Arthur Christopher Paul Mackworth, MA, Fellow of Magdalen 1913-14

• Matriculated: 1905

• Born: 24 January 1886

• Died: 26 November 1917

• Regiment: Rifle Brigade attached to MI5

• Grave/Memorial: Holywell Churchyard, Oxford

Family background

b. 24 January 1886 as the eleventh child and sixth son of 12 children (seven boys, five girls) of Colonel Sir Arthur William James Mackworth, JP, DL, CB, RE, 6^th Baronet of The Gnoll (Glamorganshire) (1842–1914) and Lady Alice Katherine (“Kat”) Mackworth (née Cubitt) (1845–1915) (m. 1865). At the time of the 1891 Census the family, except for Sir Arthur, was living at 9 Campden House Road, Kensington, London W8 (four servants); at the time of the 1901 and 1911 Censuses the family was living at The Priory, Caerleon, Newport, Monmouthshire (now Gwent) (six servants). The Priory is now a popular hotel but was originally a Cistercian monastery, dating back to 1180.

 

Parents and antecedents

The Mackworth family was originally from the village of Mackworth, two miles west of Derby, and had a long history in Derbyshire and Shropshire. The first Mackworth, Henry du Mackworth, is mentioned in the Pipe Rolls of 1254 – the annual financial records of royal income, arranged by county -– and the family acquired local prominence in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, when Mackworth Castle, now a ruin, was built. The baronetcy of The Gnoll still exists but is not to be confused with the Mackworth Baronetcy of Normanton, Rutland (which existed from 1619 to 1803 and is now extinct). Mackworth Castle was sold off in c.1655 by Sir Thomas Mackworth, the 3^rd Baronet Mackworth of Normanton (1634–94).

The first Mackworth to achieve national importance was Humphrey Mackworth [I] (1603–54), a lawyer and judge who was a member of Gray’s Inn. He was active in the legal profession in London and Shrewsbury, was made an Alderman in the latter town in 1633, and during the English Civil War (1642–51) was a prominent Puritan soldier and politician in the Midlands, Welsh Marches and Wales. When King Charles I arrived at the Royalist town of Bridgnorth, Shropshire, on 12 October 1642, he named Mackworth as one of three Shropshire gentry whom he intended to charge with high treason for criticizing the government. But Mackworth was never arrested, and after the Parliamentarians’ recapture of Ludlow, the last Royalist stronghold in Shropshire, on 20 May 1646, it was decided to dismantle most of the fortified towns but to maintain garrisons in Ludlow and Shrewsbury. So on 2 June 1646, Humphrey Mackworth, now a Colonel, was appointed military Governor of Shrewsbury, no easy office in such unsettled times. As such, in 1650 he became a member of the committee for the assessment of the Army in Shropshire and in May 1651 one of the Commissioners who had been appointed to try prisoners at Chester.

Then, when Charles II and a Scottish Covenanter Army invaded England in July 1651, Humphrey raised a company of one hundred men that helped in the defeat of Charles at the Battle of Worcester on 3 September – for which, in the following year, Parliament presented him with a gold chain and a medal worth £100. On 29 September 1651 he presided over the trial of James Stanley, the 7^th Earl of Derby (1607–51), who was found guilty of treason for his recent military support of Charles II and beheaded on 15 October. On 2 February 1654, during the last year of his life, Humphrey became a member of Oliver Cromwell’s Council, and attended 159 of its 176 meetings. He also served on numerous committees, “dealing with the most varied business, military, financial, legal, and even literary, or more accurately censorial”. Finally, during the First Protectorate Parliament (which lasted only briefly, from 3 September 1654 to 22 January 1655), he became a Knight of the Shire and was returned as one of the four MPs allotted to Shropshire under the Instrument of Government of December 1653: as such, he served on ten important parliamentary committees.

When he died, he was accorded a state funeral in Westminster Abbey and initially buried in Henry VII’s Chapel there; moreover, his widow was awarded £300 for the funeral expenses and a pension for life of £160 p.a. But after the restoration of the monarchy in 1660, he was denounced as a regicide, disinterred on 12 September 1660, and, together with the bodies of other prominent Parliamentarians, flung into an unmarked pit in the churchyard of St Margaret’s, Westminster. Humphrey [II] (b. 1631, date of death unknown), Humphrey [I]’s second son by his first marriage (c. 1624) with Anne Waller (exact dates unknown), succeeded him as military Governor of Shrewsbury from late 1659 to early 1660; he was also Town Clerk of Shrewsbury from 1652 to April 1660 and Shrewsbury’s MP in the parliaments of 1654, 1656 and 1659, but did not play as distinguished a role there as his father had done. He did, however, play a major part in the suppression of a Royalist conspiracy and insurrection in Shrewsbury in March 1655, and after the Restoration he wisely disappeared so that nothing more is known about him.

Humphrey [I]’s eldest son, Thomas (1627–96), was admitted to the bar at Gray’s Inn in 1645 – i.e. while the Civil War was still on; he was also Colonel of a Parliamentarian regiment of foot that was raised in Shropshire in 1650 and became the MP for Shropshire in the Second Protectorate Parliament, settling at Betton Grange, Betton Strange, two miles south of Shrewsbury. But he entered the history of Magdalen indirectly when he sent the first member of the Mackworth family –Humphrey [III] (1657–1727), his second son by his first wife Anne Bulkeley (d. 1666) – to Magdalen, where he matriculated as a Gentleman Commoner on 11 December 1674.

Humphrey [III] became a member of the Middle Temple in June 1675, was called to the Bar in 1682, practised as a barrister, and was knighted by Charles II in January 1683 when he became Comptroller of the Middle Temple. In 1688 he was made a Deputy Lieutenant of Monmouthshire (now Gwent), but in 1686 he had already made an exceptionally good match by marrying Mary Evans, who was still a minor (date of birth unknown but died in or just before 1696), the daughter and heiress of Sir Herbert Evans (dates unknown; High Sheriff of Glamorgan in 1661) and Anne Evans (née Morgan; dates unknown). In 1658 the Evans family had bought Gnoll Castle, Glamorgan, a mansion (now demolished) in a hundred-acre estate (now a National Park) some seven miles north-east of Swansea which, by the time of her marriage, provided Mary Evans with an annual income of £1,200. Humphrey [III] had previously lived in the hamlet of Bentley in the parish of Tardely, Worcestershire, but moved to South Wales on his marriage and took over the management of the Gnoll estate for Sir Herbert Evans’s widow on the death of her second husband.

Coal mining and copper smelting had gone on in the Gnoll area since the late sixteenth century, and when, in c.1697, Humphrey saw the economic potential of the Gnoll estate, which he had inherited on his wife’s death, he decided to create an industrial complex there. So he began to repair the ageing collieries and revive the disused copper-smelting works, and in 1698 he established a Joint Stock Company that was called The Mine Adventurers Company and received the Royal Charter in 1703. By 1702 he had also established furnaces and mills for rolling iron and brass and making brass kettles and wire, and had used the considerable profits for extending Gnoll Castle and laying out formal gardens there, and for building workhouses for his workforce and their families. By 1699 Humphrey’s increasing wealth fostered his political ambitions and from February to November 1701 he sat as the MP for Cardiganshire. At the 1705 election, a group of Fellows of Magdalen encouraged him to stand for Oxford University’s seat in Parliament, and even supported his candidature actively by distributing bundles of his political pamphlets (the first of which had been published in 1694) and even crates of wine. But he came “a poor third” and for the next three years had to make do with representing Totnes, in rural Devon.

