[5] Their only son, Thomas Sydney Beckwith, was a captain in the Rifle Brigade, and died in Gibraltar on 21 March 1828.

[3] In 1800, he was appointed to command a company in Colonel Coote Manningham's "Experimental Corps of Riflemen", which later was designated the 95th Regiment and subsequently the Rifle Brigade.

Beckwith was one of the favourite officers of Sir John Moore in the famous camp of Shorncliffe, and aided that general in the training of the troops which afterwards became the Light Division.

He took part in the Battle of Vimeiro, and the expedition into Spain under Sir John Moore, in which the Rifles bore the brunt of the rearguard fighting.

[7] At the Battle of Craney Island, Beckwith's troops, 700 Royal Marines and soldiers of the 102nd Regiment of Foot along with a company of Independent Companies of Foreigners, came ashore at Hoffler's Creek near the mouth of the Nansemond River to the west of Craney Island on the morning of June 22, 1813, and were repulsed by shore batteries while attempting to land.

[8] He subsequently captured Hampton, Virginia where the Independent Companies of Foreigners committed numerous atrocities, motivated in part by anger over suffering a perceived massacre at the hands of American forces.