Charles Palmer: from Major General with the Royal Hussars to disgrace and bankruptcy…

By the time of his death, on April 24 1851, aged 73, Charles Palmer had been a Major General, a long-term MP for the city of Bath, and a significant owner of Bordeaux vines. He was also penniless and disgraced, and living in rented accommodation at 35 Warren Street, Clerkenwell, London, today one of a row of non-descript offices.

A few weeks before his death, at the end of March 1851, Palmer was recorded in the 10-yearly national census as a ‘retired Major General’ living on his own, a widower, in lodgings run by a Mrs Clark from Chippenham.

He was the only adult male living at the address, but Mrs Clark is named as the head of the household. The lodgings were clearly modest, as only one 35-year-old house servant is listed, also from Chippenham, called Sarah Bunner. Mrs Clark had six children, with ages spanning from 16 to 2 years old, so Palmer spent his last years surrounded with young people, although he had never become a father himself.

Palmer was born on May 15, 1777 at Westhall House, just outside of Bath, and was baptised at Weston parish church, originally a separate village but now part of the outer suburbs to the northwest of the city. There is still a Westhall Rd in the area, near to the Royal Victoria Park, although it is today a suburban cul-de-sac, with pretty houses but no trace of a Westhall House. You can, however, find a commemorative plaque to Palmer’s grandparents inside the parish church, which is called All Saint’s and dates back to the 12th century. The carved stone displays the names John Palmer, who died in 1788, and his wife Jane, who died in 1783.

The Palmers were an important family. Both Charles’ great grandfather Samuel and grandfather John were in the brewing business, providing a neat link to the wine business that would fascinate Charles for much of his life. His grandfather was one of the best-known brewers in the city, described in the Diary of National Biography as ‘a prosperous brewer and tallow-chandler, and a member of an old Bath family.’ He ran a brewery and maltings, and tallow (candle) chandlery, while his wife Jane Long came from a long-standing Wiltshire family who owned the beautiful South Wraxall Manor (one of her descendants, Ann Charteris would many years later marry author Ian Fleming). Palmer Senior became so successful that he was able to build the Orchard Street Theatre in Bath in 1750.

Charles’ father John Palmer II was also an important man in the city, who took over the running of the theatre from his father and ensured it was given Royal recognition in 1768, becoming the Theatre Royal; an asset that he was able to hand down later to his son Charles on his death in 1818. John Palmer was also a long-serving mayor and MP for Bath, and set up the early template for the modern postal system in Britain by introducing mail coaches in 1782 that ran between London and Bristol in 16 hours, where previously the post had taken 38 hours to cover the same distance. By 1785 the system covered much of England. Palmer had been promised 2.5% of all increased revenue, but although he was given a pension of £3,000 a year, it took until 1813 – and the intervention of his son Charles – for him to be fully financially compensated for his invention.

Charles’ education reflects the family’s standing. Second of three (surviving) sons, he was sent to Eton school from 1791 to 1793, and from there to Oriel College Oxford.

While still at school, at the age of 15, he joined his father in signing a petition from the Guildhall in Bath on December 8th 1792, in support of the Association for Preserving the Liberty, Property and the Constitution of Great Britain Against Republicans and Levellers. This association, founded in response to the French Revolution that was raging over the Channel, had been launched in November 1792 by British judge and conservative activist John Reeves at the Crown and Anchor Tavern in the Strand, London. It was staggeringly successful, spawning 2,000 local branches almost immediately, and continued to publish loyalist pamphlets and disrupt radical meetings around the country for around a year, until it had basically become clear that England was not going to follow France into Revolution.

The Royal Hussars

But Charles was not to go immediately into the family business. Upon graduating from Oriel, aged 19, his father purchased a military title for him on 17th May 1796 as a Cornet of the Regiment of Light Dragoons, the lowest commissioned rank officer.