 

Unfortunately, Humphrey [III]’s expansionism caused bitter disputes from c.1703 to 1708 between him and other neighbouring mine owners, especially the powerful Mansel family with whom he was in direct competition, and in December 1705 their dispute came before the Queen’s Bench and the House of Commons. Moreover, as Humphrey’s scheme for exploiting the minerals on his land was very ambitious, it required more capital than he had at his disposal, which he tried to raise by broadcasting a series of extravagant claims about the undertaking’s likely profits, and although this brought in a great deal of money, his Company collapsed in 1709 and all his investors went bankrupt. So in 1710 a committee of the House of Commons investigated the collapse and found that Humphrey had “frequently infringed the terms of the company’s charter, forged names to subscriptions, diverted company funds […] to his own private affairs, and obtained loans which were neither accounted for nor repaid”. Nevertheless, despite being found guilty of fraud, Humphrey was not formally charged with any crime, and although the scandal contributed to a two-year blip in his parliamentary career, in October/November 1710 he was elected MP for Cardiganshire once more in an election that resulted in a landslide Tory victory. He was ousted by a Welsh Whig in the election of 1713.

Throughout Humphrey [III]’s political career he was active in Parliament, sat on a good number of committees, and wrote a large number of political tracts and pamphlets. But despite his Puritan ancestry and upbringing, his views were typical of a High Church Tory, especially those on how to remedy poverty, and from 1702 to 1707 he campaigned – unsuccessfully – for a general reform of the Poor Law. He also supported the Occasional Conformity Act of 20 December 1711, which prevented Non-Conformists from taking Anglican Communion occasionally in order to circumvent the earlier Test Acts and thereby qualify for national and municipal office. His political career came to an end after the Hanoverian dynasty succeeded Queen Anne on 1 August 1714. In general, Humphrey [III] was a puzzling and colourful figure and has been described as “a collection of apparent paradoxes; a County Tory industrialist and financial ‘projector’; a godly-minded High Churchman; and a publicly pious and philanthropic swindler for whom not one among his contemporaries could find a kind word”. Certainly, his diaries show that he practised spiritual self-examination and exercises like any hard-line Puritan, believed in the intervention of divine Providence in everyday life, and was one of the five initiators of the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge (SPCK), most of whom had Welsh connections and who first met in London on 8 March 1699. He was also busy in the Gnoll area on behalf of the SPCK’s concern with education and housing, and performed other pious duties, causing him to be regarded by many as a bare-faced hypocrite.

Humphrey [III]’s elder son Herbert [I] Mackworth (1687–1765) was educated at Westminster School and matriculated at Magdalen on 12 October 1704 (DCL degree, 8 July 1756). In 1730 he married Juliana Digby (c.1710–1785), the fifth daughter of William Digby, the 5^th Baron Digby of Gleashill (1661–1752), who had studied at Magdalen from 1679 to 1681 and gained a BA. Herbert [I] became a member of the Middle Temple in 1708 and was Tory MP for Cardiff’s two boroughs from 1739 until his death, though there is no evidence that he ever spoke in the House.

Herbert [I]’s only son – Herbert Mackworth [II] (1737–91) – was educated, like his father, at Westminster and Magdalen, where he matriculated on 15 December 1753 (BA 1757; MA 1760). In 1759 he became a member of Lincoln’s Inn and married Eliza(beth) Trefusis (1738–99), the only daughter of Robert Trefusis (1708–42) and Elizabeth Trefusis (née Affleck) (c.1713–1748) (m. 1737). In 1766 he became the 1^st Baronet Mackworth of The Gnoll, Carmarthenshire, and for 24 years (1766–90) he, too, represented Cardiff’s two boroughs in Parliament as an independent-minded MP while practising as a barrister. He became a Major in and then Lieutenant-Colonel of the Glamorgan Militia (1761–91), and in 1777 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society because of his wide-ranging mathematical and scientific interests. At some point he became Vice-President of the Marine Society, a charity that had been founded in 1756, i.e. at the beginning of the Seven Years War, in order to recruit orphaned teenagers for the Royal Navy. He also continued to develop Gnoll’s industrial assets, such as the Gnoll copper-works at nearby Neath. He died of septicaemia that was caused by a thorn breaking off in his finger.

 

In 1792 the 2^nd Baronet, Sir Robert Humphrey Mackworth (1764–95), married Molly Anne Myers (1768–1848), but he died childless. Sir Robert was succeeded as 3^rd Baronet by his younger brother, Sir Digby Mackworth [I] (1766–1838), who did not, however, inherit the family estates. These had been left to Sir Robert’s widow, who, in 1797, married Capel Hanbury-Leigh (1776–1861). Sir Digby matriculated at Magdalen as a Gentleman Commoner on 17 July 1788, and after graduating served for a short time in the Royal Navy while Britain was at war with Revolutionary France. In 1798 and 1803–04 he was Commandant of the City of Oxford Loyal Volunteers and in 1799 he received an honorary DCL from the University. In 1788 he married Jane Deere (d. 1808), and they had one daughter and four sons; and then in 1821 he married Philippa Affleck (d. 1851), but fathered no more children. Both of his wives were daughters of clergymen. He and his family settled in “Glen Usk”, an elegant neo-classical villa with an adjoining neo-classical temple at Llanhennock, near Caerleon, Monmouthshire (now Gwent), on which work started in c.1820 and which underwent extensive improvements in the 1840s.

 

One of Sir Digby Mackworth [I]’s grandsons via his son William Harcourt Isham Mackworth (1806–72) was Digby Mackworth Dolben (1848–67). (Dolben had been added to Mackworth when William married the heiress Frances Dolben (1816–92) in 1835.) This grandson was a poète maudit who was known, even while at Eton, for his gay proclivities, extravagant sartorial habits, mediaevalism and extreme High Church religiosity – he crossed himself at meals and read dubious religious tracts. Whereas his contemporaries there considered him “dreamy, abstracted, otherworldly” – saintly almost – his headmaster saw him as “an agitator, dangerously misguided”. After leaving Eton, he became a novice in the English Order of St Benedict, wore his monk’s habit in public on long walks, and on one occasion caused outrage by walking through the City of Birmingham barefoot, surrounded by a hostile mob. Although he failed the entrance examination to Balliol College, Oxford, he was preparing to take the entrance examination for Christ Church when he drowned, aged 19, while swimming in the River Welland. At the time he was contemplating founding a mystically inclined Anglo-Catholic brotherhood and also considering conversion to Roman Catholicism. On his seventeenth birthday, in February 1865, his distant cousin Robert Bridges (1844–1930; Poet Laureate 1913–30), whom he had known at Eton, introduced him to the slightly older Gerard Manley Hopkins (1844–89). The meeting made such a massive impact on Hopkins that he became infatuated with Dolben, and it probably accelerated his own conversion to Roman Catholicism. On 21 October 1866 Hopkins was admitted into the Catholic Church by John Henry Newman himself and on 8 September 1870 he became a Jesuit. Bridges would also rescue Dolben’s poetry from oblivion by editing and writing a memoir for The Poems of Digby Mackworth (OUP: 1911).

