Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury (1809-1886), 8th Baronet, of Barton Hall, Bury, Suffolk
F. 4334
Arms: Bunbury quartering Hanmer, North and ......, impaling Horner.
Motto: Esse Quam Videri
This bookplate was most probably made after Sir Charles succeeded his father in the Baronetcy, in 1860.
He was the son of Lt.-Gen. Sir Henry Edward Bunbury, (1778-1860), 7th Bt. and Louisa Emilia Fox dau. of General the Hon. Henry Edward Fox (1771-1811) who was the younger brother of Charles James Fox.
His aunt Caroline Amelia Fox was m. to Lt.-Gen. Sir William Francis Patrick Napier, who fought in the Peninsular War and wrote History of the war in the peninsula and in the south of France : from the year 1807 to the year 1814. His brother was Lieut. General Sir George Thomas Napier (1784-1855), also a veteran from the Peninsular War and Commander-in-Chief of the Army in the Cape Colony.
He married Frances Joanna Horner, daughter of Leonard Horner, on 31 May 1844 whose elder sister Mary Horner was married to the geologist Charles Lyell.
A famous botanist and plant collector, accompanied Lieutenant-General Sir George Napier to Cape of Good Hope in 1837, elected to the Royal Society in 1851, author of numerous papers on Geographical Botany and on Fossil Plants.
Published Journal of a Residence at the Cape of Good Hope in 1848; and Botanical Fragments in 1883, botanical observations made in South Africa & South America. His wife published Life, Letters, and Journals of Sir Charles J.F. Bunbury, Bart., edited by Frances Joanna Bunbury, 3 vols., London 1894.
In 1833-35 he visited Argentina Uruguay and Brazil travelling from from Rio de Janeiro to Minas Gerais where his uncle Henry Fox - an amateur botanist - was H.M. Minister (see, Sir Charles James Fox Bunbury, Brazil, Account of a Journey in Brazil in 1833-35, and Portuguese translation, Narrativa de viagem de um naturalista ingles ao Rio de Janeiro e Minas Gerais, 1833-35, Imprensa Nacional: Rio de Janeiro, 1943).
In 1853-54 he travelled to Madeira where he also collected a herbarium.
Sir Charles brother, who would succeed him as the 8th Bart., Sir Edward Herbert Bunbury was also a member of parliament, a well known geographer and archaeologist, and author of a History of Ancient Geography. Their younger brother Colonel Henry William St Pierre Bunbury, soldier, author and politician and an explorer in Western Australia.
Another bookplate is known to have been used by Sir Charles bearing the Bunbury crest but not reported by in the Frank’s collection.
See also F. 4336 F. 4337 – Bookplates of his father Lt.-General Sir Henry Edward Bunbury, 7th Bart, with different arms, the first Bunbury impalling Fox and the second made after his 2nd m. (1830) to Emily Louisa Napier, Bunbury impalling Napier quartering Scot.
Sources: Ray Desmond & Christine Ellwood, Dictionary of British and Irish Botanists and Horticulturists: Including Plant Collectors, Flower Painters, and Garden Designers, CRC Press, 1994
