AdmiralSir William Garnham Luard, KCB (7 April 1820 – 19 May 1910) was a British Royal Navy officer.[1]
Naval career
Born in 1820, he was the eldest son of a local magistrate, William Wright Luard J.P., D.L. of Witham Lodge,[2]Witham, Essex (formerly of Hatfield Peverel Priory) and Charlotte Garnham, only child of Thomas Garnham of Belchamp Hall (Felsham Hall in Lovejoy) in Suffolk.[3] The Luards were a prominent family of Protestant Huguenot merchants who had fled to England from Caen, Normandy in the late 17th century as part of the mass exodus of Huguenots from France to England that followed the 1685 revocation of the Edict of Nantes.[3]
Luard entered the Royal Naval College (formerly the Royal Naval Academy) at Portsmouth at the age of 13 and later studied at Portsmouth Naval College. He served extensively and saw action in the South China Sea, for which he was recognized in dispatches and decorated for gallantry and bravery several times including being named Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB).[4]
Luard was advanced to KCB by Queen Victoria in 1897, during her diamond jubilee year.[4]
Luard married Charlotte Du Cane (an anglicization of the original French surname 'Du Quesne') in 1858, with whom he had 13 children.[4] She was from another French Huguenot family (see Jean Du Quesne, the elder and descendants), with landed estates at Braxted Park and Coggeshall.[6][7]
A staunch Liberal and supporter of Prime Minister William Gladstone, Luard retired to his estate in Essex[8] where he served as a justice of the peace and as an active member of the court of Quarter Sessions. He died in 1910 as a result of injuries sustained in a carriage accident. His funeral cortege in his home town of Witham, Essex attracted thousands of mourners. [9]
References
^The Illustrated Naval and Military Magazine, Volume V, W.H. Allen & co, 1886
^see Men of Bad Character: the Witham Fires of the 1820s by Janet Gyford