Background

John Reynolds was born about 1713 in London, England.

Career

John Reynolds entered the British navy at fifteen and was gazetted lieutenant at twenty-three.

After service in the West Indies and at home, he was given command, on October 30, 1746, of the Arundel. From 1748 to 1751 she was detached on the southern American station, and Reynolds was later called to account for spending so much of his time at Charlestown. Because promotion seemed slow, in August 1754 he welcomed the appointment, apparently influenced by the Earl of Hardwicke, as governor of Georgia.

On October 30, at Savannah, he took over the government from the old Board representing the proprietary trustees. Difficulties at once confronted him. To set up the standardized machinery of royal government among a people accustomed to the paternalism of the trustees demanded high abilities, sympathy, energy, and firmness. Reynolds did not possess them, but for some months his administration seemed successful; courts were organized, new settlements encouraged, local defenses strengthened. His relations with the Council and the first Assembly were amicable; both supported him in suppressing Edmund Grey's conspiracy for the protection of "liberties" endangered by royal government. In the Assembly's claim to control finance, however, and in the governor's closing accusations against men who preferred anarchy to order, lay possibilities of conflict, and by September 1755, Reynolds and his Council were at odds.

He regarded the Georgians as a "lawless, anti-monarchal people" who required government by military force. The Council, and later the Assembly, accused him of incompetence, partiality, and tyranny. The center of their attack was his private secretary, William Little, a former surgeon in the navy whom the governor had appointed to no less than seven offices. Petitions for the removal of this man, "unconversant in business and of most despotic principles", were urged upon Reynolds in vain, and he even dissolved the Assembly, during the famous session when the speaker was held in the chair, to prevent inquiry into Little's conduct. While some of the specific charges against the Governor could be duplicated in any royal colony, the telling argument that the widespread dissatisfaction caused by his administration affected the colony's prosperity led in August 1756 to his recall.

In February 1757 he surrendered the government to Henry Ellis. On his return voyage he was taken by a French privateer into Bayonne and stripped of all his papers.

In 1759, as captain of the Firm, he acted as commodore of a cruising squadron in Hawke's fleet, but failed to participate in any major engagement. During the next fifteen years he held short commands in seven ships, and when on shore lived at Newington Butts with his wife and children. In 1768 he proposed to the Admiralty that windmill sails, worked by hand from the deck, could be utilized to move vessels in a calm. He became rear admiral of the Blue in 1775, and though incapacitated by a paralytic stroke which affected both mind and body, following the regular course of preferment was promoted admiral in 1787.

Achievements

• During Reynolds' tenure as governor, the Spanish governor of Florida, Alonso Fernández de Heredia, sent soldiers to raid British forces Georgia, in order to distract from Templar operations at Chichen Itza. During this time, the Templar Shay Cormac sent an envoy to Reynolds to recover a letter detailing these plans. Later on, as the Spanish raids continued, the envoy returned to receive reports from Reynolds.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Death's Vision: Represented In A A Philosophical Sacred Poem (1713)

    (This scarce antiquarian book is a facsimile reprint of th...)

Connections

He was married and had several children.