Skip to main content
GSSA
The 1820 Settler Correspondence
 as preserved in the National Archives, Kew
 and edited by Sue Mackay

pre 1820 Settler Correspondence before emigration

ALL the 1819 correspondence from CO48/41 through CO48/46 has been transcribed whether or not the writers emigrated to the Cape. Those written by people who did become settlers, as listed in "The Settler Handbook" by M.D. Nash (Chameleon Press 1987), are labelled 1820 Settler and the names of actual settlers in the text appear in red.

LEMPRIERE, Thomas

Written by Sue Mackay on .

No.12 Wilson Street

Finsbury Square

22 July 1819

My Lord,

Thinking it probable that the emigration to the Cape of Good Hope will be extensive in consequence of the money recently voted by address in the House of Commons and that the presence and residence of a superintending officer at the place of disembarkation will be both necessary and useful, I take the liberty of tendering my services to your Lordship and of expressing my readiness to accept of that or any other appointment in the new settlement, which I might be judged capable of filling.

Being totally unknown to your Lordship it is proper that I should acquaint you with my connexions and with the habits of my past life.

My family has been long known in the Foreign Office, my father and uncle having for nearly sixty years been successively Consuls at Faro, and my first cousin now having the honor to hold a similar appointment in Pernambuco. My brother is high on the medical staff of the Army, being Deputy Inspector of Hospitals.

As to myself, I was charged by Mr. SURENA, at that time Portuguese Consul General with the equipment at Portsmouth of the Portuguese Squadron that joined the Grand Fleet under Lord HOWE in the year 1794, and in 1800 was stationed at Cuxhaven to receive and convey to Hamburgh the public subsidies sent in specie from this country to the Continent, in the performance of which duty more than a Million Sterling was confided to me. At the Peace of Amiens I settled at Calais as a merchant and had the misfortune to be among the number of those who were detained by Buonaparte, and to remain in captivity the whole war. I was thus during a period of eleven years deprived of the means of carrying on business and since the peace my efforts to re-establish myself in this country have been constantly baffled.

I however flatter myself that my habits of business and my knowledge of mankind and of several foreign languages qualify me for undertaking with credit to myself and with advantage to the public an employment of the nature of that which I have taken the liberty to point out to your Lordship, and venture to hope that if your Lordship would condescend to allow me to refer to persons of the first respectability i should be found not altogether undeserving of your Lordship's humane protection.

I have the honor to be my Lord

Your Lordship's most obedient humble servant

Thos. LEMPRIERE

 

  • Hits: 6309