Colonel Richard Stanley Hawks Moody (23 October 1854 – 10 March 1930) was a distinguished British Army officer, military historian, and Military Knight of Windsor.

He was the eldest son of Major-General Richard Clement Moody, Kt. (who was the founder of British Columbia) and of Mary Susannah Hawks of the Hawks industrialist dynasty.

Birth and family Moody was born in Strada Reale, Valletta, Malta, on 23 October 1854,The London Evening Standard, 1 November 1854, p. 4 into a high church landed gentry family of senior officers in the Royal Engineers. He was born whilst his father was Commanding Executive Officer of the Royal Engineers in Malta. Moody was the eldest son of Major-General Richard Clement Moody, Kt. (who was the founder of British Columbia) and of Mary Susannah Hawks of the Hawks industrialist dynasty.

His maternal grandparents were the merchant banker Joseph Stanley Hawks JP DL, Sheriff of Newcastle, (1791 - 1873), and Mary Boyd (d. 1884) of the armigerous Boyd merchant banking family of Newcastle.

Moody's paternal grandparents were the Colonial Office aide-de-camp Colonel Thomas Moody, ADC, CRE WI, Kt., and Martha Clement (1784 – 1868).Dorothy Blakey Smith, ed., ‘The Journal of Arthur Thomas Bushby, 1858–1859,’ British Columbia Moody's uncles included The Rev. James Leith Moody (1816 -1896) (who was Chaplain to Royal Navy in China, and to the British Army in the Falkland Islands, and Gibraltar, and Malta, and Crimea); Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody CB (1821 - 1869) (who was Commander of the Royal Engineers in China during the Second Opium War and the Taiping Rebellion); and the sugar-manufacture expert Shute Barrington MoodyHeadstone of Shute Barrington Moody, St. Matthew's Church, Kensington Road, Marryatville, Adelaide, South Australia through whom his nephew was Commander Thomas Barrington Moody (b. 1848) of the Royal Navy.

Moody was a second cousin of the high church clergyman, theologian, classical scholar, and freemason, Clement Moody, Vicar of Newcastle. Moody's nephew was freemason Major Richard Charles Lowndes MC.The Worcester News, 21 March 1941, p.5

Early life Moody spent his infancy in British Columbia, of which his father was founder and first Lieutenant-Governor, and is mentioned in the letters that were written from there by his mother, Mary Susannah Hawks, to her sisters Juliana Stanley Hawks and Emily Stanley Hawks in England.

He was educated in England at Ludlow Grammar School and at Cheltenham College. Moody subsequently was commissioned, as a sub-lieutenant, in the 3rd Regiment of Foot, on 9 August 1873. He subsequently passed the Staff College, Camberley.

Military service

Anglo-Zulu War

Moody served in the Anglo-Zulu War, in 1879, as an adjutant, in Zululand, with the 2nd battalion of the 3rd Regiment of Foot, for which he received the medal with clasp.Hart's Annual Army List, Militia List, and Yeomanry Cavalry List, for 1902, by Lieutenant General H. G. Hart, p.347

Malta Moody was brigade major at Malta between 1885 and 1890. His father Major-General Richard Clement Moody, Kt. died on 31 March 1887 and left over £24,000 in money (about £1.6 million in 21st century money) in addition to estates which included over 3049 acres in British Columbia.'Colonel Moody and the Royal Engineers in British Columbia', by Lillian Cope, 1940, Appendix IX 'Letter from Colonel R. C. Moody to H. P. P. Crease, 2 December 1873, List of land owned by Colonel Moody in British Columbia'

India Between 1895 and 1897, Moody served in the Chitral Expedition, in which he was part of General William Forbes Gatacre's flying column, and served during 1895 under Sir Robert Low with the 1st battalion of the 3rd Regiment of Foot, including at Mamugai, for which he received the medal with clasp.