 

Sir Digby [I] was succeeded as 4^th Baronet by his son, Sir Digby Mackworth [II] (1789–1852), who was a professional soldier in the 7^th Fusiliers, fought in the Peninsular War (1807–14), and survived the costly but indecisive Battle of Albuera (16/17 May 1811) between the French Armée du Midi (24,260 men) under Marshal Nicolas Soult (1769–1851) and the Allied Army (35,284 men) under General Sir William Beresford (1768–1854). Sir Digby [II] was made aide-de-camp to Lord Hill (Rowland Hill, 1^st Viscount, 1772–1842, General Commanding II Corps at Waterloo, Commander-in-Chief of the British Army 1828–42); his horse was killed under him during the final cavalry charge of the battle, led by General Hill. Sir Digby [II] later commanded some of the troops who, in June 1831, were used to suppress a riot in the Forest of Dean by 3,000 impoverished peasant farmers, foresters and miners who were protesting against the removal of their ancient rights and the destruction of their livelihoods by the enclosure of the forest that had resulted from the Dean Forest (Timber) Act of 18 June 1808. He also commanded some of the troops who, on 29–30 October 1831, suppressed the riots in Bristol that caused 250 casualties and much damage to property and had been sparked by the House of Lords’s rejection of the Second Reform Bill. He retired from the army as a Colonel in 1851. In 1816 he married Maria Alexandrine Ignatie Julie de Richepance (c.1795–1818), the only daughter of one of Napoleon’s generals, Adolphe Antoine de Richepance (1770–1802); and then in 1823 he married Sophia Noel Mann (c.1801–1882). Many obituaries refer to his Christian faith and charitable works.

The 5^th Baronet, Sir Digby Francis Mackworth (1817–57), Mackworth’s grandfather, served for a while in the 90^th Regiment of Foot (raised in 1794 as the Perthshire Light infantry and amalgamated with the Cameronians (Scottish Rifles) in 1881), and became a Lieutenant by purchase in 1840.

The 6^th Baronet, Mackworth’s father, served in the Royal Engineers for most of his life. He took part in the Egyptian campaign (1882) and was mentioned in dispatches, and he commanded the Royal Engineers in South Wales and then in the West Indies. He was promoted Colonel in 1886, and during his last years in the Army (1894–99) he commanded the Royal Engineers at Aldershot and was on the staff of the Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850–1942), the third son and seventh child of Queen Victoria, who was a professional soldier for most of his life and Governor-General of Canada from 1911 to 1916.

Mackworth’s mother was the daughter of Joseph Cubitt (1811–72), the son of Sir William Cubitt (1785–1861), both of whom were distinguished civil engineers. Sir William initially built only canals, but later railways as well, while Joseph worked only on railways. William’s most impressive achievement was the Digswell viaduct, near Welwyn, Hertfordshire, whose 40 arches carry the East Coast main line over the River Mimram.

 

 

Siblings and their families

Mackworth was the brother of:

(1) Gwyneth (1866–1938); later Gordon after her marriage in 1894 to her cousin Gwynedd Conway Gordon, CBE (1868–1936), a Colonel in the Army Service Corps; he was the son of Colonel Lewis Conway Gordon, RE, CIE (1838–95), and Mary Grace Gordon (née Cubitt) (1843–1928); one daughter.

(2) Digby [III] (1868–1900); joined the Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment in 1887 and served in the Fourth Burma (now Myanmar) War (1894–96) and, after the final defeat of the Kingdom of Asante (1896), in the Northern Territories of the Gold Coast (now Ghana) against the Binduri people, where he was mentioned in dispatches and promoted Brevet Major. He was killed in action on 6 January 1900 during the desperate fighting for Wagon Hill (Platrand), when the Boers tried – unsuccessfully – to break through the British lines and retake the town of Ladysmith, Natal, South Africa, which was besieged from 2 November 1899 to 28 February 1900. The fighting lasted for 17 hours and cost the British 175 killed and 249 wounded: the Boers lost over 50 killed, but their total number of casualties is not known.

(3) Helen (1870–1951); did not marry.

(4) Humphrey [IV] (1871–1948; 7^th Baronet from 1914); married first (1908) Margaret Haig Thomas (1883–1958) (2^nd Viscountess Rhondda), marriage dissolved in 1923; and second (1923) Dorothy Cecil Cleeves Llewellin (1892–1951). Humphrey was at one time a Captain in the Royal Monmouthshire Royal Engineers (Territorial Force) but resigned in 1911. From September 1915 he was Assistant Superintendent of the British Army’s Remount Service with the rank of Lieutenant.

Margaret Haig was the only child of David Alfred Thomas (1856–1918), the 1^st Viscount Rhondda, and Sybil Thomas (née Haig) (1857–1941), the 1^st Viscountess Rhondda (m. 1882). Her father was an industrialist, colliery owner and Liberal politician from Llanwern, Monmouthshire (MP for Merthyr Tydfil 1888–1910; MP for Cardiff January–December 1910; Privy Councillor 1916; Minister of Food Control in Lloyd George’s wartime government from June 1917 to July 1918). Her mother, besides being an active and prominent Liberal, was a suffragette, feminist and philanthropist. Her great-great-grandfather (John Haig; 1720–73) was also the great-grandfather of Field-Marshal Douglas Haig (1861–1928), the Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force from 10 December 1915 until the end of the war.

 

 

Margaret had enjoyed a mixed education that included three seasons as a debutante, and had also spent two terms studying History at Somerville College, Oxford, in order to avoid the vacuity and boredom of a fourth London Season. According to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography:

she drifted into marriage. […] For a while at least she enjoyed being mistress of her own home and genuinely sought to fulfil the role of a country landowner’s wife. But they were an ill assorted pair and the marriage ended, quite amicably, in divorce in 1923.

Whether the divorce was amicable or not is a moot point, given the letters between Margaret and her husband that were published in full in several issues of The Times. Moreover, although she was successful in her plea for the Restitution of Conjugal Rights, Sir Humphrey did not oblige, and she was then granted a decree nisi because of his non-compliance and his “occupying a room with a woman other than his wife” at the Midland Grand Hotel, St Pancras, London N1.

In 1908 Margaret joined the Women’s Social and Political Union (founded in Manchester in October 1903) and was the Secretary of its Newport branch from 1908 to 1914. A passionate suffragette, she campaigned across South Wales, took part in protest marches, and broke through the police cordon in order to jump onto the running-board of Herbert Asquith’s car when, in his capacity as Prime Minister (April 1908–December 1916), he was visiting St Andrew’s during one of the two election campaigns of 1910. In June 1913 she destroyed a pillar-box and its contents on Risca Road, Newport, with a home-made bomb and was brought to trial. But she refused to pay – or to allow her husband to pay – the £10 fine and so was sentenced to one month’s jail, but she was released after five days after going on hunger strike. During World War One she worked with her father and accompanied him to the USA in order to arrange the supply of munitions for Britain. But when returning to Liverpool on the liner RMS Lusitania, it was torpedoed by the U-20 on 7 May 1915 eleven miles off the Old Head of Kinsale, South-west Ireland, and sank in 18 minutes with the loss of 1,198 of its 1,959 passengers and crew. Although Margaret was one of the 761 survivors, she was blown overboard while her father and his secretary managed to reach a lifeboat, and when she was rescued by an Irish trawler, she had spent several hours in the water holding on to a piece of wreckage. Consequently, she was suffering from severe hypothermia and had to spend several months recuperating in the family home.

