Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 57.djvu/181

 the legislature stated that he left behind him ‘a monument of gratitude in the heart of every dispassionate man in this community.’ Under his administration there was at length a cessation of the constant squabbles which hitherto seemed inevitable between the governor and the assembly.

Owing to failure of health, Trelawny applied to be relieved of the government in 1751. In September 1752 Admiral Knowles, his successor, arrived, and on 25 Nov. Trelawny left the colony. He was wrecked on the Isle of Wight in the Assurance, and arrived in London on 28 April 1753. He died at Hungerford Park on 16 Jan. 1754.

He married, first, on 8 Nov. 1737, Amoretta, daughter of John Crawford, by whom he had one son who died in infancy, and was buried with his mother in St. Catherine's Church, Jamaica, in November 1741; secondly, on 2 Feb. 1752, Catherine Penny, probably the sister of Robert Penny, sometime attorney-general of Jamaica.

(d. 1772), sixth baronet, a cousin of Edward, was grandson of Brigadier-general Henry Trelawny [see ], who served at Tangier and in Flanders, and died M.P. for Plymouth in 1702. Sir William sat for West Looe, Cornwall (1756–67); entered the navy, commanded the Lyon at the attack on Guadeloupe in 1759, was governor of Jamaica from 1768 to 1772, and died at Spanish Town on 12 Dec. 1772, receiving a public funeral ( and, p. 775). It is after him that the parish of Trelawny is named.



TRELAWNY, EDWARD JOHN (1792–1881), author and adventurer, born in London on 13 Nov. 1792, was the second son of Lieutenant-colonel Charles Trelawny (1757–1820) of Shotwick, who in 1798 assumed the additional name of Brereton, and died in Soho Square on 10 Sept. 1820 (Gent. Mag. 1820, ii. 376). Trelawny-Brereton represented Mitchell in parliament in 1808–9 and again in 1814. He married, on 1 July 1786, Maria, sister of Sir Christopher Hawkins, bart., of Trewithen; she died at Brompton, aged 93, on 27 Sept. 1852. Edward's grandfather was General Henry Trelawny, who fought under Howe in America and was governor of Landguard Fort from 1793 until his death on 28 Jan. 1800.

According to his own account, which there seems no reason to question, Edward suffered severely from the harshness of his father, and his education was neglected. In October 1805 he entered the royal navy, and was sent out in Admiral Duckworth's ship, the Superb, for service in the fleet blockading Cadiz. He states in his ‘Adventures of a Younger Son’ that he lost the opportunity of sharing in the battle of Trafalgar on account of Duckworth's delaying on the Cornish coast to take in provisions. As, however, the battle was fought on 21 Oct., and Duckworth did not arrive off Cadiz until 15 Nov., his version of the circumstance seems improbable. It is certain that instead of being transferred from the Superb a few days after Trafalgar, as would be inferred from his narrative, Trelawny was not appointed to the Colossus until 20 Nov. The vessel was almost immediately ordered home to be paid off, and Trelawny quitted her on 29 Dec. with a satisfactory certificate. He was then placed for a time at Dr. Burney's naval academy at Greenwich, and, if his account in the ‘Adventures of a Younger Son’ can be accepted, went again to sea in a king's ship bound for the East Indies. This is prima facie probable, and his further statement that he deserted the ship at Bombay is corroborated by the absence of any record of a regular discharge. However imaginative or highly coloured the ‘Adventures of a Younger Son’ may be, the main fact of his having found his way to the Eastern Archipelago is unquestionable, and the sole chronological indication he vouchsafes, when he speaks in a letter to Mrs. Shelley of having been off the coast of Java in 1811, is confirmed by the existence among his papers of an official proclamation in Malay of the establishment of British authority over the island, endorsed by Sir [q. v.], and dated 12 Sept. 1811; as well as by a note of the same date in a manuscript of the Koran which belonged to him. How far the incidents in the ‘Younger Son’ belong to romance, and how far to autobiography, it would be vain to investigate. The surpassing literary merit of the narrative is to some extent an argument for its veracity, since Trelawny, always strong in description, gave, apart from this book, if exception it be, no token of any particular gift for invention. The nautical details are frequently inaccurate, but their local colouring is generally as true as it is brilliant.

According to the most natural interpretation of his own words, Trelawny would seem to have returned to England about 1813,