Major General Sir Lovick Bransby Friend (25 April 1856 – 19 November 1944) was a

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

major general Major general (abbreviated MG, maj. gen. and similar) is a military rank used in many countries. It is derived from the older rank of sergeant major general. The disappearance of the "sergeant" in the title explains the apparent confusion of a ...

and amateur sportsman. He served with the

Royal Engineers The Corps of Royal Engineers, usually called the Royal Engineers (RE), and commonly known as the ''Sappers'', is a corps of the British Army. It provides military engineering and other technical support to the British Armed Forces and is heade ...

and was

Commander-in-Chief, Ireland Commander-in-Chief, Ireland, was title of the commander of the British forces in Ireland before 1922. Until the Act of Union in 1800, the position involved command of the distinct Irish Army of the Kingdom of Ireland. History Marshal of Ireland ...

, during the 1916

Easter Rising The Easter Rising ( ga, Éirí Amach na Cásca), also known as the Easter Rebellion, was an armed insurrection in Ireland during Easter Week in April 1916. The Rising was launched by Irish republicans against British rule in Ireland with the a ...

. As a sportsman, Friend played in goal for the

in the 1878 FA Cup Final and asa

wicket-keeper The wicket-keeper in the sport of cricket is the player on the fielding side who stands behind the wicket or stumps being watchful of the batsman and ready to take a catch, stump the batsman out and run out a batsman when occasion arises. Th ...

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officiall ...

for

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

Early life

Friend was born at Halfway Street near

Sidcup Sidcup is an area of south-east London, England, primarily in the London Borough of Bexley. It is south-east of Charing Cross, bordering the London Boroughs of London Borough of Bromley, Bromley and Royal Borough of Greenwich, Greenwich. Before ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

in 1856, the fourth son of wealthy merchant Frederick Friend and his wife Fanny (''

née A birth name is the name of a person given upon birth. The term may be applied to the surname, the given name, or the entire name. Where births are required to be officially registered, the entire name entered onto a birth certificate or birth re ...

'' Tyrell).Carlaw D (2020) ''Kent County Cricketers A to Z. Part One: 1806–1914'' (revised edition), pp. 187–188.
Available online
at the

Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians The Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) was founded in England in 1973 for the purpose of researching and collating information about the history and statistics of cricket. Originally called the Association of Cricket Stati ...

. Retrieved 2020-12-21.) He grew up at the family home, Woollett Hall at

North Cray North Cray is a village in south-east London, England, within the London Borough of Bexley. It is south-east of Charing Cross. It lies on the River Cray, east of Sidcup and south of Bexley, and is in the Cray Meadows electoral ward, which als ...

, and was educated at

Cheltenham College ("Work Conquers All") , established = , closed = , type = Public schoolIndependent School Day and Boarding School , religion = Church of England , president = , head_label = Head , head = Nicola Huggett ...

and the

Royal Military Academy, Woolwich The Royal Military Academy (RMA) at Woolwich, in south-east London, was a British Army military academy for the training of commissioned officers of the Royal Artillery and Royal Engineers. It later also trained officers of the Royal Corps of Sig ...

.Lewis P. (2013) ''For Kent and Country'', pp. 176–179. Brighton: Reveille Press. Warsop K (2004) ''The Early F.A. Cup Finals and the Southern Amateurs'', pp. 79–80. Tony Brown, Soccer Data. He was a mathematics scholar at Cheltenham and was awarded the Dobson Scholarship and the Cheltonian Society Prize in 1872, his final year at school.Hunter AA (1911) ''Cheltenham College Register, 1841–1910'', p. 324
Available online
Retrieved 2022-06-18.) Although his ''

Times Time is the continued sequence of existence and events, and a fundamental quantity of measuring systems. Time or times may also refer to: Temporal measurement * Time in physics, defined by its measurement * Time standard, civil time specific ...

'' obituary said that he was "proficient in all games, at cricket being exceptionally good",Maj-Gen Sir Lovick Friend, obituary, ''

The Times ''The Times'' is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title ''The Daily Universal Register'', adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. ''The Times'' and its sister paper ''The Sunday Times'' (fou ...

