Major General William Wylde, (1788-1877), served in Spain and Portugal in the 1830s, later serving briefly as Prince Albert's Equerry and subsequently Groom of the Bed Chamber in 1846. The papers in this collection relate to his career from this time onwards, when he was employed by the British government in Portugal during the tumultuous years during and surrounding the Portuguese civil war of 1846-47. During this service in Portugal, General Wylde was accompanied by two of his sons, the eldest, William Henry Wylde, and S. Robert Wylde, both of whom acted as their father's assistants. Of Robert's subsequent career, we know very little. General Wylde's daughter, Sophia, married Durham colliery owner and magistrate William Stobart in 1851.
His eldest son was William Henry Wylde (1819-1909), to whom most of this collection relates. His papers, mainly letters and despatches, accumulated and retained during some fifty years' service at the British Foreign Office, thirty of those at senior level, cover a vast and varied range of places, personalities and subjects. As head of the Commercial, Consular and Slave Trade Departments of the F.O. from 1869, Wylde received correspondence (and clearly corresponded with) consuls, ambassadors, travellers and diplomats the length and breadth of the globe. But it is the West and East Coasts of Africa and in particular the battle to defeat the slave trade and establish legitimate trade in these areas, which dominate both Wylde's own career, and thus the scope of these papers.
Everard William Wylde (1847-1911) and Augustus Blandy Wylde (ca. 1849-1909), sons of William Henry Wylde, and Everard Gordon M. Wylde, grandson of William Henry Wylde. Everard William Wylde was a senior clerk at the Foreign Office and one of the British representatives at the Anti-Slavery Conference in Brussels in 1889-90 and Augustus Blandy Wylde was briefly consul at Jeddah, a trader, later British vice-consul at Suakin, a corresponding member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society and author of '83 to '87 in the Soudan . There is little material relating to Everard in this collection, his retirement from the Foreign Office due to ill health in 1899 being followed by subsequent bankruptcy. There is however a significant set of papers relating to his brother Augustus Blandy, mostly in the form of letters and copies of diary entries to his father from Suakin and during his time at Jeddah spanning some twenty years from 1876 to1896. These offer details on hunting exploits, trade, slavery, plans for the Suakin-Berber railway and some consular business. The fourth and final generation of the family for whom letters survive is Everard Gordon M. Wylde, grandson of William H. Wylde, and presumably son of Everard Wylde. Around ten letters from Everard to his father and grandfather are found in this collection. These date mostly to 1900 and 1901 when the young Wylde served in the 52nd Company XIX Batallion of Pagets Horse B. Company during the second Boer War and from June 1901 when he worked as a government official in the Uganda Protectorate.
From the guide to the Wylde Family Papers, 1831-1923, (Durham University Library, Archives and Special Collections)
