Stephen Payne Adye

Stephen Payne Adye, brevet‐major of the royal artillery, entered the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, as a cadet, in 1757, and was appointed as second‐lieutenant in the royal artillery in 1762. He served some time as brigade‐major of artillery in North America, where he prepared his well‐known book on courts‐martial, entitled Treatise on Courts‐Martial, to which is added an Essay on Military Punishments and Rewards. The book went through several subsequent editions, and was a recognised work. Major Adye died in command of a company of invalid artillery, in Jersey, in 1794. He was the first of a name distinguished in the British artillery annals for more than a century. Of three sons in the regiment, the eldest, Captain Ralph Willett Adye, who died in 1808, was author of the Pocket Gunner, a standard work of reference, which first appeared in 1798, and has passed through many editions; the second, Major‐General Stephen Adye, served in the Peninsula and at Waterloo, and died director of the royal laboratories in 1838; the third, Major James Adye, died in 1831.

(Source: Dictionary of National Biography, 1885–1900)