Michael Linning Melville
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Michael Linning Melville, born 1805 in Ireland died 22 June 1878 in Kensington, Middlesex, was a Scots Barrister, Judge and Lieutenant Governor of Sierra Leone. He was commissioned by King William IV of the United Kingdom to suppress the slave trade by force off the West Coast of Africa.
Background and career
Melville was an ethnic Scot from Dublin where his family had lived since the middle of the Eighteenth century. He was named after his godfather, the writer Michael Linning, and went on to marry the latter's niece Elizabeth Helen Callender.
In September 1818 both of Melville's parents died within a few days of each other. His loss aroused the pity of King George IV who, in November of that year, granted the boy an annual pension from the Civil List. [1] [2]
At some stage in the 1820s Meville joined the Foreign Office. By 1827 he was serving as a Justice of the Peace and in 1835 Hansard lists Melville as King's Advocate and Registrar of the Vice Admiralty Court in Freetown, Sierra Leone. [3] He interposed his tours of duty in Africa with study at Lincoln's Inn being called to the bar in 1843.
In February 1841 Melville was made a Judge.[4] The following year the Earl of Aberdeen, Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, appointed Melville to sit on the Mixed British and Foreign Courts of Commission for the Suppression of the Slave Trade.[5]
His service in West Africa was to form the basis for his wife's 1849 memoir A Residence in Sierra Leone Described from a Journal Kept on the Spot and from Letters Written to Friends at Home Edited by Mrs. Norton, which was edited by her first cousin Caroline Norton. The book is one of the only surviving accounts of life in mid-Nineteenth Century Africa written from the perspective of a woman and contains descriptions of life and society in early Victorian Freetown and the countryside nearby as well as her husband's work seizing slave ships, prosecuting their crews, and overseeing the breaking up of the vessels at a place called "Destruction Bay".
Marriage and family
In 1840 Melville married Elizabeth Helen Callender daughter of Randall William McDonnell Callander (died 1858), of Craigforth House Stirlingshire and Ardkinglas House, Argyle. Randall Callander was the younger son, but eventual heir, of Sir James Campbell (1745–1831) of Ardkinglas Castle. Melville's wife was a descendent of James II of Scotland [6] and related the leading families of the Scottish and Anglo-Irish aristocracy. At this time in British history, before the publication of the Northcote–Trevelyan Report, appointment and promotion in the Civil Service depended on aristocratic patronage and Elizabeth's connections (her uncle, Sir James Graham, Bt, was at that time Home Secretary) would have been an immense asset for Melville's career [7]
As described in "A Residence in Sierra Leone" Michael and Elizabeth Melville had a son Robert Melville (judge, of Hartfield Grove Sussex, and Ashford Hall Shropshire), born in Sierra Leone. They later had a daughter Elizabeth, born in Scotland in 1847, who (married Arthur Champernowne of Dartington Hall, Devon).
Michael Linning Melville and his wife Elizabeth both died in 1876 and are buried in the old churchyard at Dartington Hall in South Devonshire, England. (Their son Robert is buried at the new Dartington church, built by Arthur Melville Champernowne (a grandson of Michael and Elizabeth Melville).
Later life
After his service in Sierra Leone, Melville returned to Britain. In 1870 he purchased Hartfield Grove, a large house in the Ashdown Forest, Sussex where he lived with his wife, his son Robert, and Robert's growing family.
In 1862 he became a Director of the London and North Western Railway.[8]
| Preceded by
Alexander Findlay
|
Lieutenant Governor of Sierra Leone 1833–1834 |
Succeeded by Octavius Temple |
References
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<references />, or <references group="..." />- ↑ On Financial Reform, Third Edition, by Henry Brooke Parnell, Baron Congleton, published by John Murray, Albemarle Street, London 1832 [1] page 388
- ↑ Journals of the House of Commons, Volume 81 Volume 86, Appendix (E.), Civil List, 2 Decembria continued, Journal, p 143, published The Stationery Office, London 1830 [2]
- ↑ The Royal Kalendar, and Court and City Register for England, Scotland, Ireland, and the Colonies, T. C. Hansard, Paternoster-row Press, London 1834 [3] page 406
- ↑ The Gentleman's Magazine, and Historical Chronicle, Volume 50, Sylvanus Urban, "Gazette Promotions" [4] 1841, p. 422
- ↑ Letter from Lord Howard de Walden dated 14 October 1842, quoted in General Report of the Emigration Commissioners, Volume 2, [5], p225
- ↑ Memoirs of Sir James Campbell of Ardkinglas [6]. Published 1832 p. 6
- ↑ Christopher Fyfe, A History of Sierra Leone, Oxford University Press, London, 1962, page 216.
- ↑ Railway Reminiscences by George P. Neele Late Superintendent of the Line of the London and North Western Railway, Morquorquodale & Co., London 1904, Chapter VII
