Derry’s link to the first Protestant cemetery on mainland Spain

The first Protestant cemetery on mainland Spain, the Cementerio Inglés de Málaga, is appealing for donations to help meet its day-to-day running costs. It was was opened in December 1831 and soon received its first body, that of a young Irish revolutionary, Robert Boyd, from Derry. The establishment of the cemetery put an end to a barbaric practice. Only Roman Catholics could be buried in consecrated ground in Spain. In Malaga, the custom was to treat the non-Catholic dead as heretics and to bury them upright on the seashore at night, leaving the bodies to the harsh mercies of the waves and animals.

This practice outraged the British consul of the day, William Mark, and after five years of campaigning he persuaded the authorities in Malaga to grant him a plot of waste land outside the city walls. It contains more than a thousand graves and while no longer used for burials it is open to the public, as is the adjacent St George’s Anglican Church.

Rebellion

William Mark also played a role in the last days of the heroic (or foolhardy) Robert Boyd, who was among the leaders of a liberal uprising against Ferdinand VII, the unprincipled and autocratic monarch. Boyd came from a wealthy family in Derry and served as an officer in Bengal with the East India Company’s army. In London a group of liberal intellectuals from Cambridge University, including the poet Alfred Tennyson, introduced him to Gen José María Torrijos, who had been driven into exile by Ferdinand. Torrijos was attempting to raise money and men for a rebellion against the king. Boyd, who had previously fought for Greek independence, was captivated by Torrijos and pledged his loyalty and his money to the cause. A ship was acquired, largely with the Derryman’s money, and in 1831 Torrijos and Boyd with about 60 followers set sail for Gibraltar.

In Gibraltar Torrijos received a letter from the governor of Malaga, Gen Moreno, declaring that he and his troops were ready to join the rebels as soon as they landed on Spanish ground as “we burn to join your glorious constitutional cause”. Moreno’s letter convinced Torrijos that Spain was ready to rise against the king. He and his followers promptly set sail from Gibraltar but were intercepted by Spanish ships as they approached Malaga. They were forced ashore at Fuengirola, then a small fishing village but now a favourite resort of Irish holidaymakers. They sought refuge in the neighbouring hills but within a few hours were rounded up by a force of more than 300 troops led by Moreno himself.

Torrijos accused Moreno of treachery and dishonour. “Honour!” replied the governor, “I use honour to entrap the enemies of the king”. The rebels were taken to Malaga and incarcerated in the Convento del Carmen. William Mark, the British consul, soon heard there was a British subject among the prisoners. He sought to make contact with him but the governor denied any knowledge of a British prisoner. Mark, however, did succeed in making contact with Boyd through the good offices of an Irish friar. He sent an urgent appeal to the authorities in Madrid but it was too late. Moreno decided to execute all the prisoners quickly to demonstrate his loyalty to the throne.

Boyd managed to write a letter to his brother, William, asking him to convey his love to his mother and other family members. “Dark will be the deed that will be done this night in the Convento of the Carmelites,” he wrote. “Accusation is conviction . . . Mark you that I die like a gentleman & a soldier. I am to be shot with sixty others in about an hour.” (This letter was found among the papers of one of Boyd’s nephews, William Boyd-Carpenter, who was the bishop of Ripon from 1884 to 1911).

The rebels were marched to the beach of San Andrés and executed on December 11th, 1831; Torrijos and Boyd were among the first to fall. William Mark’s son threw the British flag across Boyd’s body to prevent it being plundered by the local poor. It was taken to the new cemetery for burial, just four days after Boyd’s 26th birthday. His grave is marked by a gothic obelisk. Under a representation of the Red Hand of Ulster it carries the inscription: “To the memory of Robert Boyd, Esq, of Londonderry, Ireland. The friend and fellow-martyr of Torrijos etc who fell at Malaga, in the sacred cause of liberty”. There is a more recent plaque on the monument, put there by the Association Torrijos in 2004. It simply says: “Robert Boyd, héroe romántico”.

‘Wee Church’

Another memorial to Boyd can be found nearer home. It is in the porch of St Augustine’s Church, Derry (known locally as the Wee Church on the Walls). It commemorates Lieut Robert Boyd of the Bengal Army who died attempting to “overthrow Despotism in Spain . . . to advance the sacred cause of religion and liberty in that degraded country”.

Boyd’s execution was raised in parliament during a visit to London by Gen Moreno but there was no sympathetic response from the government of the day. The foreign secretary, Lord Palmerston, said Boyd’s execution was in accordance with the laws of Spain. “Mr Boyd,” he said, “was found in arms acting against Spain, acting against its authorities, in union with persons who were considered traitors to its government.”

In Spain itself Torrijos and his comrades were rehabilitated a few years after their deaths. Today in Malaga there is a street named in honour of Gen Torrijos. And one named after Robert Boyd.