On her father’s death in July 1918, she inherited his title by special remainder, and became the 2^nd Viscountess Rhondda – though her request to take her seat in the House of Lords was refused. She also inherited her father’s property and commercial interests, and as she herself had a live interest in trade and industry, especially coal, steel, shipping and the subordinate role assigned to women in commerce, in 1926 she became the first female President of the Institute of Directors, an achievement that was marked in 2015, when the IoD inaugurated an annual Mackworth Lecture in her honour. In 1921 she set up the Six Point Group to promote gender equality and the rights of the child, with the left-wing feminist weekly Time and Tide – which she had founded in the previous year – as its mouthpiece, and this publication was her major interest until her death. She, together with 58 other women who campaigned for women’s rights, is commemorated on the plinth of the statue of Millicent Fawcett (1847–1929) in Parliament Square, London, that was unveiled in 2018, and in 2019 the city of Cardiff put up a memorial statue to her, the first woman to be accorded this honour by the city.

(5) Mary Josephine (1872–1960); did not marry.

(6) Beryl Katherine (1875–1954); did not marry and was at one time the Lady Superintendent of St Cadoc’s Home, Caerleon, a Church of England Home for Waifs and Strays.

(7) Francis Julian Audley (1876–1914); married (1910) Dorothy Conran Lascelles (1883–1976); two daughters. He was educated at Llandaff Cathedral School and Malvern College, Worcestershire (September 1891–July 1895), and in 1895 he matriculated as a Scholar of Selwyn College, Cambridge, where he was a prominent member of the Debating Society, rowed for the College (1897–98), read for the Mathematical Tripos and was awarded a BA in 1898.

 

He joined the Army in the same year (London Gazette, no. 26,983, 1 July 1898, p. 3,985) and served with the West Africa Frontier Force from 1904 to 1908 before going to Staff College in 1909. He was appointed Adjutant of the 26^th Brigade, Royal Field Artillery, promoted Major on 30 October 1910 and made Brigade Major RA of the 3^rd Division, the position that he was holding when he was killed in action by a shell splinter near La Couture, three miles north-east of Béthune, on 1 November 1914, aged 38. He was mentioned in dispatches in October 1914 (LG: no. 28,942, 16 October 1914, p. 8,346). Francis Julian is buried in Vieille-Chapelle New Military Cemetery, La Couture, Grave IV.D.10. The inscription is “Pro Patria” – taken from the two, ironically meant, lines from Odes III.2.13 by the Roman Poet Horace (Quintus Horatius Flaccus; 68–5 BCE): “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is a sweet and honourable thing to die for one’s country”). In 1922 his widow Dorothy married Charles Edward Gatehouse (1866–1952), a painter who, like Sir Alfred Munnings (1878–1959), was in the English tradition of horse painting, and the couple moved to Harding, North Cheriton, Templecombe, Somerset.

Francis’s two daughters led different but remarkable lives. The elder, Cecily Joan (1911–2006), was described by one obituarist as “a writer, traveller, war correspondent and rebel”, but she also wrote poetry that found favour with T.S. Eliot and well-received books on François Villon, Stéfane Mallarmé, Guillaume Apollinaire and Cubism, and a selection of French poets who had lived in London. She studied at the London School of Economics, but as she found British life narrow and boring, she moved to the bohemian quarter of Paris in 1936 and spent much of her life there. In 1935 she married Léon Donckier de Donceel (1907–38), a Belgian lawyer whose family came from Liège, and they had one son; but in 1940 she managed to return to London via Spain and Portugal, and worked for a time for the Head of Security in General de Gaulle’s headquarters at 4 Carlton Gardens, London SW1.

The friends that she made in Paris included such notable literary figures as Ivy Compton Burnett, Lawrence Durrell, David Gascoyne, Henry Miller, Conchita de Saint-Exupéry, Natalie Sarraute, Stevie Smith, Dylan Thomas – whose wife, Caitlin, reputedly once stubbed out her cigarette on Cecily’s arm for being too familiar with her husband – and the Dadaist Tristan Tzara. After World War Two she returned to France, where, in 1956, she married the Marquis Henri de Chabannes-La Palice (1900–80), the scion of an ancient French noble family, and they had a daughter. She also wrote reviews, novels and several volumes of memoirs in which she described her extensive travels, being particularly interested in people who did not fit into their own societies and led exotic and colourful lives elsewhere. The first volume of her autobiography, Ends of the World, appeared in 1987 and she completed the second volume, Out of Black Mountains, a few weeks before her death in August 2006.

Her sister Helen Margaret (1914–1938), a “society beauty”, became engaged to Lieutenant William McClintock (1913–38) the only son of Colonel Robert Lyle McClintock (1874–1943) of Carrigans, County Donegal. In 1938, William McClintock broke his back while taking part in a steeplechase, and was paralysed. Although he released Helen from their engagement, she refused, and their marriage was scheduled to take place on 26 September 1938, some six months after his accident. But in the afternoon of 24 September William was carried into the garden on his stretcher, where his mother shot him with a shotgun and then killed herself in a toolshed with the same weapon. His body was carried into the house and laid on his bed. Shortly afterwards, another shot was heard and it was discovered that Helen had shot herself by her fiancé’s bedside using his rifle. The inquest was held the same evening and found that William’s mother, distraught at seeing him so crippled, had shot him and then killed herself while of unsound mind, and that Helen, equally distraught at William’s death, had also killed herself while of unsound mind. The funeral of all three was held on what would have been the couple’s wedding day – the McClintocks were buried in the family grave together with their pet dog and Helen was buried nearby in her bridal gown.

(8) Harry Llewellyn (later Sir; 1878–1952); married (1913) Leonie Georgette Peterson (1894–1973); no children. He succeeded Sir Humphrey [IV] as 8^th Baronet in 1948. He attended the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, and was gazetted to the Royal Engineers (London Gazette, no. 26,950, 22 March 1898, p. 1,898). He then served in the Boer War, where he was awarded the DSO and mentioned in dispatches (twice), and subsequently in Somaliland and Egypt. In 1912 he was posted to the Australian Commonwealth Military Forces, became Director of Army Signals, and served with the Australian Imperial Force in the Dardanelles and Egypt. He transferred to the Royal Corps of Signals when it was formed in June 1920 and retired from the Army with the rank of Colonel.

 

(9) Geoffrey (1879–1952); married (1910) Noel Mabel Langford (1885–1978); one son, two daughters. Geoffrey Mackworth joined the Royal Navy as a Midshipman at the age of 14, and by the end of World War One he had risen to the rank of Commander and won the DSO for his actions aboard the destroyer HMS Ferret (1911–21; scrapped) during the Battle of Heligoland Bight on 28 August 1914 (London Gazette, no. 28,949, 23 October 1914, p. 8,506). During the engagement, the first naval battle of World War One, a flotilla of 33 British ships sank four German ships and damaged three others. The Battle was regarded in Britain as a great victory and the returning ships were greeted by cheering crowds.

 

From 1922 to 1924 Geoffrey was Flag Captain of the battle-cruiser HMS Hood (1918–41; sunk by the Bismarck on 24 May 1941 killing all but three of her crew of 1,422), the Flagship of Admiral Sir Walter Cowan (1871–1956; later the 1^st Baronet). The two men had a reputation for being strict and often uneven and excessive disciplinarians, making the Hood a very unhappy ship. They had had problems on their previous ship – the light cruiser HMS Delhi (1918–48; scrapped) – where on one occasion 25 per cent of the crew refused to respond to a command. Geoffrey left the Hood to become Captain of Devonport Dockyard; he was made a Rear-Admiral in 1930 and retired in 1935 as a Vice-Admiral. His son, Commander David Arthur Geoffrey Mackworth DSO (1912–98), succeeded his uncle, Sir Harry, as the 9^th Baronet.

