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Loyd-Lindsay Robert James
(1832—1901)

Brigadier-General Robert James Loyd-Lindsay, Baron Wantage of Lockinge, was a Scottish recipient of the Victoria Cross, the highest award for gallantry in the face of the enemy that can be awarded to British forces. He was later a notable M.P., a benefactor to Wantage, one of the founders of the British Red Cross Society, for which he crucially obtained the patronage of Queen Victoria, and a distinguished philanthropist and luminary of Victorian society.

Robert James Lindsay was born in 1832, the second son of Lieut-General Hon. James Lindsay and Anne, daughter of Sir Coutts Trotter, Bart In 1858, he married Harriet Sarah Loyd, the only child and heiress of Lord Overstone, one of the richest men in the country, who endowed the couple with a considerable fortune and the Lockinge estate near Wantage.

He was 22 years old, and an officer in the Scots (Fusilier) Guards, British Army during the Crimean War when the following deeds took place for which he was awarded the VC.

On 20 September 1854 at the Battle of the Alma, Crimea, Senior Subaltern Lindsay, with a group of other officers, rallied a party of NCOs and men round the Colours and they held their ground against an overwhelming force. On 5 November at Inkerman, Captain Lindsay, with a few men, charged a large party of Russians, driving them back in hand-to-hand fighting and killing one of them himself.

He served as Conservative Party Member of Parliament for Berkshire from 1865 until he was elevated to the peerage in 1885, and Lord Lieutenant of Berkshire from 1886 until his death. Having been initiated as a freemason, passed and raised in Malta en route to the Crimea in 1854, he became Provincial Grand Master of Berkshire from 1898 until his death in 1901. As he died childless, his title became extinct.

Great Britain, 2006, Crimean war