Major General & Commander of The Bath (*), distinguished for his service in The Peninsula, Belgium & Ava. Fought at the battles of Roleija, Vimiera, Lugo, Corunna, Oporto, Talavera, Melloon & Waterloo. Severely wounded twice, he received many medals, some of which are carved on his memorial in his family lair at Greyfriars.
(*) The Order of the Bath is a British order of Chivalry founded by George I in 1725. Recipients are usually senior military officers. The name derives from the medieval ceremony of ritual bathing before being knighted.
Some inscriptions on memorials at Greyfriars reference forgotten wars, in remote foreign lands, involving terrible suffering. This memorial to Adam Davie, Major in His Majesty’s Service, who died a prisoner of war in the City of Candy, the Island of Ceylon, in July 1812, after 9 years captivity there, is a case in point.
Candy (or Kandy) was a Kingdom within Ceylon (now called Sri Lanka) that remained Independent by resisting British Colonial rule until 1815. There was a series of wars between 1796 and 1815 in which the British Army sought to gain control of the highlands in the centre of Ceylon. Major Adam Morries, the only son of John Davie & Mary Flint, was captured by enemy forces during one of these wars, with his soldiers being massacred after Major Adam Davie ordered them to surrender.
Major Adam Davie is known to have survived as a special prisoner of the King of Candy for at least nine years. Still wearing his tattered Major’s jacket throughout his captivity, but barefooted, he apparently never made any attempt to escape Candy and all requests to the King of Candy from the British Army for the Major’s release were refused. Davie had apparently married a Candy woman during his captivity and had children. So quite possibly he didn’t want to leave Candy, fearful of possible retributions for his actions preceding his capture. He died of a stroke in 1812.
The full rather incredible and bloody story of the wars & the events leading up to his capture are told here.
The independence of the Kandyan kingdom came to an end in 1815