Pamer was joining the 10th Royal Hussars, which was known as the Prince of Wales’s Own, a cavalry regiment of the British Army that was active from 1715 until 1969. In 1782 George, Prince of Wales had been appointed Colonel Commandant of the 10th, making it one of the most prestigious regiments in the army.

Dragoons were soldiers trained on horseback and on foot, and by the time Charles Palmer signed up, they were launching into the Napoleonic Wars that ran from 1792 to 1815. Palmer bought his commission for £735 ‘being the price limited by his Majesty’s Regulations as the full value of said commission’, the smallest amount that you could buy an officer’s rank for (on the same day, a James Blake signed up as a Captain in a commission that cost him £3,150). Besides the commission, Palmer would also have had to buy his uniform, including a regimental hat and sword, a bleached sword belt, a long silk sash, an officer’s coat, waistcoat and breeches, which would have come to £9, 13 shillings in total. The uniforms of the 10th Hussars had scarlet facings and white lace, one of the most dashing of all regiments.

An officer would, of course, be paid for his work. Pay day was the 25th of each month, and as a cornet Palmer received 8 shillings a day, or £124 a year. By the time he bought Chateau Palmer in 1814, he was a Colonel, and receiving £599 per year, plus bonuses for successful army campaigns.

As the army expanded during war-time, commissions could be obtained without buying them – but not in fashionable regiments such as the Light Dragoons, and even for many of his promotions within the army, he was again expected to buy his way up through the ranks. Charles was the second son in a prosperous family, meaning that his joining the army as an officer was an expected path. His elder brother John Palmer (III) went in to the church, another highly respected profession at the time. He spent 34 years as Rector of St Mary’s Pheldon, near Colchester in Essex, and died as Reverend Palmer on May 17, 1851, at the age of 77, just one month after Charles (John’s death was reported in The Spectator, while Charles’ only made it into the local Bath newspaper, as he had been out of public life for some time by then). Charles’ wife, incidentally, died in 1844, and her death made it into newspapers all over England, showing how much more important Charles was in 1844.

Charles’ younger brother Edmond joined the Royal Navy, eventually dying in 1834 as Captain Palmer. Edmond had a fairly glorious career himself, capturing a French ship, L’Etoile, towards the end of the Peninsular War in March 1814 – the last frigate action of the Napoleonic Wars. He was offered a knighthood for this, but for an unknown reason declined it. Edmund was also present in Bordeaux in July 1815, in command of HMS Hebrus, to arm and organise French royalists.

Charles was clearly successful in his chosen military career, because he was promoted to Lieutenant in 1797, then Captain in 1799, Major in 1805, then purchased the Junior Lieutenant-Colonel rank for 1000 guineas (£1050) in May 1810. He remained Lieutenant Colonel from 1810-1814, the junior of the two colonels within the 10th Hussars. His Commanding Officer at this time was Lieutenant-Colonel George Quentin – a situation that would have a lasting impact on both of their lives. The Prince Regent also appointed him aide-de-campe on Febuary 8, 1811 (a post which he reportedly held until became Major-General on May 27, 1825, although he was no longer in active service from 1815).

Palmer saw active duty off-and-on throughout the Peninsular War, landing in Corunna, Portugal in 1808, where the English were outnumbered by French troops. Between active duty, much of the time was spent in England, where he began building his political career, following in the footsteps of his father. From January 1809 until February 1813, according to local newspaper reports, the regiment was stationed in England (mainly in Brighton, where they apparently invented hurdle racing over The Downs in 1811, and were recorded as being ‘prominently to the fore in the fashionable sporting and racing events’, sounding tantalisingly like characters in Jane Austen novels).

Tearing themselves away from Brighton, they rejoined the war effort in 1813, landing at Lisbon under the Duke of Wellington. In their absence, the war had swung against Napoleon and towards Wellington, meaning their final campaigns were largely successful.

