Martin Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke
Martin Bladen Hawke, 7th Baron Hawke, generally known as Lord Hawke, was an English amateur cricketer active from 1881 to 1911 who played for Yorkshire and England. He was born in Willingham by Stow, near Gainsborough, Lincolnshire, and died in Edinburgh. He appeared in 633 first-class matches, including five Test matches, as a righthanded batsman, scoring 16,749 runs with a highest score of 166 and held 209 catches. He scored 13 centuries and 69 half-centuries.
Since an 1870 inheritance of his father, Hawke was styled ; he inherited the barony on 5 December 1887 on the death of his father, Edward Henry Julius Hawke, Rector of Willingham 1854–1875, after which the family returned to its seat, Wighill House and Park, near Tadcaster, Yorkshire. Admiral Hawke, the first Baron, was among the few Admirals elevated for his roles during the Seven Years' War: at the Battle of Quiberon Bay, off Nantes, France, and promoting the Western Squadron blockade of France.
Hawke was educated at Eton, where he was a member of the school cricket eleven in 1878 and 1879. As he had been a moderate scholar, his father decided he should receive private tuition at home for two years. In October 1881, Hawke went up to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he was a member of the Cambridge University Cricket Club team from 1882 to 1885. He won a Cambridge blue three times: in 1882, 1883 and 1885. He was captain of the Cambridge team in the 1885 season.
After Hawke left Eton in July 1879 and began his two years of private tuition, he was invited by the Reverend Edmund Carter to play for the Yorkshire Gentlemen's Cricket Club, which was based at the Yorkshire Gentlemen Cricket Club Ground in York. Living at Wighill Park since 1875 had given Hawke a residential qualification to play for the county club.
In September 1881, Carter invited him to the Scarborough Festival where he made his first-class debut for Yorkshire against Marylebone Cricket Club. Hawke went to Cambridge a month later and played for the university team from May to July 1882 before returning to Yorkshire. At this time, Hawke was usually the only amateur in the Yorkshire team. He refused the captaincy at first, saying he wanted to learn the job by playing under the professional captain, Test bowler Tom Emmett. Hawke was formally appointed club captain for the 1883 season, though he was still at Cambridge, and held the post until 1910. He remains the most successful county captain ever, Yorkshire winning the County Championship a record eight times during his tenure.
As a captain, Hawke was noted for taking a strong, and some would say paternalistic, interest in the welfare of his professional players. Certain aspects of this policy caused resentment but he was on the whole respected for it. Even so, he was strict on discipline and expelled the England bowler Bobby Peel from first-class cricket after he went out to play in a drunken state.
During his playing career, Hawke became an influential figure in cricket administration. He was elected Yorkshire club president in 1898, while still captaining the team, and held the post until his death. He had a missionary-like zeal to develop cricket overseas and undertook nine tours as a player between 1887–88 and 1911–12, leading teams to Australia, India, North America, South Africa, the West Indies and Argentina. All five of Hawke's Test appearances were made in South Africa. He captained England four times and was always on the winning side.
After he retired from playing, Hawke became a major figure at MCC as well as at Yorkshire. He was appointed President of MCC for 1914 and retained the post, which is normally an annual appointment, through the First World War. He was appointed Honorary Treasurer of MCC from 1932 to 1937. As an administrator, he held considerable influence but came under some criticism. He was accused of inactivity at the time of the Bodyline controversy. Most famously, he was disparaged for his oft-quoted and oft-misquoted statement: "Pray God, no professional shall ever captain England". Hawke's biographer noted that "his blunders on numerous public forums were to blight his declining years".
Hawke married in 1916 but he and his wife had no children. After 1924, when the lease on Wighill Park expired, the couple lived in North Berwick. His wife died in 1936 and Hawke himself died in hospital following a collapse at his home. He was succeeded as Baron Hawke by his younger brother.
Personal and family life
Martin Bladen Hawke was born on 16 August 1860 at Willingham Rectory, Gainsborough, Lincolnshire. He was the sixth child, and eldest surviving son, of Edward Henry Julius Hawke, 6th Baron Hawke of Towton, and Baroness Hawke. His father was Rector at Willingham from 1854 to 1875. Hawke's first school was at Newark and then he attended St Michael's, Aldin House in Slough, a preparatory school for Eton College, which Hawke attended from 1874 to 1879. After Eton, his father decided he should have private tuition for two years, as he was a moderate scholar only, and it was not until October 1881 that Hawke went to Magdalene College, Cambridge, where he stayed until 1885. At Cambridge, he was a member of the University Pitt Club.From 1870, when his father succeeded to the barony, Hawke was styled The Honourable. In 1875, the family moved from Willingham to Wighill Park, near Tadcaster, the lease of which was subsidised by a family friend, and Wighill was the baronial seat for the next fifty years until the lease expired. Hawke's residency at Wighill Park enabled him to play for Yorkshire County Cricket Club under county cricket qualification rules that had been introduced in 1873.
