Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Northumberland and Newcastle Yeomanry Cavalry, engraved presentation medal, 40mm excluding suspension, Obv. ‘This medal was struck to commemorate the Presentation to Lt. Col. Bell by the officers of the N.N.V.Y. of a very handsome silver candelabrum at Blagdon on Thursday 26, Sep. 1867’; Rev. ’Presented by the officers of the Northumberland & Newcastle Yeomanry Cavalry to MATTHEW BELL ESQr. their much valued Lieutenant Colonel on his retiring from the command of the Regiment after 50 Years Service. 26. Sepr. 1867.’, fitted with rectangular silver bar suspension, very fine £150-200

Matthew Bell was born in 1793, eldest son of the late Matthew Bell, Esq., of Woolsington, High Sheriff of Northumberland in 1797, by Sarah Frances, daughter of Charles J. Brandling, Esq., of Gosforth House, in that county, formerly M.P. for Newcastle-upon-Tyne. He was educated at Eton 1808, and Christ Church, Oxford 1811. By his father’s death in 1811, Matthew Bell, not yet 21, became one of the ‘Great Northern coal owner, was later Sheriff of Northumberland 1816-17, and was appointed Captain in the N.N.Y.C. in 1819. He was, besides acquiring a reputation as a popular public speaker and man of business, also responsible with his uncle Charles John Brandling, M.P. for Newcastle-upon-Tyne 1798-1812, and the county since 1820, for organising the yeomanry after Peterloo and during the 1822-23 Tyne keelmen’s riots. Bell became Conservative M.P. for Northumberland in the by-election of February 1826, caused by Brandling’s death. He was Lieutenant-Colonel commanding the N.N.Y.C. from 1826 to 1867.

Bell commanded the yeomanry during the Tyne pitmen’s strike of 1830-2, rallied the Tories and declared early as a Conservative for the new Northumberland South constituency at the 1832 election, when, despite attempts to ‘blacken’ him and criticism of his voting record, he defeated his cousin, the Liberal William Ord. He sat undisturbed until his retirement in 1852 and died without issue at Woolsington in October 1871 after a protracted illness.

For the First China War medal awarded to his younger brother see Lot 208.