Perry Mayne

Notes on Officer

MAYNE, PERRY (1700?–1761), vice-admiral, was the son of Covill Mayne, captain in the navy, who in 1740 commanded the Lennox, and was senior officer of the small squadron which, on 18 April, captured the Spanish 70-gun ship Princesa (Beatson, i. 75); he died 25 Aug. 1746 (Charnock, iv. 34). Perry Mayne entered the navy in August 1712, on board the Dolphin, then commanded by his father. After two years and a half in the Dolphin, he was presumably sent to school for another two years and a half; after which, in July 1717, he joined the Strafford, again with his father, with whom he also served in the Prince Frederick, in the Baltic in 1718. He passed his examination, 21 June 1720 (passing certificate), and on 7 July was promoted to be lieutenant of the Ipswich. In June 1721 he was appointed to the Falkland, going out to Jamaica with the broad pennant of Commodore Barrow Harris, who on 22 March 1724–5, two days before his death, promoted him to the command of the Spence sloop. On 24 Sept. 1725 he was advanced by Captain Ellis Brand, the senior officer on the station after Harris's death, to be captain of the Dragon. In 1739 he commanded the Worcester at the reduction of Porto Bello by Vice-admiral Edward Vernon (d. 1757) [q. v.], and in 1741 at the unsuccessful attack on Cartagena. On the death of Lord Augustus Fitzroy, 24 May 1741, Mayne was appointed to the Orford, remaining on the West Indian station till he was promoted to be rear-admiral, 23 April 1745. He sailed for England shortly afterwards, but going through the windward passage, the Orford struck on a reef known as the Hogstyes, and was totally lost, happily without loss of life. On arriving in England he was appointed to a command in the Channel fleet, and in January 1745–6 was ordered to preside at the trial of Vice-admiral Richard Lestock [q. v.] On 10 March he was appointed commander-in-chief at the Nore; but during 1746, and till June 1747, he was entirely occupied as president at the trial of Lestock, and afterwards of Admiral Thomas Mathews [q. v.]

During the trial of Lestock the court-martial came into curious collision with the civil law. A Lieutenant Frye of the marines had, two years before, been tried in the West Indies by a court-martial of which Mayne was a member for disobedience and disrespect; for these offences, and for contempt of court, Frye had been cashiered and sentenced to fifteen years' imprisonment, the greater part of which was remitted by the king [see Ogle, Sir Chaloner, d. 1750]. In 1746 he brought an action against the members of the court for false imprisonment and ill-treatment, and obtained writs against them—among others, against Mayne, the president, and Captain Rentone, a member of the court-martial then sitting on Lestock. On these writs being served, the court, as a body, passed a resolution complaining of the infringement of the lord high admiral's prerogative by this arrest of the president and a member of a court-martial sitting by direct authority of the admiralty. Corbett, the secretary of the admiralty, replied, fully approving of what Mayne and his colleagues had done, and enclosing a letter from the Duke of Newcastle, to the effect that the king had expressed great displeasure at the insult offered to the court-martial (Correspondence of John, fourth Duke of Bedford, i. 105, 108, 111). Thus encouraged, the court passed a resolution amounting to a vote of censure on the lord chief justice, Sir John Willes, who on hearing of it forthwith issued warrants for the arrest of every member of the court, as having insulted the majesty of the law. Mayne and the other members of the court preferred making an abject apology to being arrested. On this the warrants were withdrawn, but in withdrawing them Willes desired that the circumstance might be registered ‘as a memorial to the present and future ages.’ It seems doubtful whether the lord chief justice had the authority, which he assumed, to arrest the president and members of a legally constituted court sitting in the execution of their office; but as Mayne and his colleagues did not venture to contest it, the case remains on record as a precedent.

On 15 July 1747 Mayne was promoted to be vice-admiral, but had no further service. In February 1757 he retired on a pension equal to his half-pay. He died 5 Aug. 1761.