 

(10) Dorothy (1880–1943); did not marry.

 

(11) John Dolben, DSO, CBE (Military) (1887–1939); married (1913) Marianne Annette Sillem (1887–1968); one son, one daughter. He was educated at Winchester and Corpus Christi College, Oxford (1906–09), where he rowed for the College from 1907 to 1909. Shortly after graduating with a third-class degree in Chemistry, he was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the The Queen’s (Royal West Surrey) Regiment (London Gazette, no. 28,358, 9 April 1910, p. 2,683). In 1910 he served with his regiment in Gibraltar, and in April 1912 he qualified for his aviator’s certificate (no. 209) in a Bristol biplane at Brooklands and was seconded to the Royal Flying Corps in May. In July 1913 he was the seventeenth man to qualify for the newly created Ballooning and Airship Certificate; in 1914 he was appointed a Flight Commander in the Royal Naval Air Service; and on 30 March 1915 he was promoted Temporary Major (LG, no. 29,116, 30 March 1915, p. 3,114) and given command of a Squadron in the Royal Naval Air Service (RNAS). As at this time the British air service was equipped only with unstable spherical balloons, John Dolben was sent to France to visit the balloon factory at Chalais-Meudon. As a result of his visit, two “Type H” kite balloons – tethered balloons that were aerodynamically optimized for windy conditions and copied from the German Drachen balloon – were obtained from France.

 

As balloons had proved to be useful on the Western Front for long-range artillery spotting, especially the identification of concealed enemy artillery batteries, Lieutenant-General (later Field Marshal) Sir William Birdwood (1865–1951), the very popular General Officer Commanding Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) forces in the Middle East since December 1914, asked for this facility on the Gallipoli Peninsula. But the topography of the ground that was occupied by the Allied Expeditionary Force made the siting of such balloons problematic. So to solve the problem, Number 1 Kite Squadron RNAS, with Flight Commander John Dolben Mackworth as its Commanding Officer, was sent to Gallipoli on a modified tramp steamer called the HMS Manica (1896–1931; scrapped).

 

After initial trials in Mudros Bay, the balloon was first used actively at Gallipoli on 19 April 1915 when, under direction from HMS Manica, the armoured cruiser HMS Bacchante (1901–20; scrapped) shelled a Turkish camp just as dawn was breaking. Flight Commander Mackworth reported the bombardment in a document that is preserved in the National Archives and detailed in the Bibliography below:

The enemy were not aware of the presence of the balloon ship, and had taken no special precautions against being overlooked. The consequence was that when Manica put up her balloon, the first sight which greeted the observers was a sleeping camp, neatly arranged in a dip in the ground, out of sight of Bacchante but within easy range of her guns [two 9.2-inch guns with a range of 15,500 yards; twelve 6-inch guns with a range of 12,200 yards]. Through their excellent field glasses [the observers] could see an occasional dot moving about, but for the most part the camp was not yet astir. If there were sentries, they doubtless regarded the distant balloon hanging in the sky as a harmless form of amusement for jaded British officers, and saw no connection between it and the long guns of the Bacchante which were nuzzling round towards them. But the boom of the cruiser’s forward turret opened their eyes and a rude awakening followed when the top of a hillock some hundred yards beyond the camp was hurled into the air. No reveille ever blown commanded so instant a response. Every tent burst into life, and the ground was soon swarming with running specks. A second shot burst on the northernmost fringe of the camp, and a third right in the midst of the tents. Bacchante had the range to a nicety, and began to fire salvoes of 6-inch. A scene of indescribable confusion followed. Tents were rent to pieces and flung into the air, dust spouted in huge fans and columns, and brightly through the reek could be seen the flashes of bursting shells. Like ants from an overturned nest, the little brown dots swarmed and scattered. Across the plain galloped a few terrified mules, and in an incredibly short time the wreckage was complete. Of the once orderly camp, nothing remained but torn earth and twisted canvas, and when the smoke cleared away, no movement was to be seen. The trial was simple but convincing. Manica signalled “Cease Fire”, and lumbered home behind her consort, metaphorically wagging her tail.

 

HMS Bacchante accompanied by the Manica supported the landings at Anzac Cove on 25 April 1915, plus several other engagements later in the year, for his involvement in which John Dolben Mackworth was recommended for the DSO. Indeed, the Manica was so successful that two more kite balloon ships, the HMS Hector (1895–1915; decommissioned) and the HMS Canning (1896–1920; scrapped), were sent out to Gallipoli and the Manica returned home. In 1917 Mackworth was promoted Acting Wing Captain and in the following year he was given the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel in the newly formed Royal Air Force. He eventually served on the Staff of the RAF with the rank of Colonel and became the Deputy Director of Kite Balloons. He resigned his commission in 1921 on the grounds of ill health contracted on active service. During his retirement he worked in the Air Ministry, played the clarinet in the Newbury Amateur Orchestral Union, and in 1925 he was made an Officier de la Légion d’Honneur. He also wrote a number of books: Broadcast (1925), The Ass is Laid (1925), Free Drinks (1926) and a science fiction adventure story entitled Blood Amber: The Menace of the Terribore (1936) (US edition as The Raid of the Terribore: A Modern Adventure Story [1937]). But having suffered from depression for some time, he was particularly concerned at the outbreak of World War Two that his health would prevent him from being mobilized. Moreover, “he was greatly distressed at the prevailing situation, and the prospect of the loss of so many lives”. So just after the six o’clock news on Tuesday 5 September 1939, he went out into the garden and shot himself with a double-barrelled shot-gun. The coroner recorded a verdict of suicide while the balance of his mind was disturbed.

John Dolben’s only son, Pilot Officer Christopher (“Kit”) Charles Dolben Mackworth (1919–40), who married (1940) Janet Mackinnon (1920–2008), was killed in action on 14 May 1940 while flying a Hawker Hurricane Mk I of 87 Squadron (a modern, single-seat fighter with which the Squadron had been equipped in 1937). 87 Squadron went to France in September 1939 as part of the Advanced Air Striking Force – the Air Component of the British Expeditionary Force – and when the Germans invaded the Low Countries on 10 May 1940, it was stationed at Lille. On 20 May it moved to Merville, south-east of Hazebrouck in northern France, but it returned to England on 24 May. An Army doctor sent the following account of Christopher’s death to his family:

Seven German planes [ME110s – heavily armed, twin-engined fighters] came and machine-gunned our advanced dressing station in the village and Mackworth took on the seven of them single-handed, but the odds were too many and he was shot down. He was a very brave man.

Although Christopher managed to bale out, his parachute caught fire and did not open, and his aircraft crashed near the village of Ramegnies-Chin, a couple of miles north of the town of Tournai, one of 24 RAF Hurricanes to be lost in action on that day. He is buried in Bruyelle War Cemetery, Belgium, in Grave I.B.21, with the inscription “One crowded hour of glorious life is worth an age without a name” (Thomas Osbert Mordaunt (1730–1809), stanza 11 of ‘The Call’, this soldier poet’s most famous poem).

On 26 August 1946, Christopher’s widow, now calling herself Janet Mackinnon Mackworth, married E. P[eter] G. Barrett (1920–2002), who was the Headmaster of King’s Mead School, Seaford, East Sussex, from 1951 to 1968, when the school closed. During the final years of their lives the couple lived in Criccieth, a seaside town in Gwynedd, North Wales.

