George III candlesticks to light up Suffolk auction
A pair of George III silver Egyptian pattern candlesticks, with links to Admiral Francis William Austen, the brother of celebrated novelist Jane Austen; the Napoleonic Wars and the East India Company is set to sell at Lacy Scott & Knight in Suffolk this summer.
Francis William Austen (Frank), the 12 year old son of a Hampshire rector, joined the Royal Navy in 1786. He graduated from the Royal Naval Academy at Portsmouth and was steadily promoted while being appointed to various ships and taking part in blockades and skirmishes around the Empire.
By 1805, Austen was commanding officer of HMS Canopus, a French ship of the line which had been captured in the Battle of the Nile, undertaking pursuits of the French Fleet around the West Indies and taking part in the Battle of San Domingo. He married Mary Gibson in 1806, and being without a ship at that point, took lodgings in Southampton where he was joined by his mother and sisters. Unfortunately, their father had died the previous year, leaving his mother Cassandra Austen and her daughters, including 32-year-old Jane, without a permanent home.
In need of money and without a naval commission at that point, Francis was put in command of the third-rate HMS St Albans in March 1807 and commissioned to support ‘the trade’. The following February, he sailed out to St Helena to pick up a convoy for the East India Company and escort them back to England. The voyage was a success, despite being marginally involved in the start of the Peninsula War, whereby Napoleon attempted to usurp the Spanish crown and install his brother Joseph Bonaparte as king.
On 20th June 1808, the St Albans log book (in the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich, collection) records “Exchanged numbers with the Raven brig. The brig is from off Lisbon. The French have taken possession of Spain. The Spanish Royal Family are prisoners in France. It is not certainly known where the Rochefort squadron is gone, but supposed into the Mediterranean.”
The East India Company were so pleased with Austen that they paid him £420 with which to buy a piece of plate: this was a substantial gift (perhaps the equivalent of a year’s salary) in thanks for his having safely convoyed to Britain seven of their Indiamen, plus one extra (voyage chartered) ship, from St Helena.
Furthermore, a biographical manuscript written by Francis Austen, which has been recently purchased and transcribed by the Jane Austen’s House museum in Chawton, includes the statement: “For his attention to the Convoy, the Board of East India Directors voted him 400 guineas, as they had the beginning of the year 200 guineas on his arrival from the Cape; and the Captains of the 8 ships he conveyed, in a letter expressive of their sense of his gentlemanlike conduct to themselves, as well as his attention to the safety of the convoy, requested his acceptance of a piece of plate, as a testimony of their satisfaction and best wishes they presented him with 2 pairs of handsome Candlesticks of an Egyptian pattern.”
From this historical record and the inscription, the auction house believes that this pair of candlesticks is one of the two pairs presented. They have been consigned from a local deceased estate along with a good collection of other art and antiques.