Review of The Unfortunate Colonel Despard by Mike Jay

I chose this book as I had already done a short blog post about Colonel Edward Despard a while ago, after his character was portrayed in the final series of Poldark, one of my favourite ever period dramas. I wasn’t able to write about his entire life during that post, but only able to cover how Despard is known for being the last man to receive the hung, drawn and quartered sentence (although he was only drawn, hung and beheaded) in 1803. You can view that previous post here.

I wanted to learn more about his life and see how much his supposed treasonous acts held up or not. I feel that Jay’s book does this well and shows that Despard was executed on circumstantial evidence that in modern times would mean he would probably be found not guilty. It did this by portraying Despard as a man ahead of his time: he was an Irish gentleman that married a black woman, who was the daughter of a free black woman, and was seen to care for the plight of slaves, wished for an equal society in the Caribbean and Central America, where most of his army career had been undertaken. He also wanted political reform back home, reflecting the experiences he’d been a part of in the colonies.

As I only knew of Despard’s imprisonment and subsequent execution, my main aim from this book was to learn more about him and his journey towards the end of his life and whether it was inevitable or not that it would end how it did. It is obvious that the author wishes the reader to think along the same lines, especially as the book opens with the execution itself, which was witnessed by a huge crowd. This in itself is a rather ingenious idea as from the subtitle of book, any reader, whether they have any previous knowledge or not of Despard, knows that he was executed for treason, before chronologically following his movements that ultimate led to this outcome.

However, the author showed, Despard had not showed signs of outright treasonous behaviour before, instead he was interested in discussing reform and the bad behaviour the government had shown him when he was dismissed from his role as Superintendent of Honduras. It was his role in seemingly underground correspondence societies and connections with the United Irish and Britons groups that implicated him.

The issue for anyone writing a book on Edward Despard is that there is relatively little that survives about him besides his time in the army, Honduras and his stints in prison, often held unlawfully. For this reason, there is some supposition by the author, which can be a little infuriating at times for the reader, but it is often put into wider context with the social and political trends that were happening, suggesting that Despard was not alone in the circumstances he found himself. For me as a reader though, I found it incredibly informative that this further context was included.

As someone who is very much interested in the times that Despard lived in, including the beginning of the Napoleonic Wars, I have often tried to answer the question of whether Britain could have ever followed France into revolution. The author here tries to answer this in terms of how Despard was viewed and concludes that it depends on who at the time you would have asked as he was either seen as innocent or entirely guilty. This may not be to everyone’s liking as it does seem to dominate the narrative and take over from Despard himself.

The writing style does suck you in though and I devoured this book very quickly and gleefully. It also helps that the first half of the book tells of Despard’s exploits in Central America and the Caribbean, which makes it feel like a real-life action story, even including the young Horatio Nelson, perhaps the country’s biggest celebrity at the time, second only to the royal family. In general, I hope this wonderful writing style would continue to endear any reader, despite the many diversions in the story.

The final chapter focuses on the reform movement after Despard’s death. It shows that despite his end, Despard’s name was not forgotten by those he knew or who admired him for his reformist believes. This sums up his legacy well and shows what was possible, even if it took many generations to achieve. However, I was disappointed with the author’s mistakes in his mention of the 1817 Pentrich Revolution, started by disaffected weavers and other working class men. This was the last armed rebellion that posed a threat to the government,although it quickly became demoralised. The rebellion started a few miles away from me in my home county of Derbyshire. The author mistakenly named it Pentridge in Nottinghamshire. There is no Pentridge in Nottinghamshire, so I can only think that the confusion came from the fact the rebels came from a mixture of Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire.

Overall, this was a book that needed to be written about Despard’s life by attempting to collate the many different pieces of this man’s life, no matter how difficult a task that may have been. This clearly presented many challenges, which at times were obvious, but I hope this has been able to share Despard’s, as well as story, as well as his wife Catherine, with a wider audience.