Guillemard, Sir Laurens Nunns - (1862-1951)

Sir Laurens Nunns Guillemard is a third cousin once removed from Esther Beuzeville,
the third great grandmother of Marion Helen Hunt

 

Sir Laurence Nunns Guillemard (1862–1951), civil servant and colonial governor, was born on 7 June 1862, the only son in the family of six children of William Henry Guillemard (1815–1887), clergyman, headmaster, and Hebrew scholar, and his wife, Elizabeth Susanna, née Turner (d. 1887).

The Guillemard’s were of Huguenot descent, although William Henry Guillemard keenly promoted the Oxford Movement. At the time of Laurence's birth his father was headmaster of the Royal School, Armagh (Northern Ireland). In 1869, he became vicar of Little St Mary's, Cambridge, where he remained until just before his death.

Laurence Guillemard was educated at Charterhouse School and at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took first-class honours in the classics in 1884. Having toyed with the idea of a career at the bar, he attended a crammer to prepare for the home civil service entrance examinations.

Guillemard entered the Home Office in 1886 and two years later was transferred to the Treasury, where he served as private secretary to the Chancellor of the Exchequer.  In 1902, Guillemard was appointed deputy chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue and on 2 July the same year he married Ellen (Ella) (d. 1940), elder daughter of Thomas Spencer Walker of Walsingham, Norfolk. She was Guillemard's junior by eighteen years. There were no children of the marriage.

In 1908 Guillemard transferred to the Board of Customs to be its chairman, and in 1910 he was knighted KCB, having been made CB in 1905.

At the end of 1919 Guillemard became governor of the Straits Settlements and high commissioner for the Malay states. This seemed a surprising appointment for a man who had spent thirty-four years in the home civil service. Lord Milner (secretary of state for the colonies) was confident that Guillemard would provide this colonial estate with necessary leadership in the modern management of public finance and economic development. Guillemard was a natural optimist and departed for the East with what he regarded as ‘special advantages’: an insider's knowledge of Whitehall, an open mind regarding the problems and personalities of Malaya, and a ‘close friendship’ with the secretary of state. When, however, Milner left office in February 1921, Guillemard found himself with few allies in a virulent controversy that was to dog him for the remainder of his governorship and would torment the administration of British Malaya until the Japanese occupation.

On their return to England Guillemard and his wife retired to Rodsall Manor, between Shackleford and Puttenham in Surrey. Physically slight, he had been a keen tennis player and continued to shoot and fish. He joined the board of the Prudential Assurance Company and in 1937 published his memoirs, Trivial Fond Records, which skated over his career. In April 1946 he joined Maxwell, Sir Frank Swettenham, Sir Cecil Clementi, and other senior officials, who had once bitterly contested forms of Malayan government, in protest against Whitehall's plans for the union of the Malay States.

Laurence Guillemard died on 13 December 1951 at Rodsall Manor of an acute coronary thrombosis. His funeral was held at Puttenham parish church on 18 December.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         

Wealth at death:  £26,819 6s. 2d.: probate, 8 March 1952, CGPLA Eng. & Wales.  Wealth in 2017: £836,983.