Page:George McCall Theal, History of South Africa since September 1795, Volume 1 (1908).pdf/217

1811] CHAPTER VII.

LIEUTENANT-GENERAL SIR JOHN FRANCIS CRADOCK, GOVERNOR, INSTALLED 6TH SEPTEMBER 1811, RETIRED 6TH APRIL 1814.

As successor to the earl of Caledon and to General Grey, Lieutenant-General Sir John Francis Cradock was appointed. He was a distinguished military officer, the first of a series of veterans of the peninsular war who governed the Cape Colony until the introduction of a parliament. He had been commander-in-chief of the English army in Portugal from December 1808 to April 1809, when he was succeeded by Sir Arthur Wellesley, afterwards duke of Wellington. He then became governor and commander-in-chief of Gibraltar. He was a man of very high personal character, of an ancient Welsh family, though his father was archbishop of Dublin. At the time of his appointment to the government of the Cape Colony he was forty-nine years of age. His wife was a daughter of the earl of Clanwilliam. On the 5th of September 1811 Sir John Cradock arrived in Table Bay in the ship of war Emerald, and on the following morning took the oaths of office.

Ever since the conquest of the colony in 1806 the district of Uitenhage had been in a disturbed state, and matters there were constantly becoming more unsettled. The Xosas in the Zuurveld observed the conditions of peace no longer than suited their inclinations, and as soon as the white people in their neighbourhood got a few cattle together, robberies were renewed. Some individuals in England expressed an opinion that Europeans must have provoked the Kaffirs, but the closest investigation by officers of the government could not bring to light an instance in which colonists were the aggressors.