The rest of his life was spent chiefly at his country-seat, Rochetts, in Essex, sixteen miles from London.  Having a handsome income, though not wealthy, he entertained freely; and his retreat was cheered by frequent visits from his old naval subordinates and political friends.  Generous in the use of money, and without children for whom to save, the neighborhood learned to love him as a benefactor.  In cases of necessity, his liberality rose to profusion, and he carried into the management of his estate a carelessness he never showed in administering a fleet.  It is told that he once undertook to raise a sum by mortgage, in entire forgetfulness of a much larger amount in bank.  Far into old age he retained the active habits of his prime.  To say that he rose at four, asserts a biographer, would be to understate the case; he was frequently in the fields at half-past two in the early summer dawn of England,—­always before his laborers,—­and he was not pleased if his male guests did not appear by six.  To ladies he was more tolerant.  With mind unclouded and unweakened to the last, he retained his interest in public affairs and in the navy, contributing to the conversation which animated his home the judgment of an acute intellect, though one deeply tinged by prejudices inseparable from so strong a character.  Thus honored and solaced by the companionship of his friends, he awaited in calm dignity the summons, which came on the 13th of March, 1823.  He was two months over eighty-eight when he passed away, the senior admiral of Great Britain.

FOOTNOTE: 

[14] This has been done by the author elsewhere (Influence of Sea Power upon the French Revolution and Empire, Vol.  I. pp. 371-377).

SAUMAREZ

1757-1836

“These were honourable among the thirty,” says the ancient Hebrew chronicler, “yet they attained not unto the first three.”  Since that far-away day, when the three mighty men broke through the host of the Philistines that they might bring their chieftain water from the well of Bethlehem, to how many fighters, land and sea, have these words been applicable!—­men valiant in deed, wise in council, patient in endurance, yet lacking that divine somewhat which, for want of a better name, we call genius.  Of such an one now, and, in contrasted sequence, of another of his peers, we are about to give an account; men who in their respective careers illustrated more conspicuously, the one the distinctively military, the other the more purely nautical, aspects, in the due blending of which the excellence of the profession is realized; foremost, both, among the ocean warriors whose pennants flew through the wild scenes where England’s flag was called to brave the battle and the breeze,

    “Till danger’s troubled night depart,
        And the star of peace return.”