[BITList] Fwd: On board, with Charles - Oxford DNB Life of the Day

[John Feltham]

To read this Life of the Day complete with a picture of the subject,
visit http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/lotw/2010-08-04



Haddock, Sir  Richard  (c.1629-1715), naval officer, was the eldest of the four sons of William Haddock (c.1607-1667) and his wife, Anna Goodlad (c.1611-1689), of Leigh-on-Sea, Essex. The Haddock family had been mariners since at least 1327, and both Richard's father and grandfather, another Richard (c.1581-1660), commanded ships for parliament in the civil wars and afterwards. William Haddock commanded the Hannibal against the Dutch in 1653, and the younger Richard served under him at that time. He obtained his own command, the Dragon, in 1657, serving in the channel and operations at Dunkirk, and was among the naval officers who signed the oath of allegiance to Charles II in 1660. Following the Restoration Haddock traded in the Mediterranean as master of the Supply before returning to the navy in June 1666 as captain of the Portland, which he commanded in the attack on Dutch shipping at the Vlie. After leaving the Portland in October 1667 he returned to the Mediterranean trade as master of the Bantam, which he part owned. Haddock married twice. His first wife, Lydia, whom he had married by 1657, was the daughter of John Stevens, mariner, of Leigh. She had died before 1671 when he married Elizabeth Hurlestone (1650?-1710), the daughter of a Rotherhithe mariner.

At the beginning of the Third Anglo-Dutch War Haddock was appointed flag captain to the earl of Sandwich, admiral of the blue, aboard the Royal James, and led her brave but doomed resistance to a concerted Dutch attack in the battle of Sole Bay on 28 May 1672. Largely due to Haddock's direction, the Royal James freed herself from the attacks of the Dutch flagships Groot Hollandia and Dolfijn, but, in Haddock's words, while 'the surgeon was cutting off the shattered flesh and tendons of my toe'  (Thompson, 19) following a shot from the Dolfijn, a fireship succeeded in attacking the Royal James and setting her alight. The ship was burned to the waterline and Sandwich drowned, but Haddock escaped. His gallantry earned him substantial amounts of royal bounty money and the king's own cap, which he took from his head to give to Haddock. He commanded the Lion over the winter of 1672-3 before becoming flag captain to Prince Rupert for the 1673 campaign, first aboard the Royal Charles and then, from 5 to 30 June 1673, aboard the Sovereign. The relationship between Haddock and Rupert was stormy, with the prince accusing his captain of cowardice and inconsistent tactics during the battles of Schooneveld (28 May and 4 June 1673). The consequence was Haddock's premature removal from the fleet and appointment as a commissioner of the navy. He was knighted on 3 July 1675 and served as MP for Aldeburgh in the first Exclusion Parliament (1679), voting against exclusion and being labelled 'vile' by Shaftesbury. He returned to the Commons in 1685 as MP for New Shoreham. Haddock was also an elder brother of Trinity House from 1675 onwards, serving as master in 1687-8.

On 2 February 1682 Haddock became controller of the navy, being additionally appointed first commissioner of the victualling in 1683. The reorganization of the Navy Board following the return of Samuel Pepys to the Admiralty led to Haddock's effective demotion to commissioner for the old accounts, a position which he held for the duration of Pepys's 'special commission' to reconstruct the navy, namely from April 1686 to 12 October 1688. Haddock was reinstated as controller on that day and continued to hold the post until his death. He was imprisoned for a fortnight late in 1689 as a consequence of a parliamentary inquiry into alleged corruption in the victualling accounts, and was later removed as first commissioner. Following the disgrace of Arthur Herbert, earl of Torrington, after the battle of Beachy Head in June 1690, it was decided to revert to the precedent of the Dutch wars and appoint a triumvirate of joint admirals. Although he had never held flag rank before, Haddock's experience made him an obvious candidate and he was duly appointed on 6 August in commission with Sir John Ashby and Sir Henry Killigrew, despite the opposition to his elevation from several younger officers who had already held flag rank and also of a number of the Admiralty commissioners, who felt that Haddock had been disparaging towards Britain's Dutch allies. The joint admirals commanded aboard the Sovereign, then the Kent, for the remainder of the 1690 campaign, concentrating on the recapture of Cork and Kinsale.

Haddock was ashore again by the beginning of 1691, and throughout the French wars he was one of the mainstays of the naval administration. His ability from his own and his family's experiences to recall precedents from the 1640s and even earlier meant that he was often called upon as an 'expert witness' in parliamentary and other enquiries into naval matters, as well as making him a valuable source of information for Pepys. Haddock's increasingly great age meant that some of his duties eventually had to be delegated to others. He died in London on 26 January 1715 and was buried in the family vault at Leigh, after having survived in office every change of government from the Rump Parliament to the accession of the house of Hanover. Although often suspected of retaining the dissenting religious tendencies of his youth, after the Restoration Haddock conformed at least outwardly to the established church.

By his will, dated 13 November 1712, Haddock made bequests to his two surviving sons, Richard, a future controller of the navy, and Nicholas Haddock  (bap. 1685?, d. 1746), who became admiral of the blue, and to his three daughters, Martha (who married Dennis Lyddall), Lydia, and Elizabeth. Richard, who died in 1751, inherited his father's house in Mile End and property in Soham, Cambridgeshire. Both sons received the gold medals which their father and grandfather William had received from the Commonwealth for good service in the First Anglo-Dutch War, over sixty years earlier. Sir Richard also made bequests to the poor of Trinity House and his home parish of Leigh-on-Sea, at least partly proving Pepys's assertion that his was 'the greatest instance of an estate raised purely from sea service'  (Tanner, 69-70).

J. D. Davies 

Sources  BL, Egerton MS 2521 + E. M. Thompson, ed., 'Correspondence of the family of Haddock, 1657-1719', Camden miscellany, VIII, CS, new ser., 31 (1883), i-ix, 3-55 + TNA: PRO, ADM MSS + CSP dom., 1653-91 + TNA: PRO, PROB 11/544, fols. 199-201 + R. C. Anderson, ed., Journals and narratives of the Third Dutch War, Navy RS, 86 (1946) + S. Pepys, Naval minutes, ed. J. R. Tanner, Navy RS, 60 (1926) + Report on the manuscripts of Allan George Finch, 5 vols., HMC, 71 (1913-2004), vol. 2 + The manuscripts of the House of Lords, new ser., 12 vols. (1900-77) + J. M. Collinge, Navy Board officials, 1660-1832 (1978) + J. Ehrman, The navy in the war of William III, 1689-1697 (1953) + J. D. Davies, Gentlemen and tarpaulins: the officers and men of the Restoration navy (1991)
Archives BL, personal, official, and family corresp. and papers, Egerton MSS 2520-2527 + BL, order and warrants, Add. MSS 20085, 22183 | Leics. RO, letters to earl of Nottingham + TNA: PRO, ADM MSS
Likenesses  J. Closterman, oils, c.1689, Gov. Art Coll. [see illus.] · W. Faithorne junior, mezzotint (after J. Closterman); version, Philips, sale, 29 July 1974
Wealth at death  house in Mile End; mortgage on an estate at Soham; tenements and fields at Leigh-on-Sea; individual bequests of over £1000, incl. £50 to poor of Trinity House, and £10 to poor of Leigh: will