 

Education and professional life

Mackworth attended Charterhouse School from 1899 to 1905, having won a Junior Entrance Scholarship by competitive examination, which, in 1901, was increased to a Senior Entrance Scholarship. In 1905 he became the Talbot Prizeman in Classics and was awarded a leaving Exhibition, one of five that were valued at £80 p.a. and were awarded for four years to boys who were leaving the school. In his final year he became Head of School and in December 1904 he was awarded a Demyship in Classics at Magdalen.

 

 

 

 

Mackworth matriculated on 14 October 1905, having passed Responsions in Hilary Term 1905, and performed exceptionally well in the eyes of Magdalen’s Tutors – who were more used to absenteeism, slackness, and lack of real interest in the subject – and when he took the First Public Examination in the Hilary Terms of 1906 and 1907, he was awarded a 1^st in Classical Moderations. But in Trinity Term 1909 his “quiet zeal” brought him only a 2^nd in Literae Humaniores, and after taking his BA on 7 October 1909, he remained at Oxford to study Law for a year and was awarded a 2^nd in Jurisprudence in Trinity Term 1910. After a year’s study for the Bar in London, Mackworth spent from spring 1911 to summer 1912 as an assistant master in Wellington College, Berkshire, where he proved to be a successful teacher. According to The Wellingtonian of May 1912, he participated in a debate in which he “showed in a vigorous and convincing speech that a classical education helped one to be of use to the rest of the world more than any other system of education”.

In 1911, he was elected a Temporary Fellow and Tutor of Magdalen in place of A.D. Godley (1856–1925), who had been appointed the University’s Public Orator (1910–20) and who, though no mean Classicist, was a very poor teacher and is nowadays remembered mainly as a writer of humorous verse. In gaining this distinction, Mackworth was strongly backed by the robust Christopher Cookson (1861–1948; Senior Classics Tutor at Magdalen 1894–1919; Senior Dean of Arts – the equivalent of the Modern Senior Tutor – 1900-09), who had taught at St Paul’s School, Barnes, London SW13, from 1884 to 1894 and was strongly in favour of Magdalen becoming a more academically oriented and successful college. So when Mackworth returned to Oxford in autumn 1912, he did so as Cookson’s assistant, and was elected a Full Fellow and Tutor in summer 1913. An anonymous obituarist described him as “devoted to pure scholarship of the old public school and university type, and to his college and his pupils”, a judgement that is prefigured by his speech to the Wellington College Debating Society.

In 1916, while wounded and in hospital, Thomas Blantyre Simpson (1892–1954), who had studied Classics at Magdalen from 1911 to 1915 and been awarded a 3^rd in Greats, wrote a short, no-holds-barred essay in which he described and tried to account for the low level of Classics teaching at Magdalen. Essentially, he put it down to poor teaching, but excepted one Tutor from his sweeping judgment:

Mackworth, being a graduate of very recent date, knew how Mod[eration]s should be studied, and was studied at other Colleges, that is, as a species of low cunning and not as a method of absorbing culture; to this end he ‘spotted’ passages for us, and invigilated in our Collections [internal College exams held once a term to test what work had been done in the holidays] in a way that made known the real extent of our knowledge or ignorance. Cookson, fondly imagining that we had worked up our subjects, left us to ourselves on these occasions; we, anxious not to disappoint the worthy man, obligingly produced our cribs and note-books; result – brilliant collection-papers, but unfavourable auguries for Schools [Finals]. Mackworth, who had himself so recently played the same game, assumed the role of “poacher turned keeper” with good results, and a brilliant succession of business-like firsts seemed likely to replace our stream of erudite seconds when horrid war sprang on us and the gown had perforce to yield to arms.

Not surprisingly, Mackworth was the only Fellow to see the final version of Simpson’s essay, which is now preserved in Magdalen’s Archives.

War service

The war put an abrupt end to Mackworth’s work at Magdalen by “sweeping away his pupils”, and at first he sought civil employment, but soon found that it did not satisfy him. So he applied to join the Army as an officer and was commissioned Second Lieutenant in the Connaught Rangers – an Irish Regiment that was affiliated to the Rifle Brigade (The Prince Consort’s Own). But when the 13^th Battalion of the Rifle Brigade was formed at Winchester in October 1914, Mackworth was transferred into it as a Lieutenant, and then did basic training for around six months at Halton Park, Buckinghamshire, about five miles south-west of Aylesbury. On 1 April 1915 the Battalion moved to Andover, Hampshire, as part of 111^th Brigade in the 37^th Division, one of Kitchener’s “New Army” Divisions, and when E.H.L. Southwell, Mackworth’s exact contemporary at Magdalen, albeit nine months older, applied for a Regular Commission on 16 April 1915, it was Mackworth who certified that he had a “good standard of education”, thereby enabling him to join the 13^th Battalion as an officer nine days later.

On 29 July 1915, after another four months of training in southern England, Mackworth and the 13^th Battalion landed at Boulogne and marched north-eastwards via St-Omer. On 6 September 1915, when he was in the field, he received a copy of President Warren’s Creweian Oration (delivered on 23 June 1915; printed by 3 July 1915), for which he wrote Warren a long letter of thanks on 13 September:

My dear Mr President[,] I am only too conscious that I have never written to thank you for your Creweian Oration. Believe me, it was not because I did not appreciate it; I can’t tell you how awfully jolly it is to get that kind of thing sent to one in the middle of all this. I suppose it’s the sign of a rebellious spirit, but I always do so enjoy the things I’m not supposed to be engaged with. Not that it’s at all unpleasant here – as a matter of fact it’s all been rather a joy-trip so far. The trenches we have taken over have the great advantage of being a mile away from the Huns – thus abolishing all danger from bombs & rifle grenades & nearly all from snipers. In fact the only trouble is from shell-fire, & that comes very rarely, because mercifully it is an exceedingly quiet part of the line. Of course[,] when a shell comes, it is simply a case of chacun à son dugout till it’s all over, & happily the dugouts are quite reasonably safe. Just fancy, I have quite often stuck my head over the parapet by day – a thing I never dreamt would ever happen – & have even blundered about with a patrol in front of our wire by night without any too excessive qua[n]tum of terror! But I fear I do not feel nearly bellicose enough – my one desire is to leave brother Hun in peace as long as he leaves me[.] And I fear all the improvements I have been putting my men onto are directed solely to comfort & not at all to military necessity. In a way our trenches were rather a disappointment – we were told glowing stories of concrete, electric light & baths h & c – but no; “our gallant allies” seem to have had quite a poor idea of comfort & quite a poor idea of sanitation[.] – But 24 hours of us made a good difference & mercifully the rain has held off altogether so far. Really, it’s all very jolly out here & I’m gloriously happy & well. It was a dire disappointment to me not to see Hugh before I left. If ever you write to him, do tell him to write to me. My address is simply 13^th Rifle Brigade, B.E.F., France. Greet the S.C.R. (such as there is left of it) from me. I fear it must be deadly dull & depressing in Oxford just now, & we are really getting much the best time of it out here. Once one has adjusted one’s sleeping hours, all is well. I heard from Cookson the other day, & two or three times from Gautier Parry, so I’m fairly well up in Oxford news. Please give my kindest regards to Lady Warren, also to the Provost of Oriel [Lancelot Ridley Phelps] if you see him. Very sincerely yours, A. C. Mackworth.

