BOWYER, Robert

National Archives, Kew CO48/41, 277/278

10 Pall Mall

29^th July 1819

My Lord,

I beg leave respectfully to inform your lordship that being extremely anxious to serve and oblige one of the first artists in this country, Mr. BROMLEY the engraver, I have undertaken to trouble your Lordship respecting the emigration of a part of his family to the Cape of Good Hope. Mr BROMLEY had expected that the education he had given his children & the kindness he has ever manifested towards them would have induced them to feel happy in his protection & in their native country – but this is not the case & they are particularly anxious to embrace the opportunity which Government is affording to those who wish to go to the Cape.

I am aware of the regulation which it is the desire of Government to adopt respecting the arrangement of ten families going out under the care of an overseer – but I am induced to flatter myself that your Lordship will feel it not to be improper to permit some families under peculiar circumstances to go out, without being exactly confined to that peculiar arrangement.

The young men in question are quite fully aware & are fully prepared for the necessity of being obliged to undertake the most menial & laborious employment & they have from residing the last few years in the country obtained a sufficient knowledge of agriculture to be decidedly useful to them. They have also a knowledge of distillery – finding a certain mechanical turn which they have acquired. There is nothing which may be essential for them to be acquainted with as settlers at the Cape which they do not possess.

Mr. BROMLEY had hoped that they would in time have been respectable artists and he educated them accordingly – but anything rather than the arts suits their disposition – at the same time they are not only perfectly moral young men but very steady and amiable characters & I am quite confident will be very industrious. And as they are quite aware of the difficulties they will have to contend with & as it will be easing Mr. BROMLEY their father (who is one of the most ingenious artists in the Kingdom) of a considerable weight & as he is unable to provide for them & it being now to late for them to learn a trade, I do indulge the hope that your Lordship will perceive & be of the opinion that there cannot be two young men go out who w'd be more likely to answer the purpose which Government has ultimately in view respecting the colonizing that part of the globe & that it would be a pity that a family of this description should be associated with 9 other families who will of course be of the lowest description of Society & probably may be under a rapacious overseer & besides, under all the circumstances, these persons can in no case be so likely ever to become burdensome to the Government in the most remote way as those many poor persons who may go out under different auspices.

Your Lordship's kind attention to this request will ever be most gratefully acknowledged by Mr. BROMLEY as also by My Lord

Your Lordship's very grateful and obdt. Svt

Robert BOWYER

The persons who wish to go are John BROMLEY aged 24

His wife & 3 children

James BROMLEY brother to the above, aged 19

Elizabeth BROMLEY, sister of the above, aged 20