Moody was part of the Malakand Field Force in 1897, during which he was second-in-command of the 1st battalion of the 3rd Regiment of Foot under General Sir Bindon Blood (after whom he named his youngest daughter, Barbara Bindon), including at Bajaur and Mohmand. During this conflict, Moody was wounded, received the clasp, and was mentioned in dispatches. He there fought alongside Winston Churchill, who mentions him in Chapter XII (At Inayat Kila) of The Story of the Malakand Field Force.

Second Boer War Moody lived at 2 Sydenham Grove, Sydenham Road, Cheltenham, in 1899.The Cheltenham Annuaire for 1899, A Directory, p.247

Between 1899 and 1902, Moody served in the Second Boer War, for which he was mentioned in dispatches at least twice. He was promoted to lieutenant-colonel on 24 February 1900 to command a battalion of the Royal Munster Fusiliers. He went to South Africa to command the 2nd battalion of the Royal Irish Fusiliers, from January 1901 to end of campaign, for which he was again mentioned in despatches. Following the end of the war in June 1902, he returned to England on the SS Custodian which landed at Southampton in August 1902. He was appointed a Companion of the Order of the Bath (CB) in the South Africa honours list, which was published on 26 June 1902, and he received both the Queen's and the King's medals with 5 clasps. He received the decoration of CB from King Edward VII during an investiture at Buckingham Palace on 24 October 1902.

Moody was back in South Africa, in command of the 2nd battalion, from which he and about 640 officers and men left for Bombay, India, on the SS Soudan in January 1903, to be stationed in Rawalpindi, where his youngest daughter Barbara Bindon Moody was born.

World War I Moody initially retired from the Army in 1906, to serve as Commander of the Devon and Somerset Brigade of the Territorial Army until 1910. However, subsequent to the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Moody rejoined active service and raised the 7th battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers, He served also as Colonel of 2nd battalion Royal Irish Fusiliers and, during 1915, as Commandant of a School of Instruction for Officers at Dover. He during 1916 raised, from the Devonshire Regiment, and took to France, a battalion of the Labour Corps, which he commanded from 1917 to 1918, after which he retired again.

Military Knight of Windsor and Military Historian Moody lost his brother, Henry de Clervaux Moody, in the Second Boer War in 1900,The South Wales Daily News, 18 December 1900 and his only son, Thomas Lewis Vyvian Moody, in the World War I in 1918. Moody was appointed an honorary Colonel of the Buffs (East Kent Regiment) and a Military Knight of Windsor on 22 April 1921. He was a member of the Naval and Military Club, and lived at Cullompton, Devon.

Moody, at the request of The Buffs, wrote The Historical Records of The Buffs (East Kent Regiment), 3rd Regiment of Foot, 1914–1919, which was published during 1923. He during 1922 gave the first copy of the book to the Royal Library, Windsor.

Moody died on 11 March 1930 at Windsor Castle.The Evening News, London, 13 March 1930, p. 5The Belfast Newsletter, 14 March 1930, p. 15 His funeral at Windsor involved a guard-of-honour by the 1st battalion of The Scots Guards. His ashes are buried at All Saints' Churchyard in Monkland, Herefordshire, where at Plot 62 there is a memorial to him, and to his sister, Gertrude, and to his son, Thomas Lewis Vyvian Moody.Plot 62, All Saints' Churchyard, Monkland, Herefordshire, HR6 9DB

Marriage

Moody in 1881 married, at Muston, Filey,The York Herald, 7 November 1881, p. 5 Mary Latimer, Royal Red Cross, (d. 1936),Grave Cross of George Latimer (1834 - 1897), that commemorates Mary Moody (Latimer) R. R. C. (d. 1936), Ocklynge Cemetery, Eastbourne, East Sussex, England who was the second of five children of the solicitor John Latimer (b. 1827, Kirklinton Hall, d. aged 54 years), of Horsfall and Latimer Solicitors Park Row, Leeds, and of St. Mark's Villas, Leeds,The Leeds Grammar School Admissions Books, from 1820 to 1900, Ed. by Edmund Wilson F. S. A., Leeds, 1906, p. 221The Pall Mall Budget, 11 November 1881, p. 37 and Hannah Maria Lawson (who was the daughter of James Lawson of Bramhope Manor). Mary Latimer's paternal grandmother was Anne Moody who was the niece of Moody's grandfather Colonel Thomas Moody, CRE WI, ADC, Kt..The Leeds Mercury, 12 January 1839, p. 1 Mary Latimer's uncle was Nichol Latimer,The Register of the Leeds Grammar School, 1820-1896, Printed by J. Laycock and Sons, Leeds, 1897, p. 45 who was the publisher of The North China Herald which was the most influential newspaper in China.