Not long after they arrived in Lisbon, Charles handed over command of the 10th Hussars to Major Robarts, to return to England. He subsequently claimed that he did this because he felt his ‘proper post’ as second-in-command was with the depot in England, but most observers felt that he had gone back to fight for his father’s compensation from the English government for his mail coach business. Whether this was his main motivation, in 1813 Charles gave a speech in parliament on his father’s behalf, and finally saw John Palmer receive £54,700 in compensation for his contributions to the postal service.

A Year That Changed Everything

1814, it is fair to say, was a key year for Palmer. It was the end of the Peninsular War, which he had been fighting since 1807. He would have been rewarded for successful actions in the Peninsular War as prizes were often given at the end of successful battles, of up to £100 for a general.  Besides financial rewards, Palmer was made a colonel on June 4, 1814, and he bought Chateau Palmer on June 16, 1814. It is not known precisely if he used his father’s compensation to fund the purchase, which had been won after extensive lobbying by Charles Palmer himself, but all the known facts point to this.

His father had stepped down as MP because of ill health in 1808, and handed over to Charles. The words of his father’s will in 1818 gave £20,000 to both of his brothers, but not to Charles, which suggests that he had already received an advance on his inheritance. Relations were good between father and son, and as it was Charles’ lobbying that had secured the compensation, it seems unlikely that John would have refused an advance of what would have been around £7000 for investing in the chateau. They were not joint owners, however, as John Palmer is not mentioned on the purchase document.

Not everything went well though. On April 10th 1814 in Toulouse, a set piece battle was fought. From the 10th Hussars, Captain Charles Gordon and four men were killed, and seven others wounded, as well as several horses. This may well be the origin of the anger among the men, that Colonel George Quentin was not doing his job effectively – although most contemporary reports suggest that there were problems of drunkenness among the men, and a general lack of coordinated leadership – and that relations between Quentin and Palmer had long soured, largely because they were very different personalities.

After the Toulouse battle, hostilities ceased following Napoleon’s abdication. The 10th Hussars regiment was gathered in Bordeaux to ship out back to England, although some of the men sent just their luggage there, and rode up through France to return to England via a northern port.

The account on the 10th Hussars in the Peninsular War says the regiment was ‘cheerfully sending off their heavy baggage to Bordeaux and taking a pleasant trot through France to embark at Boulogne for England, mission accomplished.’ Other accounts say that the troops were to return home to England via ships from the Bordeaux harbour. In the court martial that disrupted so much at the end of 1814, Charles Palmer is recorded as saying that he volunteered for the duty of overseeing the men who travelled up to Bordeaux.

Specifically, Charles’ words were ‘After the battle of Toulouse, I applied for the command of the detachment of dismounted men, who were sent home by Bourdeaux, and in consequence I left the regiment in the month of May.’

As records have Charles present in Bordeaux in June 1814 to sign the papers for buying Domaine de Gasq, we can be fairly certain that he did indeed first come to Bordeaux after the Toulouse battle, so in May 1814.

Buying Château Palmer

It’s not exactly clear is where Palmer met Madame de Gasq – the famous story of the coach ride appears in the memoirs of Captain Gronow, who wrote that the stagecoach was travelling between Lyon and Paris. It is far more likely that it was in fact travelling between Bordeaux and Paris, or even Toulouse and Paris, as we can place Charles in Toulouse in April, and Bordeaux in late May and through the month of June.

But whatever route he took, we do know he was in Bordeaux on June 16, 1814, as Palmer bought Chateau de Gasq from Madame Gasq, and renamed it at some point Chateau Palmer.

The sale document states that Charles is a ‘member of the English parliament, Lieutenant Colonel of the 10th Regiment of the Hussards, currently in the quarter of General Duke of Wellington in Bordeaux but usually living in Bath, Somerset, present in the commune of Cantenac at the time of the signing, and accepts to buy the property from Dame Degascq.’

