Auckland Colvin

[citation needed] In 1905 Auckland Colvin gave a stained glass East window to the church of St. Mary at Earl Soham, both as a thanksgiving for the termination of the Second Boer War, and as a permanent memorial to his father.

Colvin's opportunity came when in January 1878 he was transferred for employment in Egypt, serving first as head of the cadastral survey, and then from 24 May as British commissioner of the debt, in place of Major Evelyn Baring (afterwards Lord Cromer).

By his advice and persuasion the timorous Khedive Tewfik confronted Urabi, the rebel leader, in the square of the Abdin palace, and succeeded in postponing the insurrection.

[3] In various ways, and not least by his work as Egyptian correspondent of the Pall Mall Gazette, he influenced public opinion at home, and forced the reluctant hands of Gladstone's government towards acceptance of responsibility in Egypt.

The war in Upper Burma and the danger of hostilities with Russia, consequent upon the Panjdeh Incident, were not only costly in themselves, but were followed by great capital outlay on improving the strategic position on the north-west frontier, and by increases of the British and native armies.

With Sir Courtenay Ilbert, then legal member, Colvin minuted against this increase, and after retirement he complained that the military element in the council was disproportionately strong.

Although he caused a committee to be appointed under Sir Charles Elliott to recommend economies, he was compelled not only to suspend the Famine Insurance Fund, and to take toll of the provincial governments, but to increase taxation.

This unpopular proceeding was immortalised in Kipling's Departmental Ditties by The Rupaiyat of Omar Kalvin, which represents the finance member as plying the begging-bowl among his European countrymen.

Colvin welcomed his transfer on 21 November 1887 to Allahabad as Lieutenant-governor of the North-West Provinces and chief commissioner of Oudh, in succession to Sir Alfred Comyn Lyall.

To his influence were due good water supplies and drainage systems in the larger towns of what are now the United Provinces, several new hospitals, and the Colvin Taluqdars' school at Lucknow.

Towards the Indian National Congress he declared himself uncompromisingly hostile, both in allocutions at divisional durbars and in a published correspondence with Allan Octavian Hume, formerly of his own service, the "father" of the new movement (1885).