Transcript

of

Sir Roper Lethbridge, K.C.I.E., D.L., J.P. [Obituary]

Trans. Devon Assoc., vol. 51, (1917), pp. 43-45.

by

Maxwell Adams (Ed.)

Prepared by Michael Steer

The Obituary was read at the Association’s July 1919 Tiverton meeting. The celebrated Sir Roper was an academic and civil servant in India and a Conservative Party politician who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1892. A surname index to his Presidential Address delivered at the Association’s 1901 meeting, titled “Hands across Sea” may be accessed here. The obituary, from a copy of a rare and much sought-after journal can be downloaded from the Internet Archive. Google has sponsored the digitisation of books from several libraries. These books, on which copyright has expired, are available for free educational and research use, both as individual books and as full collections to aid researchers.

Sir Roper Lethbridge who died on the 15th February, 1919, became a member of the Devonshire Association in 1897, and was President of that Society in 1901 when he gave his noted Presidential Address, entitled "Hands Across the Sea," in which he gave a very interesting history of the various Devonshire men who had settled in America, the. Dominions, and the Colonies of Great Britain from the seventeenth century onwards. In response to a circular he issued, he received particulars concerning nearly 2000 individuals and over 300 families living in the United States of America and various parts of the British Empire, including the remote Norfolk Island, 34 of whom bore the name of Lethbridge. His other contributions to the Transactions of the Association were (1) a paper, in 1902, on a "Proposed Railway between Bideford and Okehampton in 1831"; (2) " Some Hatherleigh Worthies of the Seventeenth Century," in 1904, and (3) " Tithe Commutation in Exbourne in the Seventeenth Century," in 1912. Another local publication, issued in 1914, concerned the Ancestry of John Endecott, first Governor of Massachussetts, who Sir Roper traced to Chagford.
Sir Roper who was the son of Mr. Edward Lethbridge of St. Addresse, near Dieppe, in France, was born on the 23rd December, 1840. He was educated 1853 to 1858 at the old Marmamead School, which was afterwards amal- gamated with the Plymouth College under Dr. Peter Holmes, a fine teacher of advanced and original views. At Exeter College, Oxford, Sir Roper won a Stapledon Scholarship in 1859, took a First Class in Mathematical Moderations in 1861, a Second Class in the Final Mathematical Schools in 1863, and an Honorary Fourth Class in Lit. Humaniores in 1862. He graduated B.A. in 1863 with double classical and mathematical honours; M.A. in 1866 ; and in 1880 was called to the Bar by the Honourable Society of the Inner Temple. While at Oxford he was a considerable figure in the musical world there and was- for some time secretary of the Amateur Musical Society.
After leaving Oxford he was appointed to the Pubfia Record Office and in 1868 was appointed by the Secretary of State for India to the Bengal Educational Department, and became successively Professor of History and Political Economy in the Presidency College of Calcutta, a Professor at the Hugli College, and Principal of the Krishnagar College. In 1877, he became a Fellow of the Calcutta University and was also Secretary to the Simla Education Committee, and in 1878, on the creation of the new post of Press Commissioner with the Government of India, Sir Roper was transferred to that office with the rank of Political Agent of the First Class. In the same year he was created a Companion of the Indian Empire in consideration of his services in the cause of education in India, knighted in 1885, and became a K.C.I.E. in 1890.
While in India, and afterwards, he published many works on Indian subjects, and was Editor of the Calcutta Quarterly Review from 1871 to 1878.
On his retirement from the Indian Service he became a candidate for Whitby in 1884 and in that year was founder and one of the Committee of the Imperial Service League. He represented North Kensington in Parliament in 1885 and 1886 until 1892.
On his return from India he resided for some years at Lynsted Lodge, Sittingbourne, Kent, and afterwards settled at Exbourne Manor, of which he was the lord and the patron of one living. This manor, which was the Etcheborne of Domesday, was acquired by the Lethbridge family in the seventeenth century. A quaint survival is the entry in the rent roll of this manor, which amounts to £5 17s. 6d, of the reservation of an annual payment to the lord of "six new laid eggs and three dahlia blooms" in respect of one holding. Here Sir Roper formed a fine library, and took an active part in the affairs of his native county, of which he was a Deputy Lieutenant and a Justice of the Peace both for Devon and Kent besides holding other public appointments.
His literary activities were great and varied. Besides his many works on Indian subjects, referred to above, he contributed largely to English periodical literature almost up to his death, and in 1915 privately printed a History of the Lethbridge Family.
Sir Roper was twice married. His first wife whom he married in 1865 and who died in 1895, was Eliza, daughter of Mr. Washington Finlay, and great grand-daughter of the eleventh Baron Tyenham, by whom he had two sons .and one daughter, who married in 1894, Mr. Frederick (now Sir Frederick) Gorell Barnes, of Shiplake, formerly M.P. for the Faversham Division of Kent. The elder son, Lieutenant Colonel F. W. Lethbridge, D.S.O., of the 10th Battalion the Duke of Wellington's Regiment, who distinguished himself in France and Italy in the Great War of 1914-18, survives him. The younger son, Captain W. A. L. Lethbridge, who served in the South African War in the King's Own Lancashire Regiment, died in 1909.
In 1897, Sir Roper married, secondly, Emma, daughter of Mr. John Neave, and widow of Mr. Frederick Burbidge of Micklefield.