Orders, Decorations, Medals and Militaria

An interesting pair awarded to Sir Ernest Wilton, K.C.M.G., a Consular Officer in China, who accompanied Younghusband as his adviser on Chinese affairs and was made C.M.G. for services with the Tibet Mission

Tibet 1903-04, 1 clasp, Gyantse (E. C. Wilton, Esq.); Coronation 1911, unnamed as issued; together with a second identical Tibet medal (E. C. Wilton, Esq. Asstt. Vol. Offr. Chumbi) the first two mounted as worn, good very fine (3) £1600-1800

Ex J. M. A. Tamplin Collection, September 2003.

The first Tibet medal, clearly the one he wore, was offered by Spink in March 1954, not long after Wilton’s death, and later acquired from Baldwin. The second medal is listed in Dr Payne’s catalogue of 1911, and was later sold as part of the Hamilton-Smith collection in 1927.

Ernest Colville Collins Wilton was born in Singapore on 6 February 1870, his father Danish and his mother Dutch by birth, but both naturalized British subjects. In 1890 he entered the Consular Service, and became a Student Interpreter in China where he spent the next thirty years. In 1893 he was appointed Acting Vice-Consul at Pagoda Island, in 1897 at Macao in the same capacity, in 1899 as Vice-Consul at Ichang, and in 1902 Vice-Consul at Chungking.

Wilton was employed with the Mission to Tibet in 1903-04, as adviser to Sir Francis Younghusband on Chinese affairs. One of the original members of the Tibet Frontier Commission, as it came to be designated, he was described as ‘a humorous and resourceful sinologue borrowed from the China Consular Service’. Wilton accompanied the expedition all the way to Lhasa, where they remained seven weeks.

Younghusband, in his book India and Tibet, wrote: ‘Mr. Wilton, of the Chinese Consular Service, joined us on August 7. He had been acting as Consul at Chengtu, in Szechuan, and I had not spoken to him for more than five minutes before I realized what a help he would be to us. He at once said that neither the Chinese nor the Tibetan delegates were of at all sufficient rank or authority to conduct negotiations with us, and no one else that one of the Ambans and one of the Tibetan Councillors would be of any use. The new Chinese Resident, who had been deputed in the previous December specially for the purpose of conducting these negotiations he had himself seen at Chengtu, and it is significant of the dilatoriness of the Chinese that, while Mr. Wilton reached me early in August, the Resident did not reach Lhasa until the next February, thirteen months after he had set out from Peking.’

Wilton received the Tibet medal with clasp and, on 16 December 1904, was appointed a C.M.G. ‘in recognition of services in connection with the Mission to Tibet’.

In January 1905, Wilton was appointed British Assistant Commissioner to negotiate in regard to and confirmation by China of the Anglo-Tibetan Convention of 1904, and was so employed until October 1905. In March 1906, he was appointed Consul at Teng-yueh, and afterwards was in charge of the Consulate-General at Yunnan-fu. In 1908 he was the British Commissioner of the Anglo-Chinese-Tibetan Trade negotiations in India, and, in January 1909, he was appointed Consul for the Province of Shantung, with the exception of the Prefecture of Tengchou Fu.

Wilton was awarded the Coronation Medal in 1911. He was Special Opium Commissioner in 1912-13, and Chinese Secretary in 1914. In 1915-16 he was Acting Consul-General at Canton, in 1917-18 Consul-General at Chengtu, and in 1918-20 the same at Hankow. In 1919 he was British Commissioner on the Teschen International Commission, set up to resolve the military conflict between Poland and Czechoslovakia over the important industrial region of Teschen.

In 1920, Wilton became British Commissioner in Lithuania, and was later appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to the Republics of Estonia and Latvia. On completing the last appointment he was promoted in the Order of St Michael and St George, and became a K.C.M.G. on 1 January 1923. From 1923-26 he was Chief Foreign Inspector of the Chinese Salt Gabelle, and from 1927-32 he was President of the Saar Governing Commission, in Europe. After this appointment he retired owing to poor health.

Wilton married in 1927, Violet Evelyn, daughter of George Brown, formerly H.M.’s Consul in China. Lady Wilton, who was an O.St.J., writing in January 1961 said, ‘My husband never had one [a photograph] taken in full dress with decorations - he was a very modest man of a retiring nature.’ Sir Ernest Wilton died at Ashington on 28 December 1952, aged 82. Lady Wilton died on 30 December 1963. Sold with a few photographs and some letters from Lady Wilton.