Settled from remote times in the little town of Leigh, in Essex, at the mouth of the Thames, the family of Haddock, we may be sure, took early to the sea, as was befitting their name. There are traces of Haddocks of Leigh to be found as far back as Edward the Third’s days; but we need not search for earlier generations than those which sprang from Richard Haddock, a captain in the Parliamentary Navy. That the family had followed the sea from father to son in bygone times, and had so established a tradition to be observed by their descendants, might be argued from the regularity with which the Haddocks of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries served in the Navy for upwards of a hundred years. This regularity is only to be equalled by that with which they named their children Richard, to the perpetual confusion of their biographers.

Captain Richard Haddock, to whom reference has been made above, served under the Commonwealth. In 1642 we find him in command of the ship Victory, and in 1652 he received a reward of £40 for good service. He died in 1660 at the age of 79. His eldest son William, also a Parliamentary captain, commanded the ship America in 1650, and the Hannibal in 1653. He survived his father only seven years, dying in 1667, aged 60. Captain Richard Haddock had another son, Richard, who was probably a good deal younger than his brother. He served with distinction in the Dutch war in 1673;[1] and was in all probability the father of William Haddock whom the family papers show to have been a lieutenant in the Cornwall in 1696-1697, and who commanded a ship in the action off Cape Passaro in 1718 (p. 54) and died in 1726.

William Haddock, the Parliamentary captain, had at least four sons: Richard, Andrew, Joseph, and William. Richard will be noticed presently. Andrew is mentioned in the first letter of this Correspondence. William was at sea with his brother Richard in 1657 and 1658. Joseph was a lieutenant in the Lion in 1672, and in the Royal Charles in 1673, and served in the Dutch war in those years; and afterwards held a command in the East Indies, whence he wrote an interesting letter here printed (p. 37). Richard Haddock was born about the year 1629, and must have entered the service at an early age; for in 1657, when the present Correspondence begins, he was already a captain in command of the Dragon frigate, which formed part of the squadron cruising off Dunkirk. In 1666 he was captain of the Portland; but from 1667 to 1671 he appears to have temporarily left the Navy and engaged in trading to the Mediterranean. On the breaking out of the Dutch war, however, he was made captain of the Royal James, the ship on which the ill-starred Earl of Sandwich hoisted his flag in the battle of Southwold Bay. He was one of the few officers of that vessel who survived the day, though he did not escape unwounded. He next commanded the Lion; but early in 1673 he was appointed to the Royal Charles, Prince Rupert’s ship, and within a few weeks followed the Prince into the Royal Sovereign, when the bad qualities of the former ship in action became evident. In July of the same year he was made Commissioner of the Navy; and on the 3rd of July, 1675, he was knighted. In 1682 he was appointed to the command of the Duke and to the chief command of ships of war in the Thames and narrow seas; and in the next year became First Commissioner of the Victualling Office. After the Revolution he was named Comptroller of the Navy, which office he continued to hold till his death, and received a pension of £500 a year. He was one of the joint commanders-in-chief of the fleet in the expedition to Ireland in 1690. He died on the 26th of January, 1715, in his eighty-sixth year, and was buried in his native town of Leigh.

Sir Richard represented the borough of Shoreham in the parliament of 1685-1687. He was twice married, his first wife being named Lydia, probably a member of the family of Stevens, which was settled at Leigh. The maiden name of his second wife Elizabeth is unknown. He probably married her not earlier than 1670, when she was about twenty years of age, the inscription on her tomb recording her death in 1709, at the age of 59.

Sir Richard appears to have had at the least six children, three sons and three daughters. The sons were Richard, William, and Nicholas. Of the daughters the name of only one, Elizabeth, has survived, who married John Clarke, of Blake Hall in Bobbingworth, co. Essex. Another daughter married a Lydell. The third daughter died unmarried. William, apparently the second son, died young. Richard and Nicholas both entered the Navy.

Richard, the eldest son, was, in 1692, fifth lieutenant of the Duchess, and was present at the battle of La Hogue. He afterwards served in the London, and in 1695 was in command of the Rye. At the beginning of 1702 he received his commission as captain of the Reserve, and in the following year succeeded to the Swallow. In the latter ship he served with Sir George Rooke in the Mediterranean. But in 1707 he had the misfortune to be surprised by the French when convoying the Archangel merchant fleet and to lose fifteen ships; and, although appointed to the Resolution early in the following year, he seems to have soon retired from active service. In 1734, however, he re-appears as Comptroller of the Navy, and held the post for fifteen years, dying at an advanced age in 1751. From the entries in Leigh parish registers it seems that he was married thrice and had issue, none of whom, however, survived him many years.

Of Nicholas, the youngest son of Sir Richard Haddock, we first catch sight in the following pages (p. 43) as distinguishing himself at Vigo in 1702, and serving in Spain in 1706. In the following year, on the 7th April, he received the command of the new ship Ludlow Castle, being not yet twenty years old. At the battle of Cape Passaro he fought his ship, the Grafton, with great gallantry; and indeed at all times proved himself a very skilful and dashing officer. He rose eventually to the rank of Admiral of the Blue, and commanded the squadron sent into the Mediterranean to overawe the Spaniards in 1738-1741. He returned to England invalided and did not long survive, dying in 1746, aged 60.

About the year 1723 he purchased Wrotham Place, in Kent, where he occasionally lived. He left three sons: Nicholas, Richard, and Charles. The first died in 1781; Richard served in the Navy; Charles was still living at Wrotham in 1792.

Here the male line of the Haddocks fails; and it is not necessary to follow the family history further. A pedigree, which may be found useful, is appended.[2]

It will be seen that the letters and papers here printed belonged, for the most part, to Sir Richard Haddock. His long life enabled him to embrace four adult generations in his correspondence. The collection of documents from which they have been selected was purchased by the Trustees of the British Museum in 1879, and now forms the Egerton MSS. 2520-2532.

It is to be regretted that the Correspondence is so comparatively scanty, for no doubt at one time the collection was a good deal larger. From Nichols’s Literary Anecdotes (vol. v. p. 376) we know that the Haddock papers were placed in the hands of Captain William Locker, the Lieutenant-Governor of Greenwich Hospital, who contemplated a publication of naval biography which was carried out by Charnock in his Biographia Navalis from the same materials. There is also evidence among the papers themselves, in the form of a letter written by Charles Haddock in 1792, to show that they were placed in Locker’s hands. The fate of borrowed books and papers is a mournful one.

But, few as they are, a selection from the Haddock Papers has been thought worthy to appear in print. As specimens of the letter-writing of a seafaring family of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the letters have a value of their own, even apart from the personal interest which they inspire as the record of long and honourable service.

E. M. T.

24 March, 1881.