For a small village, Hempstead can perhaps claim more than its expected share of the famous and infamous.

Almost every English person has heard of the notorious and sadistic thug, horse stealer and murderer Dick Turpin, whose life, nasty brutish and short was ended on the gallows in York in 1735. Sadly, his reputation was glamourised by the Victorian novelist Harrison Ainsworth who really should have known better; but anyone who has similarly glamourised Ronald Biggs and the Kray brothers is not in a position to feel superior. Little is really known of him for certain, except that he was born in Hempstead in 1705, almost certainly in what is now the ‘Bluebell’ public house (then his father’s butchers premises), and hung for the murder of an Epping keeper. He was probably not much missed.

Happily, we also have two other, more deserving though probably less well known worthies to celebrate, both from the same family, though separated in time by some years. Both too, were men of blood (like Turpin) though in widely different ways.

The first of these, and certainly today the more widely known, is William Harvey, who first propounded the theory of the circulation of the blood which forms one of the building bricks of modern medicine.

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WILLIAM HARVEY (1578- 1657), was born in Folkestone, Kent into a family of successful City of London merchants trading in the Middle East and educated at Kings School, Canterbury and Caius College, Cambridge and Padua University. Some years ago, sightseeing at the latter, I happened to meet the Professor of Surgery there, who was delighted to learn that I was from Hempstead, and with great pride showed me, on a cloister ceiling, Harvey’s coat of arms. He is regarded there, quite rightly, as one of their most famous alumni.

Back in England, he was for a time physician to London’s St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, and later a lecturer at the College of Physicians.

His publication in 1628 of his circulation theory probably led to his being appointed physician to both James 1st and Charles 1st. He was with the King at Edgehill, the opening battle of the Civil war in 1642, and was still in attendance when the King surrendered to Parliament in 1642, after which he returned to private practice in London.

He is now buried in the family vault in St. Andrew’s church in Hempstead, together with many other members of the family.

His life has been succinctly if slightly facetiously recorded by a Hempstead resident in the following stanzas.

A short dissertation on the life and work of
WILLIAM HARVEY, PHYSICIAN

Before the pills in order stood or Zimmer made his frame.
The circulation of the blood was very little understood
Till William Harvey came.

To Canterbury (Kings) he went to school, then Oxford (Caius)
And then, on studying medicine bent, to Padua young Bill was sent
To get some more degrees

At home once more with learning crowned, a qualified physician,
At St. Bartholomew’s he found (after some traveling around)
A senior position

And then in 1628 he wrote his famous treatise,
(In style rotund and Latinate, its fame at once was very great)
De Cordis et Sanguinis

After the pills in order stood, and William Harvey came,
The circulation of the blood was much, much better understood,
But it still went round the same

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SIR ELIAB HARVEY. A later member of the same family, who had purchased an estate in the village in 1647 ( including Wincelow, though the principal family estate was in Rolls Park).

He was sent to Harrow school, but at the age of 13, in 1771 he was entered as a volunteer in the Royal Navy. Whether he actually served at this time is not clear. It was a common 18th century custom to have young men entered on the books, in order to accumulate ‘sea time’ which was essential for later promotion to commissioned status, without always undergoing the tiresome necessity of actually being on board to any considerable extent. There was no naval tradition in the family, but his uncle was Adjutant General and a friend of King George III, which probably did not hinder his progress’.

He later served (at roughly the same time as Nelson) in the West Indies and later off the North American coast during the War of Independence. During this period he would certainly have seen a good deal of action, though not any large scale fleet actions.

In 1778 he was promoted to Lieutenant (the first rung on the promotion ladder) but in the same year his elder brother died, and Eliab inherited the very substantial family riches. And in 1780 became, as his brother had been, MP for Malden in Essex.

For the rest of his life he divided his life between serving as a naval officer, with frequent and prolonged intervals of life on land as a landowner and MP. He was made post (that is, promoted to a permanent captaincy) in 1783. After that promotion to Admiral was almost entirely a matter of living long enough.)

In 1784 he married Lady Louisa Nugent the illegitimate daughter of a rather shady Earl. (Bastardy was not socially really very important as long as you had plenty of money and the right sort of putative parents), and between them produced nine children, presumably in the frequent and lengthy intervals between naval command.

