Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 55.djvu/110

 fresh expedition. On 29 Nov. 1860, three months after Burke and Wills left Melbourne, Stuart started again with twelve men and fifty horses, a number reduced before the real work began. On 26 April 1861 he reached Attack Creek, where he had been turned before; he passed several new ranges and rivers, and named Sturt's Plains, which, however, he failed to cross on account of want of water. At a place named Howell's Ponds he turned on 12 July, and reached settled country on 7 Sept. On 23 Sept. he made a public entry into Adelaide.

Shortly afterwards the news of the fate of Burke and Wills reached Adelaide. But this did not deter Stuart from again starting north under the auspices of the government on 21 Oct. 1861. Though almost killed at the outset by a horse accident, he ordered the expedition to proceed, and rejoined it in five weeks. Fresh difficulties soon beset him: some of his party deserted, several horses died from the great heat, and the natives showed greater hostility than before. Striking northward across the Stuart Plains, he found water at Frew's Water, and later at King's Ponds, places which he named after two of his companions. After many further hardships, they reached a river which Stuart named Strangway. Following it, they came to the Roper, and thence, through mountain passes, to the Adelaide River, and along it to the Indian Ocean, which they struck at Van Diemen's Gulf before the end of July 1862. The return journey was almost fatal to Stuart; the distress of the whole expedition, chiefly from want of water, was intense.

Stuart received from the government of South Australia the grant of 2,000l. which was destined for the first colonist who crossed the Australian continent. John McKinlay [q. v.] had actually crossed two months earlier, but the circumstances seem not to have been considered quite parallel (see, ii. 188–9). Stuart also received a gold medal and a watch from the Royal Geographical Society. He had previously received a thousand square miles rent free in the interior. He now endeavoured to settle down to a pastoral life, but his health was broken, and in 1863 he was recommended to return to England as the only chance of recruiting his strength. Arriving here in September 1864, he settled in London in Notting (now Campden) Hill Square, where he died on 5 June 1866. He was buried at Kensal Green. He was apparently unmarried. Stuart's Creek was named after him.

[Chambers's Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, 1875; Howitt's Hist. of Discovery in Australia, ii. 158–89; Hardman's Journals of McDouall Stuart's Explorations; Journals of the Royal Geographical Society for 1861 and 1862; Eden's Australian Heroes, p. 275; Davis's Tracks of McKinlay, 1863, pp. 4–20; cf. art. .] 

STUART, JOHN SOBIESKI STOLBERG (1795?–1872), and STUART, CHARLES EDWARD (1799?–1880), were two brothers who claimed to be descended from Prince Charles Edward Stuart, the young chevalier, and to be heirs to the crown of Great Britain and Ireland. Their grandfather, or reputed grandfather, Admiral John Carter Allen, was connected with the Marquis of Downshire, and is said to have claimed descent from the Hay earls of Erroll. He died at his house in Devonshire Place, London, 2 Oct. 1800, and by a will dated eight months before left 2,200l. to one son, Captain John Allen, R.N., and only 100l. to another son, Lieutenant Thomas Allen, R.N. (Quarterly, June 1847, pp. 75–6; will at Somerset House). Thomas was probably the elder of the two, for Admiral John Allen (1774–1853), who died at Torpoint, near Plymouth, is called ‘the youngest son of Admiral J. C. Allen’ in his obituary (Gent. Mag. September 1853, p. 310), and, moreover, he became a lieutenant in 1794, Thomas in 1791. On 2 Oct. 1792, at Godalming, ‘Thomas Allen, of the parish of Egham, bachelor,’ married Catherine Matilda Manning, second daughter of the Rev. Owen Manning [q. v.], vicar of Godalming. She was baptised at Godalming 27 July 1765, so at the time of her marriage was twenty-seven years old. Of this marriage were born the two brothers who are the subjects of this notice. The name of their father, Thomas Allen, is in the navy list for January 1798, but not in that for July or afterwards.

Where the brothers were born is unknown, except that the younger says, ‘I was an exile—born in foreign land’ (Lays, i. 322; at Versailles perhaps, according to Mr. Jenner). The dates, too, of their births are uncertain. Those given in the Eskadale epitaph—14 June 1797 and 4 June 1799—are seemingly incorrect, for John, in his lines ‘To my Brother on his Birthday, written 4 July 1821’ (Bridal of Caölchairn, p. 195), writes:— The winged pace of six-and-twenty years Has passed full sad and various o'er my head. About 1811 the reputed secret of their descent from the Stuarts was, according to their own story, revealed to them (Lays, i.