{{Infobox person | name = Sir William Draper | image = Sir_William_Draper_KB.jpg | birth_date = November 7, 1721
Lieutenant General Sir William Draper KB (1721 – 8 January 1787), was a British Army officer and cricketeer who led the expedition which captured Manila in 1762 and was involved in the unsuccessful defence of Menorca in 1782. He was also involved in a key 1774 meeting which agreed on an early set of cricket rules including the leg before wicket rule.
Draper was born in Bristol, then the second largest city in England, to a young customs officer. [1] His father died the following year and the family struggled financially for many years, spending some time in British India. [2] Draper was educated at Bristol Cathedral School, then Eton, to which he won a scholarship in 1733, and King's College, Cambridge. [3] [4] In 1744, during the War of the Austrian Succession, he was joined the British Army at the rank of ensign in Lord Henry Beauclerk's regiment. Draper was appointed as an adjutant in the 1st Regiment of Foot Guards in 1746, and rose to the ranks of lieutenant and captain in 1749. In 1756 he married his first wife, Caroline, daughter of Lord William Beauclerk. [5] He married his second wife, Elizabeth March sometime afterwards, until she forsook him in Bombay, 1773 due to her dislike of him. [6]
In the Seven Years' War he commanded the 79th Regiment of Foot, raised by himself, at the Siege of Madras from 1758 to 1759. [7] A colonel in 1762, he had his greatest triumph when he led together with Royal Navy officer Samuel Cornish an expedition against Spanish-held Manila, capturing the city on 6 October 1762. The British occupation of Manila lasted until 1764, after which it was returned to Spain. During the capture Draper had signed an agreement, known as the "Manila Ransom", by which the Spanish would pay the British a large amount of money. News of Manila's capture arrived too late to affect the Treaty of Paris, and under its terms the British returned the city to the Spanish, the ransom being only 1/4th paid. [8]
Draper returned home expecting to receive commendations for his capture of Manila, but the reaction was more mixed. In 1765 he was colonel of the 16th Regiment of Foot. In December 1765 he became Knight Companion of the Order of the Bath and defended the Marquis of Granby against Junius in 1769. In 1769 he lost his wife and went on a tour through the American colonies. In North America, he married Susanna De Lancey, daughter of Oliver De Lancey, the head of one of the leading families in the Province of New York. Draper entertained a hope that he might be appointed as a Royal Governor, but this came to nothing. In 1774, Draper chaired the committee that formulated some early laws of cricket. They were settled and revised at the Star and Garter in Pall Mall on Friday 25 February 1774. The committee included the Duke of Dorset, the Earl of Tankerville, Harry Peckham and other "Noblemen and Gentlemen of Kent, Hampshire, Surrey, Sussex, Middlesex, and London". [9] This meeting was one of the earlier sets of cricket rules and is acknowledged as being the first where the leg before wicket rule was introduced. [10]
A lieutenant-general in 1777, he became lieutenant-governor of Menorca, 1779–1782, until the island was captured by a combined Franco-Spanish expedition during the invasion of Menorca. He preferred unsubstantiated charges of misconduct against Lieutenant General James Murray, who had suspended him. He was reprimanded by a general court-martial in 1783. He died on 8 January 1787 and was buried in the old Abbey Church in Bath, where a monument has been erected to his memory.
Prince William Henry, Duke of Gloucester and Edinburgh, was a grandson of George II and a younger brother of George III of the United Kingdom.
General James Murray was a Scottish army officer and colonial administrator who served as the governor of Quebec from 1760 to 1768 and governor of Minorca from 1778 to 1782. Born in Ballencrieff, East Lothian, Murray travelled to North America and took part in the French and Indian War. After the conflict, his administration of the Province of Quebec was noted for its successes, being marked by positive relationships with French Canadians, who were reassured of the traditional rights and customs. Murray died in Battle, East Sussex in 1794.
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Charles Beauclerk, 1st Duke of St. Albans, KG was an illegitimate son of King Charles II of England by his mistress Nell Gwyn.
The Battle of Manila was fought during the Seven Years' War, from 24 September 1762 to 6 October 1762, between the Kingdom of Great Britain and the Kingdom of Spain in and around Manila, the capital of the Philippines, a Spanish colony at that time. The British won, leading to an eighteen-month occupation of Manila.
The Anglo-Spanish War was a military conflict fought between Britain and Spain as part of the Seven Years' War. It lasted from January 1762 until February 1763, when the Treaty of Paris brought it to an end.
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Charles Bennet, 4th Earl of Tankerville, styled Lord Ossulston from 1753 to 1767, was a British nobleman, a collector of shells and a famous patron of Surrey cricket in the 1770s. He agreed a set of cricket rules that included the first mention of the Leg before wicket rule.
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The 48th (Northamptonshire) Regiment of Foot was a regiment of the British Army, raised in 1741. Under the Childers Reforms it amalgamated with the 58th (Rutlandshire) Regiment of Foot to form the Northamptonshire Regiment in 1881.
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Brigadier-General Richard Kane was a British Army officer from Ireland who served as the governor of Gibraltar from 1720 to 1727. He also served as the governor of Menorca from 1733 to 1736.
The 79th Regiment of Foot was a British military unit, formed in 1757 at the beginning of the Seven Years' War. Its commander was Brigadier General William Draper.
Simón de Anda y Salazar was the Spanish governor-general of the Philippines from July 1770 to 30 October 1776. He was born in the Basque Country in northern Spain.
Harry Peckham was a King's Counsel, judge and sportsman who toured Europe and wrote a series of letters which are still being published over 200 years later. Peckham was a member of the committee that drew up early laws of cricket including the first inclusion of the leg before wicket (lbw) rule. The diarist James Woodforde makes reference to Peckham playing cricket at Oxford in 1760. and he was still playing in 1771.
The British occupation of Manila was an episode in the colonial history of the Philippines when the Kingdom of Great Britain occupied the Spanish colonial capital of Manila and the nearby port of Cavite for eighteen months, from the 6th October 1762 to the first week of April 1764. The occupation was an extension of the larger Seven Years' War between Britain and France, which Spain had recently entered on the side of the French.
Colonel William Fullarton of Fullarton was a Scottish soldier, statesman, agriculturalist and author. He sat in the House of Commons between 1779 and 1803.
Philip Dehany was a West Indies plantation owner and cricket pioneer. He sat in the House of Commons from 1778 to 1780.