Kitley Heritage - Bastard impaling Rodney

27/ Or a chevron azure Impaling Or three eagles displayed purpure – Bastard impaling Rodney

There were two Bastard/Rodney marriages in consecutive generations, father and son, but the impalement denotes the first of these. Edmund Pollexfen Bastard, son and heir of Edmund (q.v. shield 21), born 12th July 1784, married the Hon. Anne Jane Rodney, daughter of George, 2nd Baron Rodney, at Eye in Hertfordshire on 22nd Jan 1824. The other marriage into a cadet branch of the Rodney line was that of Edmund’s son, Baldwin John Pollexfen Bastard, born 11th March 1830, to Frances Jane, daughter of the Hon. Mortimer Rodney, on 16th Oct 1861. Baldwin, John P Bastard actually inherited the Lordship of the Manor after his elder brother, Edmund R P Bastard, died (q.v. shield 29) but, rather confusingly, the main line of descent of the Lords of Kitley was through Edmund P’s third son, William (q.v. shield 23).

Edmund P Bastard was MP for Devon 1816-30. it might have been he who first instigated the display of the Plantagenet arms at Kitley (although q.v. shield 23), for it is understood that the commissioned someone to trace the lineage, which established that he was a twentieth generation descendant of King Edward III, through the Poullet connections (q.v. shields 17 to 19 & 2). Baldwin J P Bastard, his son, was High Sheriff of Devon 1865, Colonel Commanding the 4th Devon Battalion VR, and also served in the Crimea as a Lieutenant in the 9th Regiment of Foot.

During these years one George Harvey was head butler at Kitley, whom one can imagine as having been the archetypal forgetful butler, for although he was stated in a not in a servant’s book to have been “honest, faithful and willing”, he was also described as being “deficient in head and memory in many respects”! He died in service at Kitley in 1865.

It is likely that these decades of the early-mid nineteenth century marked the period of the Bastard’s most extensive landholdings in Devon – the family had sold the Barton of Duloe, Cornwall, some years earlier – for an 1826 Manor survey records their ownership of the Manors of Yealmpton, Dunstone, Buckland in the Moor (including properties in Ashburton & Widecombe), Aveton Gifford, Baston & Shabbacombe, Worthill (with lands in West Alvington, South Milton, Kingsbridge, Newton Ferrers, Ottery St Mary & Whimple. A total of eight Devonshire Manors, plus additional land, the total extent unfortunately nowhere recorded, but probably something in the region of 15,000 acres.

Regarding the Rodney line, Anne Jane was granddaughter of George B Rodney, 1st Baron Rodney, a name which will be well known to those with interests in the naval history of the country. He was a commander, under Hawke, at the defeat of the L’Etendiene Squadron in 1747, promoted to Rear Admiral in 1759, Commander at le Havre 1760 & Martinique 1761, made a Vice Admiral in 1762, created a Baronet in 1764, defeated Langara at Cape St Vincent in 1780, and was created 1st Baron Rodney in 1782, after his victory over the French fleet in that year, during which the enemy flagship, the 110-gunner Ville de Paris was captured, along with three 74-gunners, two 64-gunners, and four other ships, one sunk, which let ultimately to the capitulation of the enemy and the signing of the Treaty of Versailles in 1783.

Thus, as has already been observed, passages from the military history of the nation can be read in many of the arms to be seen in the Kitley hallway. And not only from remote periods of history, from the days of Caerloverock, Boroughbridge, Crecy and Agincourt, &c, when the Plantagenet dynasty ruled half of Western Europe by the sword, but also from later eras, when the country was the supreme sea power in the world – a century after Rodney, the country had amassed the largest steel-hulled fighting fleet the world has ever seen. And, of course, episodes from the military history of the country from the age of the Empire, and beyond, into the two World Wars of the twentieth century, in which members of the Bastard family served.

And 1st Baron Rodney would have been proud of the actions of the ship which bore his name in WW2. In the late Spring of 1941 HMS Rodney became involved in the hunt for the biggest prize of all in the Battle of the Atlantic and, together with HMS King George V, played a principle role in the most famous naval engagement of the war. The world’s most powerful operational battleship was their quarry, which had been responsible for the sinking of another famous British ship, the loss of which stunned the entire nation when the tragic news was broadcast at 9pm on 21st May 1941. Closing in for the final kill, Rodney fired the almost unbelievable total of 113 salvoes at the stricken Bismark, from ranges of around 25,000 yards down to as close as 3,000 yards, including seven full broadsides from her nine 16-inch guns. Between forty and fifty direct hits were scored. Thus was the loss of HMS Hood avenged.