In 1793, during the war with France (which eventually became the Napoleonic war), he commanded a frigate Santa Margarita. He was involved in the attacks on French West Indian possessions in Guadaloupe and Martinique, which might well have yielded some lucrative prize money from the capture of French sugar fleet vessels and plantations. Later the same year, he was involved in a successful action, with the English vessels against a French frigate and corvettes off Brittany.

A step up to a line of battle ship (Valiant, 74 guns) followed in 1796, but ill health sent him back to England in 1797. He was recovered sufficiently by 1798 to be appointed Captain of Sea Fencibles (a kind of coastal Territorial Army raised in response to the very real threat of French Invasion) for a substantial part of the English East coast, from Leigh on sea to Harwich. This lasted only until 1799, when he again went to sea in command of Triumph, another 74 gun ship, and served in the blockade of Cadiz holding up the Spanish fleet believed to be preparing to join with the French fleet in a combined invasion.

In 1802, he again became a MP during the brief and uneasy peace, and then took command, in 1803, of the Temeraire, in which he was to win enormous, though perhaps not long lasting fame.

At the battle of Trafalgar in October 1805, he followed his Admiral, Lord Nelson, into the middle of the combined enemy fleets, and was in the thick of the battle throughout its’ whole five hours in which the enemy fleet was almost totally destroyed. In fact, had it not been for the Temeraire, who at one time was involved in savage close quarter fighting with two, possibly three enemy ships at the same time, it is arguable that Victory herself would not have survived and the course of the battle could have been very substantially different.

After the battle, and to some extent because the public (and the Government) wanted a live hero, as well as a dead one, Sir Eliab became, for a comparatively short time, probably the most famous man in England. He was a pall bearer at Nelson’s funeral, and promoted to Admiral, and in 1806 joined Admiral St.Vincent in another blockading mission off Spain. Then, disaster struck.

Sir Eliab was considered, by his wife as irascible and bad tempered, not an uncommon combination in wifely opinions of husbands, though there is in this case corroborating evidence.

At an expedition under Admiral Gambier off the Basque Roads, Sir Eliab was refused the command of a cutting out expedition to which, probably rightly, he considered himself, by reason of seniority, entitled. The command actually went to Lord Cochrane who was probably a better choice. But Harvey lost his temper, and in front of a number of other officers, both senior and junior, publicly insulted Dismal Jemmy (as Gambier was known around the Fleet, because of his rather dour and melancholy Methodism and aversion to drink) on his own quarter deck. Referring to him as a canting washerwoman, and a robber of widows and orphans, of which indeed there is some, though not necessarily conclusive, evidence.

Gambier was almost universally known - and disliked - in the service for his Methodism and aversion to strong drink, never a passport to popularity in fighting services, and was later court martialled, though surprisingly acquitted, for failing to press home the attack. Nevertheless, Sir Eliab’s outburst in public was hardly conducive of good discipline, and he too was court-martialled and dismissed the service.

There was a good deal of political fall out from this decision, particularly in view of Sir Eliab’s fame as a fighting sailor. In 1810 he was quietly reinstated in the both navy and his rank, but he never again received an acting command, living the rest of his life as a country squire in Chigwell. Sadly, his elder son was killed whilst serving with the Coldstream Guards at the battle of Badjoz in 1812, and his younger son, after many years of illness, died at the early age of twenty-one. More happily, his daughters married well, one of them to an Army man from our next door village of Great Sampford.

He died in 1830, and there is a family tradition that as the funeral procession made it slow and laborious way from Chigwell to Hempstead, the proceedings were interrupted by a number of the mourners breaking off to pursue a fox which crossed their path.

Lady Louisa survived him for many years, but the Hempstead estate was sold (probably on his death) and in turn was sold off by the Fane family in the early years of the last century.

A minor footnote to this brief eventful history is that the Temeraire, of Trafalgar fame, became famous again a few years later when Turner, seeing the ship being towed to the breakers in 1838, immortalized her in what is probably his most famous painting, the ‘Fighting Temeraire’. It was a tremendous success, and was offered to Lady Louisa for £200. She refused the offer, as she considered it was too much to pay for a painting by a living painter.

Among the obituaries at his death in 1830, the following suggests a not unreasonable view of his character. ‘As a magistrate remarkable for firmness and decision which seem considered as approximating too closely to a rigid dispensation of justice, but in is private capacity he was sincere and constant and, what redounds to his praise, he was a kind, liberal and indulgent landlord’.

One could certainly be remembered less happily.

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