Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Military General Service 1793-1814, 1 clasp, Corunna (J. Branch, 1st. Foot Guards.) minor edge bruise, nearly extremely fine £700-900

Provenance: Glendining’s, December 1988

James Branch was born in Little Seiling, Essex, in 1781, and attested for the 1st Foot Guards at Chelmsford, Essex, on 19 May 1801. He served with the Regiment in the Peninsula, as part of Lieutenant-Colonel Drummond’s Company at the Battle of Corunna, 16 January 1809, and during the Waterloo Campaign, 16-18 June 1815. He was discharged on 17 August 1817, after 18 years and 91 days’ service.

In retirement Branch was the victim of a burglary, when, ‘on the night of the 23rd July 1831, at about eleven o’clock at night, he heard a noise below stairs, and going to investigate, he saw two men coming out of his house. Mr. Branch called to them, but they made no answer, and so he levelled a gun which he had in his hand, but it mis-fired. The robbers passed round the front of the house and then ran away. On examining his house, Mr. Branch found that the door had been opened, a stone bottle had been stolen, and a shoe had been left behind in the house. Later, a Mr. Byford said that he saw one of the suspects, a William Mascall, at Weathersfield fair in Mr. Coote’s beer shop, and that he was wearing a shoe identical to the one left behind after the robbery, and missing the other one. The prisoner was taken before the Magistrates. He stated that he had thrown away his old shoe. On being called for his defence, he said he was a poor fatherless boy who had no witnesses to speak for him. The Jury immediately found him guilty, and the Court said that he must expect to pass the reminder of his days in slavery, and in a foreign land.’ (The Essex Standard and Colchester and County Advertiser, 10 December 1831 refers).