'', 21 November 1944, p. 6.
Available online
at The Times Digital Archive. Retrieved 2022-06-18.) he did not play for the College XI, despite showing what his ''

Wisden ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'' obituary described as "good batting form".Friend, Major-General The Right Hon. Lovick Bransby
Obituaries in 1944, ''

Wisden Cricketers' Almanack ''Wisden Cricketers' Almanack'', or simply ''Wisden'', colloquially the Bible of Cricket, is a cricket reference book published annually in the United Kingdom. The description "bible of cricket" was first used in the 1930s by Alec Waugh in a ...

'', 1945. Retrieved 2017-10-22.

Military career

Friend won a prize for artillery whilst at the Woolwich and was commissioned into the

in 1874 as a Temporary Lieutenant.Friend, Sir Lovick Bransby
Liddell Hart Centre for Military Archives. Retrieved 2019-11-10
Archived version
archived 2009-10-09. His commission was made permanent in 1876 and he spent time stationed in Ireland and Hong Kong before being appointed as an instructor at the

Royal Military College, Sandhurst The Royal Military College (RMC), founded in 1801 and established in 1802 at Great Marlow and High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, England, but moved in October 1812 to Sandhurst, Berkshire, was a British Army military academy for training infantry a ...

, in 1883 and promoted to

captain Captain is a title, an appellative for the commanding officer of a military unit; the supreme leader of a navy ship, merchant ship, aeroplane, spacecraft, or other vessel; or the commander of a port, fire or police department, election precinct, e ...

in 1885. In 1885 he was made Secretary of the Royal Engineers Experimental Committee and served in the

British West Indies The British West Indies (BWI) were colonized British territories in the West Indies: Anguilla, the Cayman Islands, Turks and Caicos Islands, Montserrat, the British Virgin Islands, Antigua and Barbuda, The Bahamas, Barbados, Dominica, Grena ...

, training the West Indies Fortress Company, before being promoted to

major Major (commandant in certain jurisdictions) is a military rank of commissioned officer status, with corresponding ranks existing in many military forces throughout the world. When used unhyphenated and in conjunction with no other indicators ...

in 1893. He was posted to

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Mediter ...

in 1897 and served as a

staff officer A military staff or general staff (also referred to as army staff, navy staff, or air staff within the individual services) is a group of officers, enlisted and civilian staff who serve the commander of a division or other large military un ...

in charge of organising supplies during the

Anglo-Egyptian invasion of Sudan The Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan in 1896–1899 was a reconquest of territory lost by the Khedives of Egypt in 1884 and 1885 during the Mahdist War. The British had failed to organise an orderly withdrawal of Egyptian forces from Sudan, and t ...

in 1898 before being attached to the Intelligence Department before the

Battle of Omdurman The Battle of Omdurman was fought during the Anglo-Egyptian conquest of Sudan between a British–Egyptian expeditionary force commanded by British Commander-in-Chief (sirdar) major general Horatio Herbert Kitchener and a Sudanese army of the M ...

where he was an aide to Sir Herbert Kitchener, the commander in chief of British forces. He was

mentioned in dispatches To be mentioned in dispatches (or despatches, MiD) describes a member of the armed forces whose name appears in an official report written by a superior officer and sent to the high command, in which their gallant or meritorious action in the face ...

after the battle and received the Khedive's Sudan Medal and

Queen's Sudan Medal The Queen's Sudan Medal was authorised in March 1899 and awarded to British and Egyptian forces which took part in the Sudan campaign between June 1896 and September 1898. The campaign reflected the British desire to reverse the defeats of the Ma ...

as well as the

Order of Osmanieh The Order of Osmanieh or Order of Osmaniye ( ota, نشانِ عثمانیہ) was a civil and military decoration of the Ottoman Empire. History The order was created in January 1862 by Sultan Abdülaziz. With the obsolescence of the Nişan-i If ...

