SERGEANT E.N. THORNEWILL, 68TH (PAGET’S HORSE) COMPANY, 19TH (PAGET’S HORSE) BATTALION IMP

SERGEANT E.N. THORNEWILL, 68TH (PAGET’S HORSE) COMPANY, 19TH (PAGET’S HORSE) BATTALION IMPERIAL YEOMANRY. Queen’s South Africa Medal, 3 clasps, Cape Colony, Transvaal, South Africa 1901 (officially named, impressed in plain block capitals: 13327 Sgt. E.N. THORNEWILL, 68th. Co. 19th. IMPL: YEO:). Good Very Fine.

Medal accompanied by biographical details, 6 pages of copied service papers, extracts from 1891 and 1911 census returns and copied medal rolls, confirming medal and clasps.

Edward Noel Thornewill (1874-1949) born in the parish of New Brighton, Cheshire, was a member of the Thornewill family of Tilston Lodge, Malpas, Cheshire. He enlisted as a private in Paget’s Horse at Suffolk Street, London, 8/2/1900. At the time of enlistment he was 25 years of age and gave his trade as that of “gentleman”. Promoted Corporal, 23/4/1900 and Sergeant, 29/7/1900, Thornewill was discharged on demobilisation on 24/6/1901. He is recorded in the 1911 census as a married man living at Tilston Lodge, Malpas, Cheshire, with his wife, daughter, two sons and seven servants.

Thornewill was a descendant of the Plantagenet royal dynasty, as recorded in the “Plantagenet Roll of the Blood Royal” (Marquis of Ruvigny and Raineval, London, 1911).

Paget’s Horse, the 51st, 52nd, 68th and 73rd Companies, which served with the 12th and 19th Battalion Imperial Yeomanry, was an elite unit. The following description of that regiment, the man who raised it and its recruits is taken from “Absent Minded Beggars” by Will Bennett.

“They were public school-educated men recruited through advertisements in gentlemen’s clubs. The battalion was raised by George Paget, the son of a British general and a compulsive amateur soldier with a penchant for getting himself involved in any conflict that afforded the chance of action. He never seems to have been a regular officer but served in the Russo- Turkish War of 1877-8 and the Greco-Turkish War of 1897, as well as the Zulu War in 1879. Although aged 46 when the Boer War broke out, he went out to South Africa as second-in-command of his regiment and proved himself to be a man of some courage, being wounded twice. A portly figure who felt at home in the dining rooms and smoking rooms of Pall Mall, Paget recruited 500 officers and men from a tiny, hopelessly inadequate room at the Imperial Yeomanry Committee’s offices in Suffolk Street. However, it at least had the advantage of being only a short stroll from the clubs of which he was a member. Paget’s Horse wore a badge made up of the letters PH which provided a source of instant merriment for the wags on the streets of London, who suggested that it stood for ‘Piccadilly Heroes’ or more commonly for ‘Perfectly Harmless’. Gentlemen troopers such as Cosmo Rose-Innes, a barrister, found that wearing their new uniforms in the capital produced a rich variety of reactions and some odd social contradictions. He later recalled: “The khaki drew to its wearer, however, many amusing experiences the fervent ‘God bless you’ of old ladies in the bus, the friendly offers of navvies to “ave half a pint’ in the street, the respect of substantial citizens for one’s opinion on the war. The “ave half a pint’ situation was the most embarrassing. We were clad as troopers but flattered ourselves we bore the impress of officers and hence a conflict of emotions, the desire to be rollicking good fellows qualified by surprise that our would-be host should not detect the gentleman under the plain khaki.”