecca, from Jamaica to London, when, on 9 April, off Havana, he was boarded by a Spanish guarda-costa commanded by Captain Fandino, who had a widespread reputation for cruelty. On this occasion he plundered the Rebecca, took from her all that was of any value, cut off one of Jenkins's ears, and so left her, ‘with the intent,’ it was believed, ‘that she should perish in her passage’ (Rear-admiral Stewart to the governor of Havana, 12 Sept. 1731). The Rebecca, however, arrived in the Thames on 11 June, and Jenkins, whose case excited some little attention, was shortly afterwards permitted to state it before the king. The admiral in the West Indies specifically mentioned it among other outrages for which he demanded satisfaction from the governor of Havana; but it was then dropped, till revived again in the political agitation of 1738, when Jenkins was examined before a committee of the House of Commons. His story lost nothing in the telling; he produced something which he asserted was the ear that had been cut or torn off, and being asked ‘what were his feelings when he found himself in the hands of such barbarians,’ he replied, ‘I committed my soul to God, and my cause to my country.’ The report roused the utmost public indignation. ‘We have no need of allies to enable us to command justice,’ said Pulteney on 15 May; ‘the story of Jenkins will raise volunteers.’ It certainly was an important factor in bringing on the war with Spain in the following year. The popular exaggeration and political excitement not unnaturally produced a reaction, and it afterwards came to be questioned whether the story was not a fable, or whether Jenkins, if he had lost an ear, had not lost it in the pillory. The evidence, however, is distinct that as early as June 1731 it was publicly stated that Jenkins's ear was cut off by the captain of a Spanish guarda-costa (Gent. Mag. i. 265), and that the commander-in-chief in the West Indies referred to the outrage in a formal letter of 12 Sept. 1731, although no attempt to make political capital out of it was made till 1738. Nothing more is known of Jenkins. His barbarous captor, Fandino, was himself captured, after a desperate resistance, by Captain Thomas Frankland (1717?–1784) [q. v.] on 4 June 1742, and sent a prisoner to England. Mirabeau effectively quoted Jenkins's case when arguing before the French assembly (20–2 May 1790) against the policy of entrusting a popular assembly with the power of declaring peace or war (Discours de … Mirabeau, p. 48). 

JENKINS, THOMAS (d. 1798), painter and dealer in antiquities, a native of Devonshire, was a pupil of Thomas Hudson [q. v.] He accompanied Richard Wilson, R.A., to Italy, and settled at Rome, before 1763. He painted portraits and historical subjects with moderate success. Two copies from paintings by him, done by N. Mosman, are in the print room at the British Museum. Jenkins became the principal English banker in Rome, and the profits of this business enabled him to take an active part in the excavations at Rome during the golden age of classical dilettantism. In