# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Willock, Henry Davis

​WILLOCK, HENRY DAVIS (1830–1903), Indian civilian, born on Christmas Day 1830, at Oujoun, Persia, was one of four sons of Sir Henry Willock (1790–1858), Madras cavalry, who accompanied Sir Harford Jones-Brydges [q. v.] on his mission to Persia as interpreter, was afterwards resident at the court of Teheran (1815–26), and later director of the East India Company, and in 1846–7 chairman. His mother was Eliza, eighth child of Samuel Davis, F.R.S., Bengal civil service, celebrated for his heroic defence of his house in Benares on 14 Jan. 1799, against the attack of Wazir Ali, the deposed Nawab of Oudh; she was sister to Sir John Francis Davis [q. v. Suppl. I], British plenipotentiary in China.
Willock was educated at Kensington and at the East India College, Haileybury (March 1850–December 1851). Appointed to the civil service, he arrived in India in 1852, and was posted to the North-West Provinces. Joint magistrate of Allahabad on the outbreak of the Mutiny, he commanded a company of volunteers, and served under General James G. S. Neill [q. v.] at the storming and capture of Kydgunj. As civil officer he volunteered with Major Renan's force for the relief of the Cawnpore garrison (which fell before its arrival), and served with the force subsequently commanded by Havelock. He was in the actions of Fatehpur, Pandu Nudi, Maharajpur, and Cawnpore, being one of the first persons to enter the Beebeegarh in which the British women and children had been slaughtered by order of the Nana Sahib.
Willock accompanied Havelock on his two unsuccessful advances to Lucknow; was with Outram and Havelock in their subsequent relief of the residency, and served as a member of the garrison until the final relief by Sir Colin Campbell (Lord Clyde) in November 1857 (cf. his letter to his parents, in The Times of 1 Feb. 1858, headed ‘Lucknow Garrison, 19 Oct. 1857 to 18 Dec. at Allahabad’). Returning to Cawnpore, then besieged by the Gwalior contingent, he was appointed civil officer of Maxwell's movable column watching the banks of the Jumna in the Cawnpore and Etawah districts. He was at the capture of Kalpi by Sir Hugh Rose's central India force in May 1858, and at many minor engagements. In June he was appointed civil officer with the field force watching the southern borders of Oudh, being present at the capture of the Tirhol and Dehaen forts. General Sir Mowbray Thomson, the last survivor of the Cawnpore entrenchment, wrote that Willock's ‘feats of arms were patent to all the force, who asserted that he had mistaken his profession and ought without doubt to have been a soldier’ (The Story of Cawnpore, 1859, p. 253). He thus participated in the suppression of the Mutiny from first to last, and he was the only civilian to receive the medal with the three clasps for relief of Lucknow, Lucknow 1858, and Central India. Queen Victoria sent him a letter of thanks.
He subsequently served at Shahjehanpur, Bareilly, and Bulundshahar as magistrate and collector, and as judge of Benares, and finally, from 1876 to his retirement in April 1884, as judge of Azimgarh. He was for some years a major in the Ghazipore volunteer rifles, raised by Colonel J. H. Rivett-Carnac, C.I.E. (cf. his Many Memories, Edin. and Lond. 1910).
After his retirement Willock lived at Brighton and subsequently in London. He died on 26 April 1903 at Tunbridge Wells, and was buried at Little Bookham, Surrey. He married on 27 Oct. 1859, at Barnes, Surrey, his cousin Mary Elizabeth, only child of Major Charles L. Boileau, late rifle brigade, brother of Sir John Peter Boileau [q. v.]. He had two sons and two daughters. The elder son, Henry Court, took in 1906 the additional surname of Pollen on succeeding to the manor of Little Bookham.
F. H. B.