Colonel Thomas Moody (1779–1849) was a British Colonial Office expert on the West Indies; Commander of the Royal Engineers in the West Indies; Home Secretary for Foreign Parliamentary Commissioners; Director of the British Royal Gunpowder Manufactory; and Inspector of British Gunpowder.
Moody was knighted by France, by Louis XVIII, in the Order of Military Merit, for his service during the Napoleonic Wars, and by the Ottoman Empire in their Order of Glory, for his advice about the manufacture of gunpowder by the Ottoman Empire. Moody and his friend Sir James Stirling offered to colonise Australia using their own capital, but were prohibited from doing so by the British Government.
Moody was the father of a Major-General Richard Clement Moody (who was the founder of British Columbia and first British Governor of the Falkland Islands); and of Colonel Hampden Clement Blamire Moody CB (who was the Commander of the Royal Engineers in China during the Taiping Rebellion and Second Opium War).
Family Thomas Moody (the fourth) was born in Arthuret, Longtown, Cumbria, into an armigerous high church landed gentry family that had a history of military service, and who had included Jacobites, and who had in-common ancestry with George Washington, the founder and first President of the United States of America.
His middle brother George (1773 - 1844), of Longtown and later of Leeds,The Leeds Intelligencer, 4 January 1845, Deaths was a surgeon whose sixth son was the high church clergyman and theologian Clement Moody, Vicar of Newcastle. George Moody's daughter Jane married Lewis Alexander of Hopwood Hall, Halifax, West Yorkshire, who was the father of the barrister Robert Alexander FRS FSA. The granddaughter of George Moody's other daughter Anne MoodyThe Leeds Mercury, 12 January 1839, p. 1 married Thomas Moody's grandson Colonel Richard Stanley Hawks Moody.The York Herald, 7 November 1881, p. 5
Thomas Moody (the fourth)'s eldest brother Charles Senior (1771 – 1830), of Longtown, inherited the family's trade of foreign food-commodities. Charles Moody Senior married, on 19 November 1801, Jane Forster (1764 – 1841), and both are buried at Arthuret. They had two children, the West Indies planter Charles Moody Junior (1796 - 1818) who died at Demerara during January 1818,The Carlisle Patriot, 28 March 1818, p. 3 and Barbara (1803 – 1820), both of whom died unmarried and without issue.
Relation to Washington family In 1649, subsequent to the defeat of the royalist cause in the English Civil War, Sir Henry Moody, 2nd Baronet, had sold the Wiltshire estate of Garsdon to Sir Lawrence Washington.Wiltshire Notes and Queries, Vol. VII, 1911 - 1913, George Simpson and Co., Devizes, Ltd, 1914, p. 5
Thomas Moody (the fourth)'s great-great grandparents were Henry Moody, a London merchant who was listed as a member of the landed gentry in 1673,An Alphabetical Account of the Nobility and Gentry which are (or lately were) related unto the several Counties of England and Wales, London, 1673, County of Middlesex and City of London, p. 59 and Hannah Washington, who was the daughter of the merchant Robert Washington (b. 1616, Adwick le Street, Yorkshire, d. 1674, Rotterdam) of Austhorpe Hall, Leeds.Dugdale's Visitation of Yorkshire, Ed. by J. W. Clay FSA, William Pollard & Co., The Printing Works, Exeter, 1899, pp. 234–236The Moody Family Record, by E. Grant Moody of Arizona, Published by the Dr. Thomas Moody Family Association, 1957, p. 4 Hannah Moody (née Washington)'s brother James, who worked in the London-Rotterdam trade, sailed to the USA with his cousin John Washington (1633 – 1677), who was the great-grandfather of the founder of the USA, in 1657, on Edward Prescott’s tobacco ship. However, whereas John stayed in North America, James subsequently returned to Europe on the ship.
His great-great grandmother Hannah Moody (née Washington)'s father Robert Washington's parents were Darcie Washington Senior (d. 1657), of University College, Oxford, and Anne Wentworth of Bretton. His ancestor Sir John Washington (d. 1331) was the brother of Sir Robert Washington (d. 1324) who was the progenitor of the branch of the Washington family of Sulgrave Manor, from whom the founder of the USA was descended.The Pedigree and History of The Washington Family: Down to General George Washington, First President of the United States, by Albert Welles, President of the American College for Genealogical Registry and Heraldry, Society Library, New York, 1879, Appendix pp. 306–307 Her other brother was Joseph Washington (1660 - 1693) of Gray’s Inn, who was a translator of Lucian and of Milton, who is buried in the Bencher’s Vault of Temple Church.
Character and society Education He was privately tutored by Westminster School-educated tutors from Edinburgh University. Like his sons, Moody was a polymath who was extensively read in history, economics, philosophy, climatology, physics, and surveillance, and was fluent in English, French, and Dutch. His primary influence were the works of Montesquieu; William Petty; William Robertson; Charles-Augustin de Coulomb (whom he knew personally); Johannes van den Bosch; and those of the Africans Toussaint Louverture and Henri Christophe, and he was read in abolitionist literature and influenced by the contemporary Jean-Pierre Boyer who was the African president of Haiti.
