Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/109

 Webb a son, John Richmond of Lincoln's Inn, M.P. for Bossiney (1761–6) and justice for the counties of Glamorgan, Brecon, and Radnor, who died 15 Jan. 1766, and two daughters.

The Colonel Richmond Webb who died on 27 May 1785, aged 70, and was buried in the east cloister of Westminster Abbey, was a kinsman—second cousin of the half-blood—of the general (they were both great-great-grandsons of Edmund Webb of Rodbourne Cheney, who died in 1621, and his wife, Catherine St. John); his father, Captain Richmond Webb, was buried at Rochester in 1734. Richmond Webb the younger, born in 1714, a cornet in the queen's own royal dragoons in 1735, became captain in Moreton's regiment in 1741, commanded a company for King George at Culloden, and retired from the army in 1758. He was survived four years by his widow, Sarah (Griffiths), who was buried beside her husband in June 1789. Their daughter Amelia (1757–1810), the godmother of ‘Emmy’ in ‘Vanity Fair,’ married at St. John's Cathedral, Calcutta, on 31 Jan. 1776, William Makepeace Thackeray (1749–1813), the grandfather of the great novelist. Another daughter, Sarah, married Peter Moore [q. v.], the friend of Sheridan (, Memorials of the Thackeray Family; cf., The Thackerays in India, 1897, pp. 97, 179).

An interesting life-size equestrian portrait of Webb, signed ‘J. Wootton 1712,’ is preserved at Biddesden House, a red-brick mansion in the style of Kensington Palace, which the general erected for himself in 1711 upon an estate the nucleus of which he had purchased from the widow of Sir George Browne in 1692. Another portrait, now in the possession of Colonel Sir E. Thackeray, V.C., was engraved by Faber after Dahl (, ii. 197). A curious medal attributed to Christian Wermuth was struck to celebrate the battle of Wynendaele, and represents a lion pursuing a cock through the mazes of a labyrinth (, vi. 5; Medallic Hist. of England, 1885, ii. 328). Three sketches drawn by Thackeray for some imaginary ‘Memoirs of Lieutenant-General Webb’ are prefixed to the volume containing ‘Esmond’ in the ‘Biographical Edition.’ The chapters in ‘Esmond’ relating to the exploits of Webb (bk. ii. chaps. x. xiv. xv.) are based upon minute research, and contain what is perhaps the best account extant of the affair of Wynendaele.

[Burke's Family Records, 1897, s.v. ‘Thackeray;’ Dalton's English Army Lists, vols. iii. and iv.; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vi. 247, x. 119; Beatson's Political Index, ii. 209, 117; Members of Parliament (Official Returns); Chester's Westminster Abbey Registers, 1876, pp. 439, 440; Hoare's Modern Wiltshire, ‘Ambresbury Hundred,’ pp. 91 sq.; Marlborough Despatches, ed. Murray, vols. iv. and v.; Coxe's Life of Marlborough, ii. 318 sq.; Swift's Journal to Stella, ed. Ryland, pp. 156, 157, 160; Arbuthnot's Works, ed. Aitken, p. 430; Wentworth Papers, ed. Cartwright, passim; Boyer's Reign of Queen Anne, 1735, pp. 346, 362, 477, 535; Prior's Hist. of his Own Time, 1740, i. 277; Rapin's Hist. of England, iv. 75, 79, 84, 86, 116, 192, 433; Burnet's Own Time, 1823, ii. 506, 507; Oldmixon's Hist. of England, ii. 412–13; Stanhope's History, 1701–13, pp. 357, 373; Pointer's Chronolog. Hist. 1714, p. 595; Wyon's Hist. of Queen Anne, ii. 113 sq.; Mémoires du Maréchal de Berwick, Paris, 1780, ii. 36–9; Dumont's Lettres Historiques, 1708 ii. 505–20, 1709 ii. 526; Détail du Combat de Wynendale, ap. Pelet's Mém. Militaires, 1850; Egerton MS. 1707, f. 367 (a good account of Wynendaele in French, giving the English force as 18 to 20 battalions, and the French 34 battalions and 42 squadrons of cavalry); Official Return of Members of Parl.; genealogical and other notes most kindly supplied to the writer by Malcolm Low, esq., of Clatto, who has aided in revising the article, and by Alfred H. Huth, esq., of Biddesden House.] 

WEBB, JONAS (1796–1862), of Babraham, stock-breeder, was born on 10 Nov. 1796 at Great Thurlow in Suffolk. He was second son of Samuel Webb, who afterwards removed to Streetly Hall, West Wickham, in Cambridgeshire. He began business as a farmer at Babraham in Cambridgeshire in 1822. As the result of a series of experiments conducted by himself and his father, he rejected the native Norfolk breed of sheep and specially devoted himself to the breeding of Southdowns, which were then little known in his district. He first of all purchased ‘the best bred sheep that could be obtained from the principal breeders in Sussex,’ and then, by a vigorous system of judicious and careful selection, he produced a permanent type in accordance with his own ideas of perfection. He began his career as an exhibitor at the second country meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society of England, held at Cambridge in 1840, when he received two prizes for his Southdown ewes. This success was followed up at practically every subsequent annual meeting at which he exhibited, until at Canterbury in 1860 he took all the six prizes offered by the society for rams, and sold the first prize ram ‘Canterbury’ for 250 guineas. He was also a constant prize-winner at other shows. In several instances, however, these successes were bought dearly, as his ewes and aged