Major Fiennes Cornwallis
(1831-1867)
3 June 1861

 

Volume 4, page 12, sitting number 4118.

Major Fiennes Cornwallis of the 4th Hussars was the son of Charles Wykeham-Martin and his wife Lady Jemima Cornwallis, only daughter of James, fifth Earl Cornwallis. He rose to the rank of Major in the service of the 4th Light Dragoons; during the Crimean War he took part in the famous Charge of the Light Brigade. On 29 July 1863 at Barnimham in Norfolk he married Harriet Elizabeth, second daughter of Mr John Thomas Mott, of Barningham Hall. He died, aged only 35, on 23 April 1867.

‘Major Fiennes Cornwallis, late of the 4th Light Dragoons, who died from the effects of a fall while hunting, on the 23rd ult., at Chacombe Priory, Northamptonshire, was the second son of Charles Wykeham-Martin, Esq., of Leeds Castle, Kent, and of Chacombe Priory, Northamptonshire, M.P. for Newport, Isle of Wight, by his wife, Jemima Isabella, elder daughter of James, fifth and last Earl Cornwallis, and was brother of Philip Wykeham-Martin, Esq., M.P. for Rochester. He was born on Nov. 1, 1831, and had served in the Army in the Crimea, and was one of the gallant “six hundred who rode into the valley of death” at Balaclava; and at Inkerman, he was for some time under a heavy fire. He became Aide-de-Camp to Lord George Paget, and remained in the Crimea until the last of the light cavalry were embarked. He became a Major in 1860. He assumed the surname of Cornwallis in lieu of his patronymic Wykeham-Martin’ (Illustrated London News, 11 May 1867).

His son, Francis Stanley Wykeham Cornwallis, was born in 1864. He served as Member of Parliament for Maidstone from 1888 to 1895 and again from 1898 to 1900. In 1927 he was raised to the peerage as Baron Cornwallis of Linton in the County of Kent.