We now revert to the history of a naval hero.
John Jervis, the second son of Swynfen Jervis, Esq., was born on the 20th of January 1735. He was descended, on both the paternal and maternal side, from families which had figured in the olden times of England. The family of Jervis possessed estates in Staffordshire as far back as the reign of Edward III. The family of Swynfen was also long established in Worcestershire. John Swynfen was a public character during the troubled times of Charles I. and Cromwell, and until a late period in the reign of Charles II. He had been originally a strong Parliamentarian; but, thinking that the party went too far, he was turned out of parliament for tardiness by the Protector. But his original politics adhered to him still; for, even after the restoration, he was joined with Hampden, the grandson of the celebrated patriot, in drawing up the Bill of Exclusion. Among his ancestors by the mother's side was Sir John Turton, a judge in the Court of King's Bench, married to a daughter of the brave Colonel Samuel Moore, who made the memorable defence of Hopton Castle in the Civil War.
But no man less regarded ancestry than the subject of the present pages, who, in writing with reference to his pedigree, observed, in his usual frank and straightforward language--"They were all highly respectable; but, _et genus et proavos_, nearly all the Latin I now recollect, always struck my ear as the sound maxim for officers and statesmen."
His first school was at Burton-upon-Trent, where a slight incident seemed to designate his future politics and fortitude. In 1745, when the Pretender marched into the heart of the kingdom, without being joined by his friends or opposed by his enemies, as Gibbon antithetically observed, all the boys at the school, excepting young Jervis and Dick Meux, (afterwards the eminent brewer,) wore plaid ribands sent to them from home, and they pelted their two constitutional playmates, calling them Whigs.
His father designed young Jervis for the law; but, in 1747, removing to Greenwich on being appointed Counsel to the Admiralty and Auditor to the Hospital, naval sights were too near not to prove a strong temptation to the mind of an animated and vigorous boy. His parents were still strongly for the adoption of his father's profession; but there was another authority on the subject, the family coachman, one Pinkhorne, who, saying that it was a shame to go into a profession where all were rogues, determined the future hero; and, before the year was over, he ran away, to commence life as a sailor. He was reclaimed, however, by his family, and was regularly entered in the navy, in January 1748, on board the Gloucester, fifty guns, Commodore Townshend--twenty pounds being all that was given to him by his father for his equipment. The Gloucester sailed for the West Indies; and thus, at the age of thirteen, young Jervis began the world. It appears that the rigid economy of his father, combined with the singular good sense of this mere child, urged him to every means of acquiring the knowledge of his profession. The monotonous life of a guard-ship already seemed to him a waste of time, while the expenses on shore must have been ruinous to his slender finances. He therefore volunteered into whatever ship was going to sea. He thus writes to his sister from on board the Sphinx, 1753:--"There are many entertainments and public assemblies here, but they are rather above my sphere, many inconveniences and expenses attending them; so that my chief employ, when from my duty, is reading, studying navigation, and perusing my own letters, of which I have almost enough to make an octavo volume."