While these inquiries, investigations, and statements were going the round of all the periodicals of the day, it is unaccountably strange that the family did not produce the desired rectification, and yet more surprising that in the inscription on the monument erected to his memory by his widow, and which was drawn up by her request, she should not have furnished the writer with the date of his birth, and the years of age to which he had arrived.
The London Gazette, first announcing his death, stated it one hundred and four years. The Westminster Magazine for July 1785, (a periodical published in the very neighborhood of the old family mansion,) in the monthly notice of deaths, has "June 30th, General Oglethorpe, aged 102. He was the oldest general in England." And I have a fine engraved portrait of him taken in February preceding his decease, or which is inscribed "he died 30th of June, 1785, aged 102." A writer in the Gentleman's Magazine for September, 1785 p. 701, who was one of the first emigrants to Georgia, and personally and intimately acquainted with the General, declares that "he lived to be near a hundred years old, but was not one hundred and two, as has been asserted."
In the Biographical Memoir of him in the 8th volume of the European Magazine; in NICHOLS's Anecdotes of Literature and in McCALL's History of Georgia, his birth is said to have been in 1698; and yet it is asserted by the best authorities, that he bore the military rank of Ensign in 1710, when, according to their date of his nativity, he could have been but twelve years of age; and this before his entering College at Oxford.
Again, some make him Captain Lieutenant in the first troop of the Queen's Guards in 1714; the same year that others put him to College. According to such statements, he must on both these military advancements, have been of an age quite too juvenile for military service, and more so for military rank. And yet, to account for his obtaining such early, and, indeed, immature promotion, the writers suggest that "he withdrew precipitately from the sphere of his education." But I see no reason for supposing that he left the University before he had completed the usual term of residence for obtaining a degree; though he did not obtain that of Master of Arts till the 31st of July, 1731.[1]
[Footnote 1: See Catalogue of Oxford Graduates.]
PRIOR, in The Life of Goldsmith, page 457, expressly says that
Oglethorpe, "after being educated at Oxford, served under Prince
Eugene against the Turks."[1]
[Footnote 1: About this time he presented a manuscript French paraphrase of the Bible, in two folio volumes, finely illuminated, to the library of Corpus Christi College in Oxford. "The gift of James Oglethorpe, Esq., Member of Parliament." GUTCH's Appendix to Wood's History and Antiquities of the Colleges and Halls in the University of Oxford.]
Again, CROKER has a long note upon a passage in Boswell's Life of Johnson, II. p. 173, to invalidate a narative of Oglethorpe's respecting a writing of Colonel Sir Thomas Prendergast, who was killed at the battle of Malplaquet, on the 31st of August, 1709, which thus concludes: "At the battle of Malplaquet, Oglethorpe was only eleven years old. Is it likely that Oglethorpe, at the age of eleven years, was present at Pope's interview with Colonel Cecil? And, even if he were, what credit is to be given to the recollections, after the lapse of sixty-three years, of what a boy of eleven heard?"[1]
[Footnote 1: CROKER means that the time when Oglethorpe told the story to Dr. Johnson was sixty-three years after the battle of Malplaquet, when the event referred to took place.]
In reply to this, I would observe, that it is not even probable, as this statement would imply, that the interview of Pope with Colonel Cecil was directly after the battle. There might have been intervening years. Moreover, Croker goes upon the presumption that the birth of Oglethorpe was in 1698. Now, to assign his birth to that year would make him only eighty-seven years old when he died; but Dr. Lettsom, in "a letter on prisons," in the Gentleman's Magazine, Vol. LXXI. p. 21, has this remark: "I spent an evening, which agreeably continued till two o'clock in the morning, with the late General Oglethorpe, when this veteran was in the ninety-sixth year of his age; who told me, that he planted Georgia chiefly from prisons." And Hannah More writes of being in company with him when he was much above ninety years of age. He was, therefore, born before 1698. And, finally, the record of his admission into Corpus Christi College, at Oxford, decides the matter beyond all controversy; and, by certifying his age to be sixteen, proves that he was born in sixteen hundred and eighty-eight. For the month and day, I receive the testimony of William Stephens, Esq., Secretary for the affairs of the Trustees in Georgia, in the first volume of his Journal. On Thursday, December, 21st, [1738,] he makes this record.