Mary Latimer's brother Hugh Graham Latimer (b. 1863) was articled to his father as a solicitor, served as a Lieutenant in 3rd battalion West Yorkshire Regiment, and inherited his father's farming, before emigrating to Almyra, Arkansas, by 1904.

Issue Moody and Mary Latimer had four children: Mary Latimer ('Molly') (b. 1883, d. 1960). Married Major-General James Fitzgerald Martin on 5 June 1906,Journal of the Royal Army Medical Corps, 'Corps News', July 1906, Vol. 07 at Exeter Cathedral, and had one daughter, Mary Charlotte (b. 20 September 1909, The Court, Cullompton, Devon),The Lancet, 2 October 1909, p.1044, 'Births, Marriages, and Deaths' who married, on 20 September 1929, at Holy Trinity Brompton, Gerald Dawson Kitchingman, Royal Engineers, by whom she had one son, Richard Martin Kitchingman (b. 1 March 1933). Marjorie Brogden (b. 1886, d. 1962, Dennington, Suffolk). Married Arthur Graham Brown, in 1914, and had two sons, George Arthur and Thomas Lionel Vyvian. Thomas Lionel Vyvian was educated at Cheltenham College and at Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, before he was commissioned in the Royal Engineers, with whom he went to Egypt with the 1st Armoured Division. He received the George Medal for service on the Agedabia El Aghelia Road on 17 January 1942.Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette, Somerset, England, 6 March 1943: Military Register Thomas Lewis Vyvian (b. 4 November 1896, Peshawar, Bengal, d. 21 March 1918, killed in action, Lagnicourt, France). He was educated at Cheltenham College, at Eastbourne College, and at Royal Military Academy, Sandhurst. Subsequent to leaving Eastbourne College, Moody served on HMS Worcester, with the Royal Indian Marine Service, until the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, whereupon, during 1915, he entered the Australian Army at Melbourne. He served with the 9th Service battalion and the 8th battalion of the Royal Warwickshire Regiment during the Gallipoli Campaign. Subsequent to his wounding during the Gallipoli Campaign, Thomas Moody entered the Royal Military College, Sandhurst, from which he was commissioned, as Lieutenant, in the 1st battalion of the Buffs (Royal East Kent Regiment), with which he served on the Western Front from July 1916. Thomas was fatally shot, whilst he was in command of two platoons that were surrounded by German troops near Lagnicourt, by a German officer with a revolver. Thomas is commemorated at the Arras Memorial, France, and at The Royal Memorial Chapel, Chapel Square, Royal Military Academy Sandhurst. He died unmarried and without issue. Barbara Bindon (b. 14 June 1903,Entry for James W. Webb Jones, 1939 Register of England and Wales, New Windsor Municipal Borough India, d. 1974).The Grantham Journal, 28 June 1974, p. 19 Barbara's middle name was that of her father's general Sir Bindon Blood. Barbara married the choral educator and RAF officer James William Webb-Jones on 20 December 1930 at Parish Church, Windsor,The Western Mail & South Wales News, 10 December 1930, p. 10 and had one daughter, Bridget who married the choral educator Peter Stanley Lyons at Wells Cathedral in 1957.Entry for Lyons, Peter S., Register of Twentieth Century Johnians, Volume I, 1900–1949. St John's College, Cambridge.Obituary of Peter S. Lyons, Rutland and Stamford Mercury, Friday, 20 April 2007.

Published works

Ancestry

References

Further reading