The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals

The M.V.O. group of thee to Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Lascelles, The Rifle Brigade, formerly Aide-de-Camp to Sir William Peel as a fifteen year old Naval Cadet with Shannon’s Naval Brigade

(a) The Royal Victorian Order, M.V.O. (4th Class), silver-gilt, gold and enamels, the reverse officially numbered 434, in its Collingwood & Co case of issue, this also numbered 4/434

(b) Indian Mutiny 1857-59, 1 clasp, Lucknow (H. A. Lascelles, Naval Cadet. Shannon) fitted with silver ribbon buckle, tfirst initial corrected

(c) Ashantee 1873-74, 1 clasp, Coomassie (Capt. H. A. Lascelles, 2nd Bn. Rifle Bde. 1873-4) contact marks, otherwise about very fine, the first extremely fine (3) £4000-5000

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, The Brian Ritchie Collection of H.E.I.C. and British India Medals.

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Henry Arthur Lascelles, the fourth son of the Right Honourable W. S. S. Lascelles, P.C., M.P., and the eldest daughter of the 6th Earl of Carlisle, was born on 4 December 1842 and entered the Royal Navy in 1855. In March 1857 he was one of seven Naval Cadets who sailed in H.M.S. Shannon (510 officers, men and boys, under Captain William Peel, V.C., R.N.) for the China Station. On the Shannon being diverted to India and the formation of the famous Naval Brigade, Lascelles accompanied the first party of 408 officers and men under Peel’s personal command up the Ganges on 18 August 1857, to Allalahabad, where the entire Brigade concentrated by 20 October. On the 27th, Lascelles continued the journey up country to Cawnpore with a party of 170 men and two 8-inch howitzers under, Shannon’s gunnery officer, Lieutenant Young, R.N. However, when the larger part of this detachment went on with the main body of the Naval Brigade to take part in the Second Relief of Lucknow, Cadets Lascelles and Watson, both barely fifteen years old, were left behind in an entrenched camp north east of Cawnpore with Lieutenant Hay’s rifle company of some fifty Bluejackets and Marines, and two naval 24-pounders, in General Windham’s force.

Towards the end of November 1857 a body of rebels, which was being continually reinforced, appeared to the south of the city. To prevent them concentrating, Windham applied to Sir Colin Campbell for permission to take offensive action. Having received no answer after a week he determined to attack the main body. On the 25th a successful advance was made and four guns were taken from the mutineers of the Gwalior Contingent. Three days later, however, Windham was surprised by the enemy who opened a rapid artillery fire on the British forward camp. The Naval guns were immediately sent up to the junction of the Delhi and Calpee roads and returned fire for half an hour before running out of ammunition, whereupon the enemy infantry came on in strength and the British infantry, consisting of two battalions of the Rifle Brigade and H.M’s 88th Regiment, were ordered to fall back. As the Bluejackets and Marines were frantically trying to harness their guns to bullock teams, a shrapnel shell burst overhead causing the draught animals to stampede. In the words of Cadet Watson it then became ‘a case of every man for himself’, and the guns were temporarily abandoned.

The ensuing rescue bid to retrieve the guns was made by the Bluejackets, the 88th and the Rifle Brigade who used their rifle slings in place of the missing traces. Lascelles, having determined to distinguish himself, went forward with the rescue party, but being too small and lacking the strength to be of much use in dragging the guns away, seized instead the rifle of a wounded man of the 88th Regiment and joined them in a bayonet charge.

With the evacuation of Lucknow completed, Sir Colin Campbell returned to see off the rebel forces harassing Windham’s entrenchment. Cadet Watson wrote, ‘On the 29th Lascelles and I were looking over the parapet when we saw a round shot kick up the dust just outside, and over it came, just over us. Lascelles slipped and I bobbed to avoid it, and over we went both of us together! Such a jolly lark we had, and everyone laughing at us. On the 30th Sir Colin Campbell, from Lucknow, having heard the news of our being shut up, arrived with a large force to our rescue, with jolly old Captain Peel.’

Peel, the remarkable son of the great statesman, Sir Robert, now appointed Lascelles and Watson his Aides-de-Camp. Captain Oliver Jones, R.N., a Half-Pay officer who had come out to India ‘for a lark’ to see what fighting could be done, was evidently impressed with the youngsters’ sang froid: ‘Peel’s A.D.C’s’ he wrote, were ‘fine little Mids., about fifteen years old, who used to stick to him like his shadow under whatever fire he went, and seemed perfectly indifferent to the whizzing of bullets or the plunging of cannon-balls’.


Early on the morning of the Third Battle of Cawnpore, on 6 December, Peel called his A.D.C’s and told them that there was to be ‘a grand attack’ and that they were ‘not to run and blow and go head over heels and get out of breath’. At about nine o’clock they moved off on foot, jogging alongside Peel’s horse, and after a preliminary bombardment of the rebel position, the enemy were driven back. The real work of the day then began with Lascelles and Watson joining the pursuit through and beyond the rebel camp for no less than ten miles. ‘It was most awfully exciting’, Watson told his Mama afterwards, though he was also forced to admit, ‘the only way I could keep up ... was to say to my self “Hoicks over, Hoicks over, Fox Ahead!”’. That night Lascelles and Watson slept deeply if not comfortably under a captured gun.

Lascelles went on to take part in the capture of Futtehghur, the action of Kallee Nuddee and the final capture of Lucknow where with Mate Edmund Verney, Lieutenant Vaughan and Midshipman Lord Walter Kerr, he went forward amidst the dead and the dying to have a look at the Kaiserbagh. Here, however, they met Sir Colin Campbell who interrupted their sight seeing by ordering them to man a captured gun and turn it on the enemy still holding out close by. For his services in the Mutiny Lascelles received a mention in despatches on 29 July 1858 from Vaughan, who had been instructed by the late and much lamented Sir William Peel, who had died from smallpox, to write a letter to their Lordships at the Admiralty giving an account of the movements of the Brigade and bringing to their Lordships attention those whom he had not had the opportunity of publicly mentioning in despatches. Thus, Vaughan concluded his list with the names of Mr H. A. Lascelles and Mr E. S. Watson, ‘Aides-de-Camp to Sir William Peel, and always in attendance on him in action.’

In 1860, Lascelles left the Navy and was commissioned Ensign in the Rifle Brigade. Promoted Lieutenant in 1865 and Captain in 1872, he embarked with the 2nd Battalion in 1874 to take part in the second phase of the Ashanti War, during which he was present at the battle of Amoaful, advance guard skirmishes and ambuscade actions between Adwabin and the River Ordah, the battle of Ordahsu and the capture of Coomassie.

He retired as a Major in February 1882 and was given the Honorary rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. He married the following year, Caroline, the daughter of the Hon. C. Gore, and became Assistant Private Secretary to the Secretary of State for War. He eventually settled in West Sussex at Woolbeding House, near Midhurst, where he was instrumental in raising considerable funds for the building of the King Edward VII Sanatorium at Midhurst and was awarded the M.V.O. when the hospital was officially opened by the King in June 1906. A Justice of the Peace and County Councillor for West Sussex, Colonel Lascelles died in Midhurst on 29 July 1913.

Refs: Naval Brigades in the Indian Mutiny (Naval Records Society); The Devil’s Wind (Verney); Army List; Kelly’s Handbook 1901.