A NEW memorial in Spain marks the death of a soldier from a famous
Liverpool family 200 years ago.
Lt Col John Scrope Colquitt, of the elite 1st Regiment of the Foot
Guards, died in 1812 in Spain after fighting under the Duke of
Wellington against the French in the Peninsula War.
Born in Liverpool in 1775, he was from a renowned 18th century merchant
family whose name is marked by Colquitt Street where they lived in
the city centre.
He was the son of the town’s bailiff and attended Rugby public school
and Trinity College Cambridge, before joining the Foot Guards (now
the Grenadier Guards) as an ensign.
The new £8,000 memorial in Alcala de Guadaira marks the site where Lt
Col Colquitt was buried and is part of Spain’s commemoration of the
Peninsular War’s bicentenary.
Grenadier Guardsman Lance Corp George Vickers, 22, was chosen to sound the
Last Post at the new monument for a ceremony to which Lt Col Colquitt’s
relatives from Britain, local historians, dignitaries and other guardsmen were
invited.
Among them was psychologist and author Sam Westmacott, who is Lt Col
Colquitt’s cousin five times removed.
She only discovered this link when a local historian investigating his
story contacted her.
The monument is located in an area called La Cruz del Ingles
(the Englishman’s Cross), after the cross which once stood over Lt
Col Colquitt’s grave.
The Peninsular War pitted the allied nations of
Britain, Spain and Portugal against Napoleonic France’s imperial
expansion, from 1808 to 1814.
John Colquitt died of fever in either Seville or nearby Utrera, on
September 4, 1812, after fighting Napoleon’s troops in temperatures
of 40C, according to historian Richard Daglish, of Mossley
Hill.
The reason for Lt Col Colquitt being buried in Alcala de Guadaira
only recently emerged.
He fought the French in liberating Cadiz and led his men into battle
in Seville on April 27, 1812.
After his death a few days later, his battalion carried their 37-year-old
leader’s remains to Alcala de Guadaira, where they were stationed.
Refused permission to bury him in the town’s cemetery as he was
an Anglican “heathen”, they offered a stone cross as a burial site
on a hill outside the town.
Mr Daglish said: “We’ve failed to find a portrait of Lt Col Colquitt,
but discovered he was born in Norris Green, which was then deep in
the country.
“The last Liverpool family member was Miss Susan Colquitt, who
endowed Christ Church, Kensington, before her death in 1867. Other
branches of the family moved to Gloucestershire.”
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