During the Battle of Loos (25 September–8 October 1915), Mackworth’s Battalion, as part of the 37^th Division, was probably part of the British Reserve, and judging from its absence from the Order of Battle, did not take an active part in the fierce fighting of the first three days, when untried and insufficiently trained New Army units were deployed en masse for the first time. In contrast, the Germans were well dug in with carefully prepared defensive positions and despite their use of gas for the first time, the British were pushed back to their start line by 28 September 1915, having suffered about twice as many casualties as the Germans. Nor is it likely that Mackworth took part in the Battle of the Somme, when the 111^th Brigade was loaned to the 34^th Division from 6 July to 22 August 1916 and fought in the Battles of Bazentin Ridge (14–17 July) and Pozières (23 July–3 September 1916), for having acquitted himself very well as an organizer and administrator during his time in France, he was recommended for Staff work and sent back to England in the first half of 1916.

Here, from 29 July to 2 September, he took part in the Third Course for potential Staff Officers at Clare College, Cambridge. According to an obituarist, his “remarkable intellectual gifts” led almost immediately to a posting away from the front for six months and on 12 October 1916 he wrote a brief letter to President Warren, informing him that he now had a “most interesting, well-paid & comfortable” job in the War Office – he was actually working for MI5 and had moved to Dalmeny Court, Duke St, St James’s, London SW1, “which sounds very aristocratic & suitable, but is really only a silly little flat I have taken” [nowadays that undesirable residence would fetch c.£1,000,000]. He then continued:

Only of course we are all now in daily terror of being “combed out”! There was a great flutter this morning when we all had to state on a piece of paper whether we were physically fit or not, & full many a hand trembled as it penned a wobbly “Yes” – badly written in the hope that it would look like “no”.

He continued:

It is very jolly here – We get one complete day off every week, & every other Sunday. I have seen a great many Magdalen men – including [H.F.C.] Crookshank, Rupert Somervell & [E.A.] McNair V.C. [who had won the medal for his actions at Hooge on 4 February 1916], who is now recovered [from a wound received on 8 or 18 August 1916] & is just off to India for a month’s leave.

Mackworth’s work in the War Office almost certainly meant that he was still away from his Battalion when it fought in the Battle of Arras (9–11 April 1917), and on 5 September 1917 he appeared before a Medical Board in England which reported that he was suffering from insomnia that was “of old standing” and had probably been “aggravated by exposure on active service in France, where he was for about 7 months” [i.e. from August 1915 to February 1916]. Noting that he was an Oxford “don” who had “never taken violent exercise or played games” and had “led a more or less studious life” even though he enjoyed “walking exercise”, the Board pronounced that he was “not fit for general service, even at home”, and was capable of “light duty only”. Mackworth’s doctor, who had been treating him since January 1917, was of the same opinion and wrote to the Board that Mackworth “has suffered from periodical attacks of myalgia [muscle pain], especially during the cold weather; he has also suffered from insomnia, which recurs at intervals of about a month and lasts 4 or 5 days at a time”. He also noted that Mackworth, having served in France during the winter of 1915–16, had bad circulation and suffered acutely from the cold.

At around 00.10 hours on the night of 25/26 November 1917, Mackworth died, aged 31, of a self-inflicted revolver wound at 6 Albemarle St West, off Piccadilly, Mayfair, London W1 – about a quarter of a mile from Dalmeny Court. The bullet had passed through the roof of his mouth and come out at the back of his head. An Inspector Long from Vine St Police Station, London W1, came to investigate and an inquest took place at the Coroner’s Court, Horseferry Rd, Westminster, at 15.00 hours on 27 November 1917, when the coroner found that Mackworth had committed “suicide while temporarily insane”. He had left a cheque on a table to pay for a presentation cup to a friend, and with it a note that read: “I have committed suicide because I cannot sleep & for no other reason.” He had also told a friend – probably Captain Gilbert Edward Wakefield, RA (1892–1963), a former Classics student of University College, Oxford (BA and MA 1920), with whom he shared his flat – that “he would go mad if the sleeplessness went on”. The inquest was attended by [Henry] Russell Wakefield (1854–1933, Bishop of Birmingham from 28 October 1911 to 1 August 1924) and Wakefield’s father.

 

C.C.J. Webb recorded in his diary on that day:

After [dinner] C[hristopher] R. Cookson [the former Senior Tutor] suddenly appeared with most tragic news – Mackworth shot himself on Sunday night. It seems that insomnia disordering his nerves was the cause: but the verdict at the inquest was not given [by the time that C(ookson)] left London. It is desired by his friends that he should be buried here, from the College.

The funeral took place on 29 November 1917 and Webb, who was present, left the following account in his diary:

At 3.30 [p.m.] was Mackworth’s funeral. The bell had been tolled for him yesterday between 11–12 a.m. The coffin was brought this morning from London by road and placed in the Chapel, covered with the Union Jack. A number of his kinsfolk came & a few friends from the University, and one or two freemasons from the town (he was a keen and active mason). I helped seat people in their places. Wilson took the service in chapel & read the lesson: the choir sang the psalm. We went in procession to Holywell Cemetery, where the committal prayers were said by the Bishop of Birmingham who had asked to take part in the funeral, his son having been a great friend of M[ackworth] & his fellow lodger in Albemarle Street. The only Magdalen contemporaries present were Gambier Parry & Rupert [Churchill Gelderd] Somervill [sic; see Somervell above]. Thornton came from Eton; & there were three heads of houses; [Thomas] Case [(1844–1925); President of Corpus Christi 1904–24; Waynflete Professor of Moral and Metaphysical Philosophy 1889–1910]; [Gautier Lancelot Ridley] Phelps [Provost of Oriel; see above] & [Francis William] Pember [Warden of All Souls 1914–32] beside our President; Baynes [possibly Helton Godwin (“Peter”) Baynes (1882–1943), an alumnus of Trinity College, Cambridge, who was awarded Blues in both Rowing and Swimming and served as the Medical Officer of the 9^th Battalion, the Rifle Brigade, during the war, so knew several Magdalen men in that regiment. He later became the medical assistant and close friend of C.G. Jung in Zurich and an analytical psychologist. He also introduced Jung’s psychology to Britain and helped translate several of Jung’s works into English], A.C. Clark, Cranshaw [?], & Grant Robinson were the other graduates from other colleges present.

An obituarist, writing in The Times on 30 November 1917, described Mackworth as “just one of those to whom Oxford might have looked for special help when the day of reconstruction arrives”; and on 6 January 1918, George John Theodore Hyde Villiers (1891–1942), who had been a Commoner at Magdalen from 1910 to 1914 and was a cousin of A.H. Villiers, wrote a letter of condolence to President Warren concerning Mackworth’s death in which he said:

I feel that had I been in London & in touch with him, I should have noticed that something was wrong: & then, as you say[,] one might have comforted & cossetted him back to a normal view of things. To nervous, highly-strung people, as he was, the strain of this war was very acute, & that vein of eccentricity, which he had in his nature, & which added so to his charm, must have just turned the balance of his reason at the last.

Mackworth is commemorated in a Memorial Book at Clare College, Cambridge, which lists those participants in Staff Courses who were subsequently killed in action. On 19 March 1919 he left £4,229 19s. 5d., of which £100 came to Magdalen as a benefaction on condition that his shield took its place amongst those of the College’s other Benefactors.

 

Bibliography

For the books and archives referred to here in short form, refer to the Slow Dusk Bibliography and Archival Sources.

 

Printed sources:

[Anon.], ‘The late Colonel Sir Digby Mackworth, Bart’, Lyttelton Times, no.117 (2 April 1853), p. 4.

