Life
He was educated at Glasgow University 1749.
In 1752 he joined the British Army, becoming an ensign in the 52nd Regiment of Foot. He became a lieutenant in 1759 and a captain (in the 91st Regiment of Foot) from 1760. By 1762 he was a major, and served in the campaign against the Spanish invasion of Portugal (1762). After a period on half pay in 1763, he was appointed to the 14th Regiment of Foot in 1764. He was promoted to lieutenant colonel in 1765.
Between 1766 and 1768, Dalrymple was in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In 1768, he was placed in command of a detachment of two regiments sent to Boston, Massachusetts, to support embattled royal officials who were having trouble enforcing the unpopular Townshend Acts. Troops in his command (although he was not directly involved) were involved in the Boston Massacre, in which five civilians were killed when those troops fired into a crowd. Amid continuing hostility, Dalrymple acceded to the request of Acting Governor Thomas Hutchinson to remove his troops to Castle William, an island fortress in Boston harbour.
In 1772-1773 Dalrymple received a local promotion to major general and commanded a force which captured the West Indian island of St Vincent. He returned to Britain in 1773. He continued to be in touch with his American Loyalist friends in Boston. He was saddened but not surprised by the Boston Tea Party.
After the American War of Independence broke out in 1775, Dalrymple returned to North America. He served as quartermaster general 1779-1783. He was promoted to brigadier general (1779) and then major general (1782).
After the end of the war Dalrymple was attacked for alleged corruption, but General William Howe stoutly defended his former subordinate and the allegations were dropped.
Dalrymple then went into politics. He represented Wigtown Burghs in the British House of Commons from 1784 to 1790. Between 1796 and 1798 he sat for Duleek in the Irish House of Commons.
Dalrymple was promoted to lieutenant general 1793 and general 1798.
Read more about this topic: William Dalrymple (British Army Officer)
Famous quotes containing the word life:
“The life of a good man will hardly improve us more than the life of a freebooter, for the inevitable laws appear as plainly in the infringement as in the observance, and our lives are sustained by a nearly equal expense of virtue of some kind. The decaying tree, while yet it lives, demands sun, wind, and rain no less than the green one. It secretes sap and performs the functions of health. If we choose, we may study the alburnum only. The gnarled stump has as tender a bud as the sapling.”
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Who all his life collected bones,
Till Death, that grim and boney spectre,
That universal bone collector,
Boned old Jones, so neat and tidy,
And here he lies, all bona fide.”
—Anonymous. “Epitaph on William Jones,” from Eleanor Broughton’s Varia (1925)