Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/357

Westcott in April and May 1797. Towards the end of the year she joined the fleet off Cadiz under the Earl of St. Vincent, and in May 1798 was one of the ships sent up the Mediterranean [see ] to join Sir Horatio Nelson (Viscount Nelson) [q. v.]. In the battle of the Nile her position in the rear of the line made her rather late in coming into action, and in the darkness and smoke she ran her jibboom into the main-rigging of the French Heureux, in which position she remained caught for several minutes and suffered heavy loss. At this time Westcott was killed by a musket-ball in the throat, but the ship was gallantly fought through the battle by her first lieutenant, Cuthbert, who was promoted to the vacant command on the next day by Nelson.

It is as one of the celebrated ‘band of brothers’ and by his death in the hour of victory that Westcott is best known. Collingwood wrote of him: ‘A good officer and a worthy man; but, if it was a part of our condition to choose a day to die on, where could he have found one so memorable, so eminently distinguished among great days?’ And Goodall wrote: ‘He sleeps in the bed of honour, and in all probability will be immortalised among the heroes in the Abbey. Requiescat in pace. Never could he have died more honourably. I have him to lament among many deserving men whom I have patronised, that have passed away in the prime of their lives’ (, Nelson Despatches, iii. 86–7). A monument to his memory was erected at the public expense in St. Paul's. At Honiton also a monument was erected by subscription.

Westcott left a widow and daughter. In January 1801, passing through Honiton, Nelson invited them to breakfast, and presented Mrs. Westcott with his own Nile medal, saying, ‘You will not value it less because Nelson has worn it.’ On 17 Jan. 1801 he wrote to Lady Hamilton: ‘At Honiton I visited Captain Westcott's mother — poor thing, except from the bounty of government and Lloyd's, in very low circumstances. The brother is a tailor, but had they been chimney-sweepers it was my duty to show them respect’ (, Nelson's Friendships, i. 64).

[There is no record of Westcott's life beyond the logs and pay-books of the ships in which he served, in the Public Record Office. So far as it can be tested, the traditional anecdote (Naval Chronicle, xii. 453) is unworthy of credit; but it seems probable that, whether in a ship of war or a merchantman, Westcott's beginnings were very humble.] 

WESTERN, CHARLES CALLIS, (1767–1844), elder son of Charles Western of Rivenhall, Essex, by Frances Shirley, daughter and heiress of William Bollan of London, and grandson of Thomas Western (d. 1765), by Anne, daughter of Robert Callis, was born on 9 Aug. 1767. His great-grandfather, Thomas Western (d. 1733) of Rivenhall, married Mary, daughter and coheiress of Sir Richard Shirley of Preston, Sussex, a near relative of the three famous brothers of Elizabethan fame, Sir Antony, Sir Robert, and Sir Thomas Shirley [q. v.]; a group of Western and his family was painted by Hogarth, and is now at the family seat, Felix Hall, Kelvedon, Essex.

Young Western was educated at Newcomb's school, Hackney, at Eton, and at Cambridge, but apparently left the university without graduating. His father died when he was four years old, and upon attaining his majority he succeeded to the Rivenhall estates, purchasing, two years later, that of Felix Hall, Kelvedon. To this mansion, where he resided, he added a fine classic portico, constructed from a scale drawing of the Roman temple of Fortuna Virilis, given in Desgodetz's ‘Édifices Antiques de Rome,’ Paris, 1682. He filled the house with valuable busts, urns, sarcophagi, and other objects collected during his travels abroad. They are given in a ‘Descriptive Sketch of Ancient Statues, Busts, &c. at Felix Hall … with plates of the most striking objects in the Collection,’ Chelmsford, 1833.

Western was returned to parliament on 16 June 1790 as member for Maldon, which borough he represented until 1812, when he obtained a seat for his county, and retained it for twenty years. During his forty-two years in parliament he became the mouthpiece of the agricultural interests in the commons, and boldly attacked, although without any immediate result, the currency question, with which the welfare of agriculture was, he considered, indissolubly bound. If not the author, he was one of the leading promoters of the corn bill of 1815, yet through his long life he remained a staunch advocate of protection, as strongly opposed to the fixed duty of the whigs as to the free-trade doctrines of the league. On 7 March 1816 he moved that the house should resolve itself into committee to consider the distressed state of agriculture in the United Kingdom (Speech printed in the Pamphleteer, London, 1816, vii. 504).

The treatment of criminals also occupied Western's attention, and he made a tour of the gaols in several English counties before