Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

Three: Chaplain General F. H. Beaven, Rhodesia Forces, latterly Bishop of Southern Rhodesia, who was described by men of the 2nd Rhodesia Regiment thus - ‘Bishop Beaven had appealed to our spiritual fundamentals, exhorted us to be material and cold blooded, and rubbed in the righteous war with the big “R” and the Red, White & Blue until we didn’t know whether he was a parson or soldier’

Queen’s South Africa 1899-1902, 1 clasp, Cape Colony (Rev. F. H. Beaven. C to F.); British War and Victory Medals (Ch. Gen. F. H. Beaven.) nearly extremely fine (3) £400-£500

This lot was sold as part of a special collection, Medals from an Africa Collection.

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Frederic Hicks Beaven was born in Rodwell, Caine, Wiltshire on 11 April 1855, the eldest son of Christopher Beaven. He was educated at Queen Elizabeth’s School, Wimborne and University College, Durham. Was Curate of St. Martin’s, Brighton, 1878. Beaven served as Vicar of Newborough, Staffordshire, 1881-85; Vicar of St. Chad’s, Stafford, 1885-87 and Vicar of St. Paul’s, Burton-on-Trent, 1887-1901. He served as acting chaplain to the forces in South Africa, 1900, and was appointed Archdeacon of Matabeleland in 1903. Beaven was appointed Dean of Salisbury (Rhodesia) in 1908, and served as Bishop of Southern Rhodesia, 1910-25. He served as Chaplain General of the Rhodesian Forces during the Great War, and retiring from his bishopric, he then served as Rector of Thelnetham, Suffolk, 1925-26.

The following extracts from Church & Settler in Colonial Zimbabwe by P. Wood, and The Church in Southern Rhodesia by H. St. T. Evans, give insight into Beaven’s time in Africa:

‘In the middle of 1904, the diocese was honoured with a visit from Archbishop West Jones and Mrs West Jones. The visit of the Metropolitan is best described in his own words. “The first three weeks of July were spent in Rhodesia. I visited first the Matopo Hills, where Cecil Rhodes’ body lies beneath a single flat stone, and within sight of that grave I conducted, with the Archdeacon of Matabeleland, the Ven. F. H. Beaven, the religious service at the unveiling of the granite monument to the memory of Wilson and his heroic men who fell fighting at Shangani [1893]. It was a most impressive sight.” To Beaven, the men of the patrol were heroes, splendid examples of duty honoured and death willingly undertaken for their country....’

‘Powell was succeeded by a man already on the staff of Mashonaland, Frederic Hicks Beaven, the man whom he had brought to Salisbury as Dean in 1908 in order to free himself to concentrate on missions. Beaven had been Vicar-General since Powell’s departure for England in late 1909. He was an Englishman from a military family and a man of private means, but, like Gaul, was neither a public school nor a “University” man. He had trained for the ministry at St. Bee’s a non-theological college in the North of England and as a non-graduate briefly at Durham University. These facts alone would have prevented him rising to high office in the ‘home’ church, since non-graduates and St. Bee’s were not held in high regard.

Beaven, had, however been a highly successful parish priest at Stafford in the diocese of Lichfield, before going out to South Africa as a chaplain to the Imperial troops in 1901. He had then stayed on to do district work in the Cape Town Diocese, became Archbishop of Matabeleland in 1903 and was responsible for beginning and sustaining church work in North-Western Rhodesia. He was the choice of the laity in the elective assembly of the diocese, who made it clear that they wanted no one else. He believed that the British Empire which the settlers represented was the world’s greatest secular agency for good and among the personal heroes he listed at his enthronement sermon was Cecil Rhodes, in company with King Alfred, St. Augustine, David Livingstone, Bishop Grey (first bishop of Cape Town) and the seventeenth century Anglican divine William Law. So great was Beaven’s admiration for Rhodes that, when the Dean of Salisbury was raising funds for a cathedral, he proposed that one of its chapels be dedicated as a memorial to Rhodes alone, as founder of the country. St. George’s Chapel was eventually built as a memorial both to him and those others who had laid down their lives in the pioneer work of occupation.’

The Right Reverend Frederic Hicks Beaven died in January 1941.

Sold with copied research, including photographic images of the recipient.