Lives in Cricket No 7 - Richard Daft

re-enlisted there on 13 October, 1806 when he was already 45 years old, and served up to 13 September, 1817 before being sent home prior to his discharge. John’s journey home took as long as eleven months: he was not returning from Spain, for his military service took place almost entirely in India, or on the seas around it. In 1797, he was at sea when the Regiment was in training to prepare for battle against Napoleon’s numerous agents in India. In 1805, the Regiment was in Malta, presumably returning to service in India: there ensued the astonishingly long period of eleven years while they were stationed in or around the sub-continent, with the objective of opposing Britain’s French enemies and their associates among the local population. Trichinopoly was their base until 1808; then they returned to Madras. For two years they were at sea. Eventually, by November 1816, they were back in India, at Bangalore. There, in September the following year, John Daft was given his discharge ‘in consequence of old age and inability’. It cannot be said that serving in the heat of turbulent India or under sail in wooden warships for all that time was a safe and comfortable experience; he and his colleagues must have earned every penny of their meagre wages. Service under the great Duke’s command was quite feasible for John Daft because, as Colonel Arthur Wellesley, Wellington pursued a victorious course against those Indian potentates who were hostile to British interests. By 1803, Britain had become the undisputed military power in India. So John Daft was never in the Peninsula. He did not receive an heroic character reference; indeed, the certifying officer wrote: ‘His general conduct has not been uniformly good, from an almost constant habit of drunkenness and other insubordinate acts.’ The certificate of discharge describes him as about 53 years of age, five feet six inches in height, brown hair, dark eyes, dark complexion, and by trade a framework knitter. Richard’s baptismal certificate contains the same occupation; by that time, 1835, according to the certificate of discharge, John was 70 years old. Ashley-Cooper, on information received from Richard Parr Daft, says in A Cricketer’s Yarns that he died at the age of 86, which might have been in 1851. On his marriage certificate, Richard describes his father as a glove maker. He surely must have expired by 1862. In all other documents he is referred 10 Nottingham, Queen of the Midlands