, fourth class. He was Director of Works and Stores for the Egyptian Army from 1900 to 1904, during which he received the

Order of Medjidie Order of the Medjidie ( ota, نشانِ مجیدی, August 29, 1852 – 1922) is a military and civilian order of the Ottoman Empire. The Order was instituted in 1851 by Sultan Abdulmejid I. History Instituted in 1851, the Order was awarded in fi ...

, third class. He subsequently held a variety of roles both in Egypt and in Britain in the years before the

First World War World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

. Promotions continued and Friend rose to the rank of

in 1912. He was appointed Major-General in charge of Administration at Irish Command in 1912 and succeeded Sir Arthur Paget as

, in 1914 the year the

began in Europe. He became a member of the

Privy Council of Ireland His or Her Majesty's Privy Council in Ireland, commonly called the Privy Council of Ireland, Irish Privy Council, or in earlier centuries the Irish Council, was the institution within the Dublin Castle administration which exercised formal executi ...

in January 1916. Friend was in command in Ireland when the

broke out in 1916. In the lead up to the Rising he was in command during the capture of the arms ship ''Aud'' and the arrest of

Roger Casement Roger David Casement ( ga, Ruairí Dáithí Mac Easmainn; 1 September 1864 – 3 August 1916), known as Sir Roger Casement, CMG, between 1911 and 1916, was a diplomat and Irish nationalist executed by the United Kingdom for treason during Worl ...

on 21 April, but went on leave to England after the arrest, apparently "satisfied that the danger had passed".Lewis, ''

Op. cit. ''Op. cit.'' is an abbreviation of the Latin phrase ' or ''opere citato'', meaning "the work cited" or ''in the cited work'', respectively. Overview The abbreviation is used in an endnote or footnote to refer the reader to a cited work, standing ...

'', p. 177. When the Rising began on 24 April, Friend returned to Dublin and he received the surrender of the rebel leaders. Although ''The Times'' wrote that he had "firmly handled" the Rising, his decision to leave Ireland in advance was seen as an error of judgement and he was replaced by Sir John Maxwell, although he was not criticised in the Royal Commission which examined the conduct of British officials leading up to the Rising. From 1916 until his retirement in 1921 Friend was President of the Claims Commission of the British Armies in France. He was awarded the Ordre de Léopold,

Legion d'Honneur The National Order of the Legion of Honour (french: Ordre national de la Légion d'honneur), formerly the Royal Order of the Legion of Honour ('), is the highest French order of merit, both military and civil. Established in 1802 by Napoleon B ...

and

Croix de Guerre The ''Croix de Guerre'' (, ''Cross of War'') is a military decoration of France. It was first created in 1915 and consists of a square-cross medal on two crossed swords, hanging from a ribbon with various degree pins. The decoration was first awa ...

for his role and in 1919 was made KBE and mentioned in despatches for a fourth time in his career, his organisational skills being praised by

Sir Douglas Haig Field Marshal Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig, (; 19 June 1861 – 29 January 1928) was a senior officer of the British Army. During the First World War, he commanded the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) on the Western Front from late 1915 until ...

. He was placed on retirement pay in June 1920 after 47 years of military service, although he continued to serve as Chairman of the French Committee of the Disposal Board.

Sporting career

Friend played

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

for the

and then regularly for the Royal Engineers Cricket Club after he was commissioned in 1873. He was one of the club's most prolific batsmen in its history and served as its secretary for many years.Lovick Friend
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-10-22. He was described in his ''

'' obituary as a "good

", and scored 10

centuries A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is sometimes abbreviated as c. A centennial or ...

for the RE, his first in 1877 and five during the 1885 season alone. In 1885 he made 198 runs against a Band of Brothers side which included

Lord Harris Colonel George Robert Canning Harris, 4th Baron Harris, (3 February 1851 – 24 March 1932), generally known as Lord Harris, was a British colonial administrator and Governor of Bombay. He was also an English amateur cricketer, mainly active f ...

, a key administrator and the captain of

at the time. Friend made his

debut for Kent during the following season, playing against

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

Hove Hove is a seaside resort and one of the two main parts of the city of Brighton and Hove, along with Brighton in East Sussex, England. Originally a "small but ancient fishing village" surrounded by open farmland, it grew rapidly in the 19th cen ...

