Ulster-Scots Coldstream Guard who was ‘bravest of the brave at Waterloo’

James Graham was an Ulster-Scot and a descendant of one of the fiercest Border Reiver families from the Anglo-Scottish Borders who settled in south-west Ulster to defend the outlying areas of the early 17th century plantation.

Graham was born in Clones, Co Monaghan, in 1791 and joined the Coldstream Guards, a regiment which appropriately enough takes its name from a small town in Berwickshire in the Scottish Borders, in 1813.

Serving with that regiment’s second battalion, he was commended for his gallantry during the defence of Hougoumont during the Battle of Waterloo on June 18 1815. Graham saved the life of an officer (Captain Wyndham), and his own brother (Corporal Joseph Graham), and was among the small group responsible for closing the North Gate at Hougoumont after a French attack. James Graham was promoted to sergeant for his bravery at Hougoumont and received a special medal for gallantry.

In August 1815 the Rev John Norcross, a former Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and rector of Framlingham, Suffolk, wrote to the Duke of Wellington, offering to settle an annuity of 10 shillings for life, to be called the ‘Wellington Pension,’ and paid annually on June 18, ‘on any one of my brave countrymen who fought under your grace in the late tremendous but glorious conflict’.

The duke responded favourably to the proposition. Contending that ‘the success of the battle turned upon the closing of the gates at Hougoumont’, the duke consulted Colonel (afterwards General Sir James) Macdonell, who had commanded the force at Hougoumont and two annuitants were selected: Lance-Sergeant James Graham of the Coldstream Guards and Private Joseph Lester of the 3rd Foot Guards.

Graham had ‘assisted Lieutenant-Colonel Macdonell in closing the gates, which had been left open for the purpose of communication, and which the enemy were in the act of forcing. His brother, a corporal in the regiment, was lying wounded in a barn, which was on fire, and Graham removed him so as to be secure from the fire, and then returned to his duty. He had been three years in the regiment’.

The annuities were paid for two years, and then ceased on the bankruptcy of Mr Norcross, who died in April 1837.

Graham continued to serve in the Coldstreams, and is credited with saving the life of Captain Fitzclarence (one of the illegitimate sons of the Duke of Clarence, the future King William IV) at the arrest of the Cato Street conspirators in 1820. The Cato Street conspiracy was a plot to murder Lord Liverpool, the prime minister, and members of the Cabinet. Arthur Thistlewood, the ringleader, believed that the assassination would provoke revolution.

Thistlewood had taken personal responsibility for the murder of Wellington. His co-conspirators wasted an incredible amount of time arguing who was to have the privilege of cutting Lord Castlereagh’s throat and whether his severed head should be sent back to Ireland in a box or be displayed on Westminster Bridge.

Graham was discharged from the guards after eight-and-a-half years’ service and subsequently re-enlisted in the 12th Royal Lancers, in which he served for a further nine-and-a-half years as private. In July 1830 he was discharged ‘with an injured chest and worn out,’ to a Chelsea out-pension of nine-pence per day. His character was described as being ‘very good, and distinguished by gallant conduct at Waterloo’.

He was admitted an in-pensioner at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham, Dublin, July 1 1841, and died there on April 28 1845.

A memorial plaque was erected at the hospital, and it was later transferred to St Tiernach’s Parish Church, in Clones.

A number of British journals and newspapers published fulsome obituaries of the soldier described as ‘the bravest of the brave at Waterloo’ – a tribute paid to very few common soldiers of the era.

The shutting of the gate was portrayed by artist Robert Gibb in 1903. The painting is currently held by the National Museums of Scotland. A watercolour portrait of Sergeant Graham himself is in the possession of the National Gallery of Ireland. In 1915, to celebrate the centenary of Waterloo, Graham was depicted on a cigarette card.

Graham is honoured by Coldstream Guards to this day. Every December, the Coldstream Guards commemorate the successful closure of the northern gate at Hougoumont with a ceremony known as ‘hanging the brick’. Senior NCOs of the regiment take custody of a brick, allegedly from Hougoumont, and parade it through the barracks and hang it up in the sergeants’ mess with all the honour due to the Regimental Colours. In 2004, a new accommodation block for soldiers of the Coldstream Guards in Aldershot, Hampshire, was named after Graham.

A plaque on the building is inscribed with the words: ‘In Memory of Sergeant James Graham WM, 2nd Battalion Coldstream Guards, “The Bravest Man in England”, Following His Actions in Closing The Gates at Hougoumont Farm, Waterloo, 18 June 1815.’

After seven-year restoration programme largely funded by the Treasury and spearheaded by the Duke of Wellington, the historical novelist Bernard Cornwell and the military historian Richard Holmes, Hougoumont looks pretty much as it did in 1815.

On June 17 2015 Prince Charles unveiled a memorial at Hougoumont dedicated to the British soldiers who fought at Waterloo. The memorial by Vivien Mallock FRBS stands next to the north gate and depicts two life-size soldiers, one of whom you would like to think represents James Graham, struggling to close the gates of the farm to save it from being overrun by the French.