Palmer bought a maison de maitre, chai, cuvier, stables, garden, vegetable garden, vines, several specified plots of vines located around the chateau referred to as Cassena, Maucaillou, Bouyley, Grayrole, Massac. He also buys some finished wine – 32 kilolitres, 698 litres, plus wine presses in good state, a pair of oxen, two carts and various vineyard tools. Madame de Gascq’s furniture was not included in the sale. Madame de Gasq had the right to live in the main house for a further nine months after the purchase, for free, and to receive wine.

Palmer bought the estate for 100,000 francs – at the time £7,000 – so easily within the budget that he likely received from his father.

Soon after, Palmer returned to England, and rejoined his regiment in Brighton – in his own words at the court martial – on August 9th. It was here that an internal affair within the regiment turned nasty, and Palmer’s brilliant year came to an abrupt end. Most of the 24 officers who had been serving in the recent French campaign sent a signed letter to the Prince of Wales requesting the dismissal of Lieutenant Colonel Quentin. Palmer was appointed prosecutor at a court martial that accused Quentin of, among other things, cowardice.

Quentin was acquitted, and retained command of the 10th Royal Hussars, and the Prince was hugely displeased that Palmer had let things go this far. The three officers who did not sign the original letter stayed with the 10th Royal Hussars, but the others were dispersed to other cavalry regiments, and became known as the Elegant Extracts. Later, the 10th Hussars would fight at Waterloo, but by this point Palmer was not among them – and Colonel George Quentin was.

Newspaper reports at the time report that ‘Colonel Charles Palmer, who prosecuted, and who had shown ‘general concurrence in the sentiments’ of the complaining officers, was also removed from the regiment.’

A very damning opinion is given by Harry Calvert, Adjutant General, in February 1815: ‘this letter ought never to have risen in evidence against the officers; that it ought never to have seen the light; that it was suppressed almost as soon as written, and that it is to the indiscretion of Col. Palmer alone, that its disclosure is to be attributed. I say that Col. Palmer owes it to the officers—that he owes it to his own honour, to state distinctly to the country, the manner in which that letter has risen from obscurity to the ruin of twenty-five of his friends, gallant officers, and honourable men.’

Although he does go on to say that Palmer clearly did not mean for things to go as far as they did. ‘With respect to Col. Palmer, I do not believe, that there ever existed a braver officer, or a more honourable and better man; and in this I have the good fortune to agree with the Court’.

As a result of the court martial, Palmer was removed from the 10th Dragoons as a mark of the Prince’s displeasure, and switched to become Lieutenant Colonel of the 23rd Dragoons on November 12, 1814. Both officers – Palmer and Quentin – retained their rank, and Palmer was further promoted to become Major-General on May 27, 1823, but he was never again on active duty. If we believe Captain Gronow’s recollections, he was still able to present his wine to the Prince, so his relationship with him was clearly not destroyed – but there must have been a difficult few years.

Palmer himself admitted the damage done by the incident in later years, saying ‘I was a damned fool for giving up the letter to the Prince, and the Prince was a damned rascal for making use of it.’

In the immediate aftermath, records agree that Palmer headed to France – and to Bordeaux. This was partly for military reasons, as there were still some administration of the Bordeaux area needed after the Peninsular victor. Clearly Charles will also have been attending to his new vineyard. It was from this point that he began buying up plots of land, and appointing a local agent to act on his behalf when he was not in Bordeaux.

Quentin sought Palmer out again in January 1815, travelling to Paris and demanding a duel (it was illegal by this time to duel in England, so Quentin followed Palmer to France, which looked more leniently upon this type of combat). Palmer was in Bordeaux at the time, but on his return to Paris, he agreed to meet with Quentin, against the advice of his friends.

The Duel was reported on 9 February, 1815, in the Morning Post newspaper, which reprints the letter written by Colonel Quentin to Palmer, asking him for the duel as a result of his behaviour during the court martial: ‘I call upon you as a man of honour, and a Gentleman… to answer for the gross insinuations you have given to the world as to my personal courage’.

The duel in the event turned out to be a gentlemanly affair. Quentin fired first, at twelve paces, but missed his target, then Palmer discharged his pistol in to the air, so neither man was hurt, and Quentin declared his honour satisfied.