. In total Friend played six first-class matches, scoring 189 runs at an

average In ordinary language, an average is a single number taken as representative of a list of numbers, usually the sum of the numbers divided by how many numbers are in the list (the arithmetic mean). For example, the average of the numbers 2, 3, 4, 7, ...

of 17.18 runs per innings.Lovick Friend

CricInfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

. Retrieved 2017-10-22. He played twice more for Kent in 1887 as well as appearing for

I Zingari I Zingari (from dialectalized Italian , meaning "the Gypsies"; corresponding to standard Italian ') are English and Australian amateur cricket clubs, founded in 1845 and 1888 respectively. It is the oldest and perhaps the most famous of the 'wa ...

against the Gentlemen of England the same year. In 1888 he played for the Gentlemen of England against

Oxford University Oxford () is a city in England. It is the county town and only city of Oxfordshire. In 2020, its population was estimated at 151,584. It is north-west of London, south-east of Birmingham and north-east of Bristol. The city is home to the ...

, making his highest first-class score of 72 runs, and his final first-class appearance was for MCC against Kent at

Lord's Lord's Cricket Ground, commonly known as Lord's, is a cricket venue in St John's Wood, London. Named after its founder, Thomas Lord, it is owned by Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) and is the home of Middlesex County Cricket Club, the England and ...

in 1891. He played Army and club cricket for a wide variety of sides, making his highest score of 208 for United Services Portsmouth in 1897, the last year he played for the RE. Whilst serving in the Far East he played for

Hong Kong Cricket Club The Hong Kong Cricket Club () is situated in the heart of Hong Kong Island surrounded by the hills and greenery of Wong Nai Chung Gap Wong Nai Chung Gap () is a geographic gap in the middle of Hong Kong Island in Hong Kong. The gap is betwee ...

in 1880. He played for South Northumberland and

Northumberland Northumberland () is a county in Northern England, one of two counties in England which border with Scotland. Notable landmarks in the county include Alnwick Castle, Bamburgh Castle, Hadrian's Wall and Hexham Abbey. It is bordered by land on ...

between 1887 and 1891 whilst stationed at

Newcastle-upon-Tyne Newcastle upon Tyne ( RP: , ), or simply Newcastle, is a city and metropolitan borough in Tyne and Wear, England. The city is located on the River Tyne's northern bank and forms the largest part of the Tyneside built-up area. Newcastle is als ...

and for sides such as

Free Foresters Free Foresters Cricket Club is an English amateur cricket club, established in 1856 for players from the Midland counties of England. It is a 'wandering' (or nomadic) club, having no home ground. The Free Foresters were founded by the Rev. Willi ...

and United Services. Friend played

association football Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...

for

. Described as "always cool and a sure kick", he played in goal for the team in the 1878 FA Cup Final.Bancroft JB (2021) ''The Early Years of the FA Cup: How the British Army helped establish the world's first football tournament'', pp. 120–122. Barnsley: Pen and Sword.

Later life

Friend spent time during his retirement in South Africa and Australia. He died in a nursing home at

West Kensington West Kensington, formerly North End, is an area in the ancient parish of Fulham, in the London Borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, England, 3.4 miles (5.5 km) west of Charing Cross. It covers most of the London postal area of W14, includin ...

in London on 19 November 1944 aged 88.

References

External links

{{DEFAULTSORT:Friend, Lovick 1856 births 1944 deaths British Army personnel of the Mahdist War Military personnel from Kent Royal Engineers officers Knights Commander of the Order of the British Empire Companions of the Order of the Bath Members of the Privy Council of Ireland People from Sidcup Kent cricketers Marylebone Cricket Club cricketers English cricketers of 1864 to 1889 British Army major generals Commanders-in-Chief, Ireland English footballers Royal Engineers A.F.C. players I Zingari cricketers English cricketers Academics of the Royal Military College, Sandhurst Gentlemen of England cricketers Association footballers not categorized by position FA Cup Final players People of the Easter Rising British Army generals of World War I Graduates of the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich People educated at Cheltenham College