Editing James Wolfe (section)

==Early life==
[[File:Statue of General Wolfe, Westerham-geograph.org-2007498.jpg|thumb| Wolfe statue at his birthplace [[Westerham]], [[Kent, England|Kent]]]]

James Wolfe was born at the local vicarage on 2 January 1727 ([[New Style]] or 22 December 1726 Old Style) at [[Westerham]], [[Kent, England|Kent]], the older of two sons of Colonel (later Lieutenant General) [[Edward Wolfe]],<ref>{{cite book |title=General Wolfe |last=Salmon |first=Edward |date=1909|publisher=Cassell & Company |series=Makers of National History |editor-first=W. H. |editor-last=Hutton |pages=1–2|url=https://archive.org/stream/generalwolfe00salmuoft#page/2/mode/2up}}</ref> a veteran soldier whose family was of [[Anglo-Irish]] origin, and the former Henrietta Thompson. His uncle was [[Edward Thompson (1697–1742)|Edward Thompson]] MP, a distinguished politician. 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]].<ref name=Weald>{{cite web |url=http://theweald.org/N10.asp?NId=2198 |title=Lieut. General James Wolfe |work=The Weald of Kent, Surrey, and Sussex |access-date=2 November 2017 |archive-date=4 January 2009 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090104104452/http://theweald.org/N10.asp?NId=2198 |url-status=dead }}</ref> 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; his father was James Wolfe's third cousin.

The Wolfes were close to the Warde family, who lived at [[Squerryes Court]] in Westerham. Wolfe's boyhood friend [[George Warde]] achieved fame as Commander-in-Chief in Ireland.

Around 1738, the family moved to [[Greenwich, England|Greenwich]], in north-west Kent. 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, Colombia|Cartagena]] in 1740, and his father sent him home a few months later.<ref>{{cite DCB |last=Stacey |first=C. P. |url=http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/wolfe_james_3E.html |title=Wolfe, James |volume=3}}</ref> He missed what proved to be a disaster for the British forces at the [[Battle of Cartagena de Indias|Siege of Cartagena]] during the [[War of Jenkins' Ear]], in which most of the expedition died from disease.<ref>{{cite book|last=Browning|first=Reed|title=The War of the Austrian Succession|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=fdiv6AR2wUUC&pg=PP1|year=1994|publisher=St. Martin's Press|isbn=978-0-312-12561-5|pages=59–61}}</ref>