On 5 December 1887, Hawke succeeded as 7th Baron on the death of his father and was henceforward known universally as Lord Hawke. He married Marjory Nelson Ritchie Edwards, daughter of W. Peacock Edwards, on 1 June 1916, less than a year after the death of his mother, with whom he had lived formerly. His best man was his close friend Christopher Heseltine, with whom he played cricket alongside and travelled the world extensively with. Marjory was a widow and the same age as Hawke. The couple had no children and, when Hawke died, the title passed to his younger brother. When the lease on Wighill expired in 1924, the Hawkes removed to Marjory's home at North Berwick where they lived for the rest of their lives.
During his time at Cambridge University, Hawke had been commissioned into the 5th West Yorkshire Militia and, in 1890, he put himself forward for military duties. He gained the rank of captain and later became an honorary major in the service of the 3rd Battalion of the Prince of Wales' Own Yorkshire Regiment. He gained the rank of colonel in the service of the West Riding Volunteer Regiment. In the non-military sphere, Hawke held the office of justice of the peace for the West Riding of Yorkshire.
Hawke died, aged 78, on 10 October 1938 in a nursing home at West End, Edinburgh, following an emergency operation after he collapsed at his home in North Berwick. Although he was cremated at Edinburgh Crematorium, his ashes were taken to be interred at West Norwood Cemetery, in the London Borough of Lambeth, alongside those of his late wife who had pre-deceased him on 25 January 1936. His sister's sons, Anthony Tew and John Tew, were both first-class cricketers.
Playing career in England
Early years
Hawke inherited a keen interest in cricket from his father, who was involved with the Willingham village club and was passionate about the sport. Having played at his early schools, Hawke made 19 known appearances for the Eton College team between 1876 and 1879. He was coached at Eton by Mike Mitchell who transformed the school's cricket team during the 1870s and developed other noted players such as Alfred Lyttelton, Charles Studd and Ivo Bligh. Hawke made his first appearance at Lord's in July 1878 when he played in the prestigious Eton v Harrow match.In the two years when Hawke had private tuition at home, from summer 1879 to October 1881, he played for the York-based Yorkshire Gentlemen's Cricket Club, whose leading light was the Reverend Edmund Carter, a man whose influence would guide Hawke towards the captaincy of Yorkshire.
In September 1881, Carter invited Hawke to the Scarborough Festival where he made his first-class debut for Yorkshire on 1 and 2 September, two weeks after his 21st birthday. The match was Yorkshire v Marylebone Cricket Club at North Marine Road and Hawke, who was bowled by Billy Barnes in both innings, scored 4 and 0. MCC won by an innings and 35 runs. A few days later, in another Festival match, Hawke played for Yorkshire against I Zingari and made a top score of 32 in Yorkshire's second innings as they were beaten by 159 runs.
1882 to 1885
Hawke's third first-class appearance was his debut for Cambridge University on 12 and 13 June 1882 when he played against Lancashire at Old Trafford. He made 18 first-class appearances in 1882, scoring 570 runs at 18.38 with two half-centuries and a top score of 66. He played for Cambridge four times in June, including the University Match against Oxford University at Lord's and gained the first of his three blues. From July to September, he played in 13 games for Yorkshire.When Hawke rejoined Yorkshire in July 1882, the team's professional captain Tom Emmett offered to stand down but Hawke refused and insisted on learning the job by playing under Emmett. James Coldham quoted Hawke as saying to Emmett that he wanted to "pick up a few wrinkles first". Hawke and Emmett got along very well, despite their social differences, and Hawke played to the end of August under Emmett's leadership, often being the only amateur in the team. There had been few amateur cricketers in the Yorkshire team before Hawke and there had been complaints from the cricket establishment that the Yorkshire Committee preferred to play professionals. This had much to do with the clash between the county club and Carter's Yorkshire Gentlemen but there was in fact a shortage of suitably talented amateurs too. Hawke assumed the captaincy for the two Scarborough Festival matches against MCC and I Zingari. At the end of the 1882 season, though he had just turned 22, Hawke was appointed Yorkshire club captain, the first amateur to hold the position. He remained in charge for 28 seasons until 1910, during which time the team won eight County Championships, still a record for one captain in county cricket.
