James Wolfe - Early Life (1727-1740)

Early Life (1727-1740)

James Peter Wolfe was born in the local vicarage on 2 January 1727 (New Style or 22 December 1726 Old Style) at Westerham, Kent, the older of two sons of Colonel (later Lieutenant General) Edward Wolfe, a veteran soldier of Irish origin, and the former Henrietta Thompson. His uncle was Edward Thompson MP, a distinguished politician. His relatively humble birth marked him out from many army officers at the time, who were disproportionatly drawn from the aristocracy or gentry. Wolfe's childhood home in Westerham, known in his lifetime as Spiers, has been preserved in his memory by the National Trust under the name Quebec House. Wolfe's family were long settled in Ireland and he regularly corresponded with his uncle Major Walter Wolfe in Dublin; Stephen Woulfe, the distinguished Irish politician and judge of the next century, was from the Limerick branch of the same family.

The Wolfes were close to the Warde family, who lived at Squerres Court in Westerham. Wolfe's boyhood friend George Warde would later achieve fame as Commander-in-Chief in Ireland when he crushed the Irish rebellion of 1798, and repelled two attempted French invasions in 1796 and 1798.

Around 1738, the family moved to Greenwich, in London. From his earliest years, Wolfe was destined for a military career, entering his father's 1st Marine regiment as a volunteer at the age of thirteen.

Illness prevented him from taking part in a large expedition against Spanish-held Cartagena in 1740, and his father sent him home a few months later. He was fortunate to miss what proved to be a disaster for the British forces at the Siege of Cartagena during the War of Jenkins' Ear with most of the expedition dying from disease.