J. E. B. Seely, 1st Baron Mottistone
John Edward Bernard Seely, 1st Baron Mottistone, CB, CMG, DSO, TD, PC, JP, DL (31 May 1868 – 7 November 1947), also known as Jack Seely, was a British Army general and politician. He was a Conservative Member of Parliament (MP) from 1900 to 1904 and a Liberal MP from 1904 to 1922 and from 1923 to 1924. He was Secretary of State for War for the two years prior to the First World War, before being forced to resign as a result of the Curragh Incident. He led one of the last great cavalry charges in history at the Battle of Moreuil Wood on his war horse Warrior in March 1918. Seely was a great friend of Winston Churchill and the only former cabinet minister to go to the front in 1914 and still be there four years later.
The Lord Mottistone
7 November 1947 (aged 79)
Westminster, England
8, including David Seely, 4th Baron Mottistone
Sir Charles Seely, 1st Baronet
Emily Evans
Brough Scott (grandson)
Sophie Hunter (great-great-granddaughter)
Bob Seely (great-great nephew)
1889–1923
Background[edit]
Seely was born at Brookhill Hall in the village of Pinxton in Derbyshire on 31 May 1868.[1] He was the seventh child, and fourth son, of Sir Charles Seely, 1st Baronet (1833–1915).[1]
Seely was a member of a family of politicians, industrialists and significant landowners. His grandfather Charles Seely (1803–1887) was a noted Radical Member of Parliament and philanthropist and was famous for hosting Giuseppe Garibaldi, the Italian revolutionary hero, in London and the Isle of Wight in 1864.[1] Seely's father and brother Sir Charles Seely, 2nd Baronet were also MPs, as would later be his nephew Sir Hugh Seely, 3rd Baronet and 1st Baron Sherwood, who became Under-Secretary of State for Air during the Second World War.
The family had homes in Nottinghamshire and the Isle of Wight as well as extensive property in London. He is still associated with the Isle of Wight, where he spent his holidays whilst growing up.[1] His aunt's husband, Colonel Harry Gore Browne, won the Victoria Cross during the Indian Mutiny. Gore Browne was manager of the extensive Seely estates on the Isle of Wight. Queen Victoria lived nearby at her favourite residence, Osborne House.
Early life[edit]
He was educated at Harrow School, where he fagged for Stanley Baldwin.[1] He also met Winston Churchill, who became a lifelong friend. He then studied at Trinity College, Cambridge 1887–90.[2][1]
Seely served in the Hampshire Yeomanry, in which he was commissioned as a second lieutenant, while still an undergraduate, on 7 December 1889.[3] He was promoted to lieutenant on 23 December 1891 and to captain on 31 May 1892.[4][5]
He joined the Inner Temple and was called to the Bar in 1897.[1]
Second Boer War[edit]
Following the outbreak of the Second Boer War he was commissioned as a captain in the Imperial Yeomanry on 7 February 1900,[6] having succeeded in arranging transport to South Africa for his squadron the same week,[7] with the assistance of his uncle Sir Francis Evans, 1st Baronet, chairman of the Union Castle Line.[1] He is remembered in South Africa as the commander that placed the 14-year-old Japie Greyling (1890-1954) against a wall in front of a firing squad, threatening to have him executed if he did not provide information about the Boer forces in the area. The boy refused to cooperate, and was freed. Several memorials still exist in South Africa today, attesting to the remarkable story.[8]
He served bravely, if a little insubordinately.[1] He was mentioned in despatches and awarded a medal with four clasps, as well as the Distinguished Service Order (DSO) in November 1900.[9]
Under-Secretary of State[edit]
In 1908, the new Prime Minister H. H. Asquith appointed him Under-Secretary of State for the Colonies, in place of Winston Churchill who had been promoted to the Cabinet.[1] According to the Dictionary of National Biography, "Since his chief, Lord Crewe, was in the Lords, important work fell to the under-secretary, in particular the South Africa Act 1909, which brought about the Union of South Africa."[1] He became a member of the Privy Council in 1909.[17][1] Seely was also amongst those Liberals who strongly supported Lloyd George's budgets of 1909 and 1910.[18]
Seely was defeated for Abercromby at the January 1910 General Election and returned to Parliament for Ilkeston in Derbyshire at a by-election in March 1910, holding that seat until 1922.[1] In October 1910, he was awarded the Territorial Decoration.[19]
Later career[edit]
Seely relinquished his temporary rank of major-general on 14 January 1919.[45] He was appointed Under-Secretary of State for Air and President of the Air Council in 1919, again under Winston Churchill (Secretary of State for War). However, he resigned both posts at the end of 1919 after the Government refused to create a Secretary of State for Air (as it later did).[1] In June 1920, he was one of three candidates for the post of Governor-General of Australia presented to the Australian prime minister Billy Hughes, along with Lord Forster and Lord Donoughmore.[46]
Like many Lloyd George Liberals, Seely lost his seat at Ilkeston at the November 1922 General Election.[1] He retired from the army on 25 August 1923, with the honorary rank of major-general.[47] Seely was also a Colonel of the Territorial Army, an Honorary Colonel of 72nd (Hampshire), an Honorary Air Commander Auxiliary Air Force.