Marriage, Politics and Wine

After the court martial and the duel, Palmer devoted himself to his political career as a Whig MP for Bath. In 1818 his father John died, and Charles became owner of the Theatre Royal Bath, further cementing his links to the city. In 1824, at the late age of 47, he married Mary Elizabeth Atkins (born 1784, so 40 at the time of the marriage).

The wedding date was apparently February 12, 1824 – this date is given a decade later in Bordeaux, citing an official translation of their marriage certificate, but there is no record of the marriage in England in the Births, Deaths and Marriages registration. They had no children, not surprisingly given their ages on marriage, and may have separated some time in the 1930s (certainly she was pursuing him through the local courts in Bordeaux in 1834 for money), although when she died, aged 60, in Gravesend in 1844, she is listed in the death notice as the ‘wife of Major General Charles Palmer’.

Wine makes a few appearances in his life in parliament. In some instances he is arguing against overly high duties being imposed on French wine (even while stating his reluctance in giving an opinion upon a subject wherein he was personally interested), and in other cases arguing against the dominance of just a few big names.

For instance, he says at one point, it was asserted, and generally believed, that the best claret was only grown upon the estates called Chateau Margaux and Lafitte; whereas that made upon others was equally good; and not a hundredth part of the claret sold by the merchants under these names, came from the estate of either. In proof of this, he declared, as a proprietor, that the vines upon his own property were in all respects whatever, equally good as those of Chateau-Margaux; and that the claret of the well-known vintage of 1815, made upon his estate, and landed in England from his cellar at Margaux, was equally well flavoured and full-bodied as the best of the same vintage from the merchants’ cellars at Bordeaux.’

Wine aside, Palmer was working as an MP pretty much full time between 1808, when he took over from his father, right up to 1826, when he lost his seat in parliament. He was reelected in 1832 after the Parliamentary Reform Act, and again in 1835, before eventually losing it, for the last time, in 1837, a year before he was declared bankrupt and effectively withdrew from public life. I

Palmer remained in the army until 1831, but wasn’t on active duty, so received only half pay – this was a typical situation, as he was working as an MP, and it was usual during peace time for officers to go on half pay – they would be expected to return to active duty if war was once again declared. The Bath Chronicle reports that on February 17th, 1831, General Palmer sells his commission but that ‘The gallant gentleman will be allowed to retain his rank, without receiving pay.’

By the 1830s, Palmer had purchased land in the communes of Cantenac, Issan and Margaux, and his chateau covered 163 hectares, 82 hectares of which were vineyards. As he spent most of his time in Bath, the estate was run by wine dealer Paul Estenave and estate manager Jean Lagunegrand. And it was around this time, according to the reminiscences of Captain Gronow (published many years later, in the 1860s) that Palmer was attempting to get his wine accepted by the future King George IV at Carlton House.

The only records I could find of Palmer at Carlton House came in 1811, a long time before he left the 10th Hussars, and then again in 1816 when he met the Queen. There are plenty of English newspaper advertisements for Palmer’s Claret or Palmer’s Margaux from the 1820s onwards, so clearly he had enjoyed great success in spreading the renown of the wine back in the English market. According to Gronow, that came to an abrupt end at a Carlton House dinner, when the Prince Regent favoured another wine over his, and he then spent the next few years bankrupting himself (quite literally) by replanting vines and trying various new approaches to make the wine taste more suitable for the Prince’s palate.

Bankruptcy and the sale of Palmer

Debts obviously multiplied, because in 1834 his wife Mary Elizabeth Atkins appears before the Bordeaux Tribunal, as does Charles, to ask for her rights as a wife to be upheld (hence the translation of their original 1824 marriage certificate). The Tribunal, in March 1834, rules in her favour. In the same year, Palmer appears before the tribunal a further four times, each time represented by a Mr Fournier, answering for debts to various wine merchants, including a Mazin on the Allées de Tourny, and a Delbos in Chartrons. Estenave is mentioned as the manager on behalf of Major Palmer in Bordeaux.

