[Conquest of Cayenne, 1809.] Manuscript Petition to King George III, signed by Thomas Sevestre, surgeon of HMS Confiance, asking permission to 'enjoy the Privileges' of a Portuguese order. With seal of Portuguese ambassador Sousa Coutinho.

The Conquest of Cayenne - part of Britain’s strategy of using its naval power to attack French colonial interests in the Napoleonic Wars - is described in the fifth volume of William James’s ‘Naval History of Great Britain’ (1827). Britain was only able to contribute HMS Confiance, but its captain James Lucas Yeo was put in charge of the whole expedition, and he and his crew performed with distinction (see Yeo’s entry in the Oxford DNB). As for the petitioner of the present item, in the notice of his death in the Annual Register for 1842 Sevestre is described as ‘late surgeon on the Madras Establishment’. His entry in Crawford’s ‘Roll of the Indian Medical Service 1615-1930’ (1930) reads, under 1809: ‘Sevestre, Thomas (b). b. 1784. Surg. Mate, ‘Thames,’ 1803-04. M[ember].R[oyal].C[ollege].S[urgeons]. 1805. Served in Royal Navy, 1806-09. A[ssistant]. S[urgeon]. 16 July 1809. Surg. 1 Jan. 1824. S.S. 3 Sept. 1837. R[etired]. 5 Dec. 1837. d. at Florence, 15 Feb. 1842. Knight of Tower and Sword, (Porugal), 1816. Capture of Cayenne, 14 Jan. 1809, as Surg. of H.M.S. ‘Confiance.’ Capture of Java, 1811.’ The present item is 2pp, foolscap 8vo, on the first leaf of a bifolium, the second leaf being docketed ‘Petition / of Thos. Sevestre Esq’. The two leaves have become detached from one another, and the paper is lightly stained and somewhat discoloured and worn, but with the text entirely legible. There has been some unobtrusive repair with archival tape, which goes over the signature ‘Thomas Sevestre.’ The petition is in another hand to Sevestre’s, and is headed ‘To the King’s Most Excellent Majesty / The Humble Petition of Thomas Sevestre Esqr. Member of the Royal College of Surgeons London & late Surgeon of Your Majesty’s Ship the Confiance.’ Sevestre begins by stating that he served on the Confiance ‘during the period of the Reduction of the Island of Cayenne in the Montsh of December 1808 and January 1809 during which period the Care not only of the Sick and Wounded of Your Majesty’s said Ship amounting to seventy Men but that of the Portuguese Army and French Prisoners and others in the Military Hospital, and on board the Prison Ships in the Harbour of that Port amounting to about Three Hundred Men, devolved upon Your Majesty’s Petitioner owing to the Illness of the other Medical Attendants’. He further states that ‘His Royal Highness John Prince of Brazil, Prince Regent of Portugal’ conferred on him ‘the Insignia of a Knight of the Order of the Tower and Sword’, and that he requests the king’s ‘Royal Licence and Authority that He may avail himself of this mark of the Favour of the said Prince Regent of Portugal and bear in this Country the Insignia of a Knight of the said Order of the Tower and Sword, and enjoy the Privileges annexed thereto, and that the Relative Documents may be registered in the College of Arms’. At the foot of the second page, in three different hands, is the following: ‘I do hereby certify that the Contents of the above Petition are correct. Given under my hand & sealed with the Arms of this Mission. London the 31st day of March 1810’. A red wax seal, with a clear impression of the ‘Arms’, is placed beside the following, in another hand: ‘The Chevalier &c Sousa Couttinho [sic, i.e. Domingos António de Sousa Coutinho (1762-1833), 1st Marquis of Funchal] Envoy Extr. & Min. Pleny of the Court of Portugal’. And in a third hand: ‘By Order of His Excellencie [sic] / Austin Smith’.