Major Digby Mackworth [III] [photograph], The Graphic: A Weekly Illustrated Newspaper (London), no. 1,576 (10 February 1900), p. 15.

Dooner (1903), pp. 238–9.

Hilda Johnstone, ‘Two Governors of Shrewsbury during the Great Civil War and the Interregnum’, The English Historical Review, 46, no. 102 (April 1911), pp. 267–77.

[Anon.], ‘Death of Sir A. Mackworth. Distinguished Military Engineer’, The Western Mail (Cardiff), no. 13,997 (Monday 9 March 1914), p. 6.

[Anon.], ‘Captain F.J.A. Mackworth’, The Telegraph, no. 18,593 (13 November 1914), p. 13.

[Anon.], ‘Francis Julian Audley Mackworth’ [obituary], The Malvernian, no. 347 (December 1914), p. 294.

[Anon.], ‘Officer’s Tragic Suicide: Shot Himself Because He Couldn’t Sleep’, Dundee Evening Telegraph, no. 12,794 (27 November 1917), p. 1.

[Anon.], ‘Tragedy of Insomnia: Lieut. A.C.P. Mackworth’s End in a London Flat’, Western Mail (Cardiff), no. 15,140 (29 November 1917), p. 2.

[Anon.], ‘Death of a Fellow of Magdalen: Special Memoir: Funeral Yesterday’ [loose cutting whose source is unknown].

[Anon.], ‘Death of Lieut. A.C.P. Mackworth: Funeral at Oxford’, The Times, no. 41,649 (30 November 1917), p. 11.

[Anon.], ‘First Kite Balloon: “Spotters’ Fine Work for the Fleet’, The Times, no. 41,788 (13 May 1918), p. 4.

[Anon.], ‘Heavy Divorce List’, The Times, no. 43,013 (24 April 1922), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘High Court of Justice – Restitution Decree Granted: Lady Rhondda’s Divorce Suit. Rhondda v. Mackworth’, The Times, no. 43,020 (2 May 1922), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘Lady Rhondda: Lady Rhondda’s Divorce Suit. Rhondda v. Mackworth, The Times, no. 43,221 (22 December 1922), p. 4.

David Howard Rowlands, For the Duration: The Story of the Thirteenth Battalion, the Rifle Brigade (London: Simpkin, Marshall Ltd, 1932), pp. 24, 69–76.

[Anon.], ‘Three People Shot Dead: Officer, Mother and Fiancée: Father’s Pathetic Evidence: Wedding to have taken place Today’, The Irish Times, no. 25,537 (26 September 1938), p. 5.

[Anon.], ‘Society Girl is buried in Bridal Gown’, Gloucester Citizen, no. 127 (27 September 1938), p. 7.

[Anon.], ‘Sad Death of Colonel J.D. Mackworth of Kintbury’, Reading Mercury, no. 11,260 (9 September 1939), p. 9.

[Anon.], ‘Colonel Sir Harry Mackworth’ [obituary], The Times, no. 52,474, (20 November 1952), p. 10.

P.A. Hunt and N.A. Flanagan, Corpus Christi Oxford: Biographical Register 1880–1974 (Oxford: Corpus Christi College, 1988), p. 202. 

D.S. Mullineux (Lieutenant-Colonel [Retd]), ‘Young Harry’s War’, The Journal of the Royal Signals Institution, 25, no. 1 (Spring 2004), pp 18–22.

Gordon Bowker, ‘Cecily Mackworth’ [obituary], The Independent, no. 6,175 (31 July 2006), p. 32.

Anthony Sheridan, ‘Cecily Mackworth’ [obituary], The Guardian, 49,738 (7 August 2006), p. 31.

Christopher Andrew, The Defence of the Realm: The Authorized History of MI5 (London: Allen Lane [Penguin Books], 2009), pp. 84–5.

 

Archival sources:

ADM 273/2/24.

ADM 273/31/46.

AIR 1/11/15/1/44 (Dardanelles – Report on No. 1 Kite Balloon Section’s operations from H.M.S. Manica).

AIR 76/324/19.

J77/1903/9521 (National Archives: Divorce Court File: 9521. Appellant: Margaret Haig [Mackworth]).

MCA: F29/1/MS5/5 (Notebook containing comments by H.W. Greene et al. on student progress [1895–1911]), pp. 79–80).

MCA: P257/M51/1 (T[homas] B[lantyre] Simpson, Memories of Oxford Dons [15 pp. typescript, written during sick leave 1916]).

MCA: PR/2/18 (President’s Notebook [September 1913–August 1917]).

MCA: PR32/C/3/828–833 and 1175 (President Warren’s War-Time Correspondence, Letters relating to A.C.P. Mackworth [1915–1916 and 1918]).

MCA: SCR Photo Album (MC: 01/P1/1, p. 60).

OUA (DWM): C.C.J. Webb diaries, MS. Eng. misc. e. 1162.

OUA: UR 2/1/57.

WO95/2534/1.

WO339/19526.

 

On-line sources:

Wikipedia, ‘Digby Mackworth Dolben’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digby_Mackworth_Dolben (accessed 1 June 2021).

D.W. Hayton, ‘Mackworth, Sir Humphrey (1657–1727) of Gnoll Castle, Neath, Glam.’: https://www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume/1690-1715/member/mackworth-sir-humphrey-1657-1727 (accessed 21 June 2021).

Wikipedia, ‘Mackworth baronets’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mackworth_baronets (accessed 1 June 2021).

Deirdre Beddoe (2004), ‘Thomas [married name Mackworth], Margaret Haig, suo jure Viscountess Rhondda (1883–1958)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn; Oxford University Press, 2004):   https://www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=Thomas+%5Bmarried+name+Mackworth%5D%2C+Margaret+Haig%2C+suo+jure+Viscountess+Rhondda+%281883%E2%80%931958%29%2C+feminist+and+magazine+proprietor (accessed 1 June 2021).

Hermione Hobhouse (2004), ‘Cubitt, Sir William (1785–1861)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn; Oxford University Press, 2004): https://www.oxforddnb.com/search?q=Cubitt%2C+Sir+William&searchBtn=Search&isQuickSearch=true (accessed 1 June 2021).

Paul Bevand and Frank Allen, ‘Biography of Vice-Admiral Geoffrey Mackworth’, Battle Cruiser Hood: http://www.hmshood.com/crew/biography/mackworth_bio.htm (accessed 1 June 2021).

Wikipedia, ‘Manica’: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HMS_Manica (accessed 21 June 2021).

‘RFA Manica – the Service’s first aircraft carrier’, Historical RFA: http://historicalrfa.org/archived-stories68/1301-rfa-manica-the-services-first-aircraft-carrier (accessed 1 June 2021).

Peter Gaunt, ‘Mackworth, Humphrey (1603–1654)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn; Oxford University Press, 2004): https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-37716 (accessed 21 June 2021).

William P. Griffith, ‘Mackworth, Sir Humphry (1657–1727)’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online edn; Oxford University Press, 2004): https://www.oxforddnb.com/view/10.1093/ref:odnb/9780198614128.001.0001/odnb-9780198614128-e-17631 (accessed 21 June 2021).

 

The History of the Rifle Brigade in the War of 1914–18 (text on-line):

Vol. 1, August 1914–December 1916, by Reginald Berkeley: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.210973/2015.210973.The-History_djvu.txt

Vol 2, January 1917–June 1919, by William W. Seymour: https://archive.org/stream/in.ernet.dli.2015.210974/2015.210974.The-History_djvu.txt (accessed 1 June 2021).