In the same year he had temporary command of his battalion when, on picket duty at Coimbatore, it successfully resisted an attack by a large body of Tipu's cavalry, and he was jointly responsible for moving some 20,000 cattle and sheep to supply the army assembled at Dharapuram.
When later engaged on a similar movement of stock with a small detachment of sepoys, he had to beat a 15-mile retreat over the open plains of Dharapuram under repeated attack by a mounted force of 400.
Returning to field service in command of a grenadier company, he distinguished himself by his valour at the taking of the important stronghold of Dindigul in July 1790 and was appointed Fort Adjutant.
[note 4] He remained in that post until 1796, strengthening the allegiance of several Polygar leaders to the East India Company and bringing the extensive and fertile valley of Dindigul under control by obtaining surrender of the fortress of Uthamapalayam, for which achievement he received special thanks from Government.
[8] The surrender of Uthamapalayam was accomplished after he took hostage two Polygar chiefs who professed loyalty to the Company but exposed their treachery when conversing in the Tamil language in Ogilby's presence, not realising he was proficient in their tongue.
[10] Few European constitutions were considered equal to twenty years' service in the Indian climate,[11] and in 1800 Ogilby was at Madras and about to go on furlough due to deteriorating health when he learned that his corps was among those General Wellesley had assembled at Chitradurga to suppress the insurgency of Dhondia Wagh.
[15] On 29 January 1804 Ogilby was dubbed a knight bachelor at Dublin Castle by the Earl of Hardwicke, the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, a Dublin newspaper reporting "The reputation of this deserving officer had prepared Lord Hardwicke to estimate his character, and his excellency was pleased, publicly, to confer upon him the honour of knighthood, in consideration of a series of zealous and meritorious services to his country, during the long and arduous period of twenty-two years in the East Indies".
[19] In the following year the couple's "beautiful new chariot, built purposefully for India" was damaged outside the Opera House in Covent Garden,[20] and in 1806 they were based in Norfolk Street, Grosvenor Square, and preparing to depart for Madras.
[23] The Lady's Monthly sketch recalled that, during Ogilby's time in America, he "traversed a considerable tract of the interior" and rewarded the hospitality of those whom he met by presenting them with seeds he had collected from Tahiti, India and Mauritius and instructing them in the appropriate methods of cultivation.
Ogilby signed the pledge but added he did so "to show I am conscientiously of opinion that the support of Government in this country is necessary to the general welfare of the empire; in every other sense it is from me a fruitless declaration".
He had, shortly beforehand, written to the Commander in Chief requesting permission to take retirement because "a long declining state of health and recent severe mental affliction" had rendered him "entirely unable to conduct the duties of a station of so much responsibility".
When Lady Ogilby accompanied him at St James's Palace in May 1824, a newspaper report of her attire (which included a headdress comprising "a profusion of diamonds and ostrich feathers") occupied ten lines of print.
[41] On 9 August 1834, as he returned to his house, Fromer Lodge at Friern Barnet, after dining with his sister, his four-wheeled chaise (drawn by a single blind horse) overturned into a ditch, trapping him underneath.
According to the account published in Walker's Hibernian Magazine of 1804, Ogilby "produced many beautiful little pieces of lyric poetry both original and translations from the Tamul or Malabar languages".
[49] It seems to have been on the strength of his appearance in Walker's that D. J. O'Donoghue included an entry for Ogilby (whom he described "as a soldier of great distinction in India") in The Poets of Ireland: a Biographical and Bibliographical Dictionary of Irish Writers of English Verse.
A portrait of his first wife, taken from a miniature by James Barry, engraved by Edward Scriven and published by Vernor, Hood & Sharpe, was included in The Lady's Monthly Museum’s tribute to her.