In 1837, Palmer loses his seat as an MP, and things seem to swiftly head downhill from here. In July 1837, a ‘Bond of Gentleman Palmer, former MP for Bath’, is advertised in the Bath Chronicle as being up for sale for £2000. A year later, in May 1838, the same newspaper advertises the auction at the Milsom Street Auction Rooms in Bath of a large wine cellar, ‘The Property of a Gentleman’. The wines listed include ’25 Dozen of Palmer’s Claret – received from the General’s Cellar’, plus many other wines, including Golden Sherry, East-India Madeira, 3 Dozen Constantia, 14 Dozen and 9 bottles of Champagne and 7 dozen and 10 bottles of Val de Penas, being part of a parcel imported into this country expressly for the Duke of Sussex.’

It seems to be almost certainly the wine cellar of Major Palmer himself, as just a few months later, in August 1838, he is declared bankrupt with liabilities of £150,000. At this time, Palmer himself is said to be resident in Hertford Street, Mayfair, and his job is given as ‘wine merchant and importer.’ The notices mention Chateau Palmer, but say it is deeply mortgaged. Mr Estanade has written to say that is could perhaps be sold by raising 40,000 shares at £1 per share, but no advertisements for this are found in British newspapers, so we can assume that this share-raising idea did not come to pass.

He clearly did keep some friends however, as the London Standard reports on October 18, 1838, ‘So confident were the creditors that he had been more sinned against than sinning, that they … would supply the funds necessary to carry on the business…’.

The Palmer trail goes pretty cold after this. We know that his wife died in January 1844. We also know of a letter written by a Mr B Peach of Bath after his death in 1851, a month after Charles’ death, to a lady requesting her assistance in placing one of the sons of a Mrs Clark in the London Orphan Asylum. According to this had Charles survived his brother John he would have been able to remunerate Mrs Clark for “the great attention to him for the last seven years”. As John had survived him by one month this had not happened and Mrs Clark was now in dire straits.

We also know that on Charles’ death certificate, in April 1851, his address is written as 35 Warren Street also, and that he was buried on 24 April. He died without a will, or a final testament. At some later date, a plaque was erected in Bath Abbey to his father, to Charles and to his two brothers.

Just two years later, a notice is published in the London Standard for the sale of Domain of Margaux Palmer, Third Great Growth of Medoc (two years before it was officially named as such in the Paris Exhibition). This sale was to take place on 18th May 1853 at the Chamber of Notaires in Bordeaux. It was being sold by the Caisse Hypothecaire in Paris (the largest of his former creditors reportedly), who had owned the chateau since the 1840s. It is highly likely that Palmer himself sold his estate off piecemeal to neighbours and creditors – either sold or was forced to hand over – between 1838 and 1844, with the final date being potentially linked to the death of his wife, and her rights over the estate won in a Bordeaux courtroom in 1834. The historian Pijassou gives the first sale date as 1843, organised by Paul Estanade to a Françoise-Marie Bergerac (his companion), but the outstanding debts on the estate meant that the Caisse Hypothecaire opposed the sale, and instead took over.

Even with all of this, however, the wine itself continued to gain in stature in England. In May 27 1837, in the Newcastle Journal, it is referred to as ‘General Palmer’s first Growth Claret’, and on July 24 1833 in the Hereford Journal as ‘General Palmer’s celebrated First Growth Margeaux Claret’ – both in public wine sales. In the Worcester Herald, on March 14 1845, there is a notice for ‘Two to Three Hundred Dozen of General Palmer’s celebrated CLARET, which having been bottled Two Years, is in the highest condition.’ And in 1887 it is mentioned by the Paris correspondent of the Manchester Evening News that the novelist Alexandre Dumas is drinking Chateau Palmer. The journalist describes the wine simply, and with feeling:

‘It is exquisite and not dear’.