Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 56.djvu/96

 Thackeray rated Thackeray (reply of Murray, dated Alicante, 22 June).

Thackeray was promoted to be lieutenant-colonel in the royal engineers on 21 July 1813. He had moved, at the end of June, with Lord William Bentinck's army to Alicante, and was at the occupation of Valencia on 9 July, and at the investment of Tarragona on 30 July. He took part in the other operations of the army under Bentinck and his successor, Sir William Clinton. During October and November Thackeray was employed in rendering Tarragona once more defensible. In April 1814, by Wellington's orders, Clinton's army was broken up, and Thackeray returned to England in ill-health.

At the beginning of 1815 Thackeray was appointed commanding royal engineer at Plymouth; in May 1817 he was transferred to Gravesend, and thence to Edinburgh on 26 Nov. 1824 as commanding royal engineer of North Britain. He was promoted to be colonel in the royal engineers on 2 June 1825. He was made a companion of the Bath, military division, on 26 Sept. 1831. In 1833 he was appointed commanding royal engineer in Ireland. He was promoted to be major-general on 10 Jan. 1837, when he ceased to be employed. He was made a colonel-commandant of the corps of royal engineers on 29 April 1846, was promoted to be lieutenant-general on 9 Nov. of the same year, and to be general on 20 June 1854. He died at his residence, the Cedars, Windlesham, Bagshot, Surrey, on 19 Sept. 1860, and was buried at York Town, Farnborough.

Thackeray married at Rosehill, Hampshire, on 21 Nov. 1825, Lady Elizabeth Margaret Carnegie, third daughter of William, seventh earl of Northesk [q. v.] Lady Elizabeth, three sons, and five daughters survived Thackeray.

[Burke's Family Records, 1897; War Office Records; Despatches; Royal Engineers Records; The Royal Military Calendar, 1820; Annual Register, 1860; Conolly's Hist, of the Royal Sappers and Miners; Bunbury's Narrative of some Passages in the Great War with France from 1799 to 1810; Napier's History of the War in the Peninsula and the South of France; The Professional Papers of the Corps of Royal Engineers, 1851, new ser. vol. i. (paper by Thackeray).]

 THACKERAY, GEORGE (1777–1850), provost of King's College, Cambridge, born at Windsor, and baptised at the parish church on 23 Nov. 1777, was the fourth and youngest son of Frederick Thackeray (1737-1782), a physician of Windsor, by his wife Elizabeth, daughter of Abel Aldridge of Uxbridge (d. 1816). Frederick Rennell Thackeray [q. v.] was his younger brother. George became a king's scholar at Eton in 1792, and a scholar of King's College, Cambridge, in 1796. In 1800 he was elected a fellow of King's College, and in the following year was appointed assistant master at Eton. He graduated B.A. in 1802, M.A. in 1805, and B.D. in 1813. On 4 April 1814 he was elected provost of King's College, and in the same year obtained the degree of D.D. by royal mandate.

The death of his second wife in 1818 cast a gloom over Thackeray's subsequent life. He devoted much of his time to collecting rare books, and 'there was not a vendor of literary curiosities in London who had not some reason for knowing the provost of King's.' He directed the finances of the college with great ability. He held the appointment of chaplain in ordinary to George III and to the three succeeding sovereigns.

Thackeray died in Wimpole Street on 21 Oct. 1850, and was buried in a vault in the ante-chapel of King's College. He was twice married: on 9 Nov. 1803 to Miss Carbonell, and in 1816 to Mary Ann, eldest daughter of Alexander Cottin of Cheverells in Hertfordshire. She died on 18 Feb. 1818, leaving a daughter, Mary Ann Elizabeth.

[Burke's Family Records; Gent. Mag. 1850, ii. 664; Herald and Genealogist, ii. 4-16; Luard's Grad. Cantabr. p. 513; Registrum Regale, 1847, pp. 8, 51.]

 THACKERAY, WILLIAM MAKEPEACE (1811–1863), novelist, born at Calcutta on 18 July 1811, was the only child of Richmond and Anne Thackeray. The Thackerays descended from a family of yeomen who had been settled for several generations at Hampsthwaite, a hamlet on the Nidd in the West Riding of Yorkshire. Thomas Thackeray (1693-1760) was admitted a king's scholar at Eton in January 1705-6. He was scholar (1712) and fellow (1715) of King's College, Cambridge, and soon afterwards was an assistant master at Eton. In 1746 he became headmaster of Harrow, where Dr. Parr was one of his pupils. In 1748 he was made chaplain to Frederick, prince of Wales, and in 1753 archdeacon of Surrey. He died at Harrow in 1760. By his wife Anne, daughter of John Woodward, he had sixteen children. The fourth son, Thomas (1736-1806), became a surgeon at Cambridge, and had fifteen children, of whom William Makepeace (1770-1849) was a well-known physician at Chester; Elias (1771-1854), mentioned in