Society Moody was described by Stapleton Cotton, 1st Viscount Combermere, to whom he served as aide-de-camp from 1817 to 1820, as 'a very intelligent person': and by 20th century historian D. J. Murray as 'an expert on West Indian affairs in general' who 'helped to provide an understanding in the [Colonial] Office of problems the existence of which was barely comprehended, [and] raised fundamental questions and explained the wider implications of the Government's course of action': and by Sir Humphrey Fleming Senhouse as 'an officer of high character and reputation' and 'an officer of high intelligence who examines and speaks cautiously'. He was employed by the Duke of Wellington to advise on defence. He had 'all [the London establishment]'s archives open to him' and was 'almost an obvious choice' to be 'Home Secretary for Foreign Parliamentary Commissioners'. He was invited to the Coronation of George IV in 1820 and to that of William IV in 1830.
He also was a freemason. He was a Director of the Crown Life Assurance Company, of 33 Bridge Street, Blackfriars, City of London; and a Director of the New Brunswick and Nova Scotia Land Company, of 5 Copthall Court, City of London. He was a member of Thomas Campbell's Conduit Street Club, and of London's United Service Club and Political Economy Club, at which he disputed the economics of James Mill, of John Ramsay McCulloch, and of Adam Smith, and admired the philosophy of Jean-Baptiste Say.
He invited the Whig chess champion Alexander McDonnell, whom he thought to have an 'unquestionably clever' 'cool and reasoning manner', to Downing Street to discuss economics. His other friends included Sir Robert Wilmot Horton (with whom he had an extensive correspondence, and after whom he named one of his sons); Shute Barrington, Bishop of Durham (after whom he named another of his sons); Sir James Leith (after whom he named another of his sons); Sir Humphrey Fleming Senhouse; Sir James Stirling (with whom he offered to colonise Australia using their own capital); the botanist James Mangles FRS (whom he advised about the Swan River Colony); Thomas Hyde Villiers; and the geographer James Macqueen (whom he contended to be 'a most unmanageable person').
West Indies Aide-de-camp (1797–1821)
The first member of the Moody family to emigrate to Barbados had been Captain John Moody (d. 1673), who was the son of Sir Henry Moody, 2nd Baronet, and the grandson of Deborah, Lady Moody, and who has a memorial at St. Michael's Cathedral Church in St Michael, Barbados, in the cross-walk that runs from the south to the north porch.Monumental Inscriptions of the British West Indies, Chatto and Windus, Piccadilly, London, 1875, p. 364
Thomas Moody (the fourth) arrived in Barbados in 1797, to be mathematics master, writing master, and Assistant Headmaster, of the Anglican Codrington College, at which he served until 1805. Moody there demonstrated such aptitude for mathematics that Lord Seaforth, who was the British General in Barbados obtained for Moody a commission in the Royal Engineers, which Moody entered as a Lieutenant on 1 July 1806. The Royal Engineers during the 19th century were a socially exclusive elite land-marine force, whose officers were drawn from the upper middle class and landed gentry of British society, who performed, in addition to military engineering, 'reconnaissance work, led storming parties, demolished obstacles in assaults, carried out rear-guard actions in retreats and other hazardous tasks'.
Moody's first duty was to administer the Office of Ordinance in Demerara, after which he was promoted to the Government Secretaryships of Demerara and Berbice, as which he served for three years. Moody was promoted to Second Captain on 1 May 1811; to Captain on 20 December 1814; and to Brevet Major on 23 May 1816. He was put on half-pay by the Army, in 1815, after the cessation of the Napoleonic Wars, after which he worked for one year in Guiana as an attorney for the Bohemian Jew Wolfert Katz, who was its wealthiest planter.
Moody served as aide-de-camp to Sir James Leith, who was Governor of Barbados from May 1815 to October 1816, and as Superintendent of the Crown Plantations in Guadeloupe. Moody named his son James Leith Moody after Leith, of whom he was an admirer. Thomas was involved in the successful Invasion of Guadeloupe (1815), for which he was subsequently knighted, in 1820, by Louis XVIII, in the Order of Military Merit. He was permitted by George IV to wear the Cross of the Order,The New Annual Army List, for 1849, Vol. 10, H. G. Hart, p. 471 but not to use the title 'Sir'. In 1816, Moody was responsible for the transfer of Africans, whom the Royal Navy had rescued from slave-ships since the abolition of the slave-trade, to the Crown estates in Guadeloupe, where they were to be employed as apprentices.
Moody knew that the rescued Africans made an 'extremely useful' contribution to the British Empire. Moody witnessed the Barbados slave-rebellions of September and October 1816, which he described as an attempt 'by the mass of the slaves... to gain independence': and he during September 1816 endorsed a request that the Prince Regent 'recommend in the strongest manner to the local authorities in the respective colonies, to carry into effect every measure which may tend to promote the moral and religious improvement, as well as the comfort and happiness of the negroes'.Letter by J. Dyson, Cl. D. Dom. Com., undersigned by Thomas Moody ADC and P. Sec, 3 September 1816, in 'Further Papers Relating to the Treatment of Slaves in the Colonies', House of Commons, 10 June 1818 Moody contended that blacks ought to be treated without partiality to whites.