In a tribute to Hawke, the editor of Wisden Cricketers' Almanack related that Hawke's "strength of the character was tested" when, as a young man on leaving Cambridge, he undertook the responsibility of captaining the Yorkshire side, composed at that time of "elements that were not entirely harmonious". Owing to Hawke's "tact, judgment and integrity", he moulded the Eleven into "the best, and probably the most united county cricket team in England". Derek Birley commented on the Yorkshire team to 1883 as "gifted but scarcely house-trained professionals" who were often described as "ten drunks and a parson". The odd man out was Louis Hall, a Nonconformist lay preacher who had joined Yorkshire in 1873 as an opening batsman and was reputedly the first teetotaller ever to play for them. Their best players included Emmett, Ephraim Lockwood, George Ulyett, Ted Peate, Billy Bates and Allen Hill, while Bobby Peel made his first-class debut for Yorkshire in July 1882. Birley added that their performances and "rough-hewn image" had become an embarrassment to the gentlemanly wing of the club and the decision was taken to appoint a captain who would "instill discipline and sobriety into this wayward team".
Hawke's task was not only to eradicate the drink problem but also, in Birley's view, "to unite the club's geographical and social factions" and try to produce a winning team. Yorkshire had evolved from the old Sheffield Cricket Club and it had been the case since its foundation in 1863 that all fourteen members of the County Committee were elected by Sheffield districts; and all fourteen of these committee men plus the secretary Joseph Wostinholm were loyal to the President and Treasurer, Michael Ellison. As a result, to the chagrin and vociferous opposition of the rest of the county, Ellison and Sheffield effectively controlled Yorkshire cricket. Edmund Carter was one of Ellison's main critics and opponents. At the end of the 1882 season, in addition to appointing Hawke as captain, the committee agreed to reorganise itself for the first time since the club's foundation. Admitting that it should represent the views of Yorkshire as a whole, the committee enlarged itself from 14 to 21 by inviting seven new members: one each from Bradford, Dewsbury, Halifax, Huddersfield, Hull, Leeds and York in addition to the existing 14 from Sheffield. So, although the other districts now had a voice, the Sheffield contingent retained complete control. However, York's representative was Edmund Carter and, although there was now reduced friction in Yorkshire's affairs, the issue of representation had only been deferred.
Hawke at this time had minimal influence and Coldham wrote that he cannot be seen as anything more than an "instrument of change", though his appointment did represent a "watershed" in the club's history. Whatever the extent of Hawke's involvement in the 1882 machinations, ten years would pass before Yorkshire was fully reorganised and, coincidentally, it was in 1893 that Hawke's team won Yorkshire's first official County Championship. Birley wrote that Yorkshire, "restored to feudalism", was now "ready to play the establishment game".
Hawke enjoyed a personal success in the second match of the 1883 season when he scored his maiden first-class century with 141 for Cambridge against C I Thornton's XI at Fenner's. He shared a third wicket partnership of 160 with Cambridge captain Charles Studd against a bowling attack that included Test players Billy Barnes, Ted Peate and George Ulyett. The match was drawn due to interruptions by rain after Thornton's XI scored 175 and 229; Cambridge replied with 317 and 44–3.
Hawke's appointment as Yorkshire captain brought early success as the team enjoyed a good season in 1883 with a record of 9 wins and 5 draws in 16 inter-county matches. In 1884, Yorkshire won half their inter-county matches, 8 out of 16, but four defeats left them well adrift of Nottinghamshire in the unofficial championship standings. In his 1924 memoirs, Recollections and Reminiscences, Hawke described the 1884 season as "my least successful" and explained that militia duties had interfered with his cricket at Cambridge, for whom he made only two appearances with modest scores in both. With Hawke mostly absent, Louis Hall took over the captaincy.
Hawke was more absent in 1885 when, with Hall again leading the team, Yorkshire won seven of their 16 inter-county matches and had the second best record after Nottinghamshire, whom they defeated by an innings and 28 runs, the only match that Nottinghamshire lost.
From his first match as Yorkshire captain in August 1882, Hawke played in only nineteen out of 67 first team games between then and September 1885. The captaincy, for all intents and purposes, had gone back to the professionals with first Emmett and then Hall having taken over. Hall led the team in 37 matches through 1884 and 1885.
Hawke made eight appearances for Cambridge in 1885 with a best score of 73 against MCC and he played his last match for them in June against Oxford.