Seely returned to Parliament as a member of the reunited Liberal Party for the Isle of Wight at the December 1923 General Election, which saw a hung Parliament in which the Liberals supported the first Labour Government under Ramsay MacDonald. In May 1924, however, Churchill (then out of Parliament, and who had recently left the Liberal Party to become an independent "Constitutionalist", prior to rejoining the Conservatives after his return to the Commons in 1924) listed Seely in a letter to Conservative leader Stanley Baldwin as one of his group of Liberal MPs who would vote against the Labour government, and a month later mentioned Seely as a likely Liberal Conservative. Indeed, according to historian Chris Wrigley, Seely's political trajectory was similar to that of Churchill's (i.e. a Conservative in 1900, joining the Liberals a few years later, then becoming a Conservative again in the 1920s).[48] Seely lost his seat again at the 1924 General Election, at which the Liberals suffered heavy losses.[1] Seely vehemently opposed the General Strike of 1926.[48]
He was made Chairman of the National Savings Committee in 1926, a post he served in until 1943, the same year he became vice-president until his death. During this time he was asked by the Government to conduct the publicity in regard to the conversion of the 5% war loan. According to The Times, "in the Second World War the activities of the National Savings Committee were largely extended and became a vital part of the national war effort." He continued to have an influential role in domestic politics.[1]
Seely was granted the Freedom of the City of Portsmouth in 1927.[2]
Legacy[edit]
Seely was a popular figure in the House of Commons.[1] In later life, in a play on his title, his self-promotion earned him the nickname "Lord Modest One".[1] He was described as a brave man, but it was also said unkindly of him that if he had had more brains he would have been half-witted.[53]
The Times called him a "Gallant Figure in War and Politics" and Lord Birkenhead wrote, "In fields of great and critical danger he has constantly over a long period of years displayed a cool valour which everybody in the world who knows the facts freely recognizes." Marshal Ferdinand Foch, Supreme Commander of the Allied Armies in the final year of the First World War, gave him a cigarette case inscribed, Au Ministre de 1912: au Vaillant de la Grande Guerre.
A screen was erected in St. Peter and St. Paul's Church in Mottistone in his memory.
Marriages and descendants[edit]
Seely married Emily Florence, daughter of Colonel Sir Henry George Louis Crichton, on 9 July 1895. They had three sons and four daughters. She died in August 1913.[1]
His eldest son and heir, 2Lt Frank Reginald Seely, was killed in action with the Royal Hampshire Regiment at the Battle of Arras on 13 April 1917.[1]
He married for the second time, to Evelyn Izmé Murray, JP (born 1886, died 11 Aug 1976) on 31 July 1917. She was the widow of his friend George Crosfield Norris Nicholson and daughter of Montolieu Oliphant-Murray, 1st Viscount Elibank. They had one son (she already had a son from her previous marriage).[1]
Seely's heir John Seely (1899–1963) was an architect whose work, with Paul Edward Paget in the partnership of Seely & Paget, included the interior of Eltham Palace in the Art Deco style, and the post-World War II restoration of a number of bomb-damaged buildings, such as the London Charterhouse and the church of St John Clerkenwell.
Seely's son from his second marriage, David Peter Seely, 4th Baron Mottistone (1920–2011), was the last Governor of the Isle of Wight; he was baptised with Winston Churchill and the then Prince of Wales (subsequently Edward VIII and then later the Duke of Windsor) as his godparents
Seely's grandson Brough Scott, who presented horseracing television programmes, wrote a biography of Seely, Galloper Jack (2003).
Seely was a maternal great-great-grandfather of theatre director Sophie Hunter.[54][55][56]
The present Conservative MP for the Isle of Wight, Bob Seely, is his great-great nephew.[57]
In popular culture[edit]
According to the Sir Alfred Munnings Art Museum (Alfred Munnings was a former president of the Royal Academy of Arts and famous horse painter)[58] "Without doubt his most important painting was that of General J. E. B. Seely (later Lord Mottistone) on his charger Warrior which led to his commission to paint the Earl of Athlone, brother of Queen Mary."[59]
Jack Seely was featured in the HBO film Into the Storm in 2009. At the end of the film Churchill reads a sympathetic post-election note from his old friend Jack Seely: "I feel our world slipping away." Churchill thinks back: "I met him in South Africa, riding across the veldt. He was Col. Seely then. I saw him at the head of a column of British cavalry, riding twenty yards in front, on a black horse. I thought of him as the very symbol of British Imperial power." The Testimony Films 2012 documentary War Horse: The Real Story contained extensive discussion of the First World War service of Seely and his widely revered horse, Warrior. Warrior was adopted as his formation's mascot and had a reputation for bravery under fire. Warrior survived the war, dying in 1941 at the age of 33.[60] In September 2014, the horse was posthumously awarded an honorary PDSA Dickin Medal for bravery.[61]
Seely's books shed light on his personality but are not always factually reliable.[62]