Richard Bethune Fripp Selwyn Payne (18 September 1885 – 1 February 1949) played first-class

cricket Cricket is a Bat-and-ball games, bat-and-ball game played between two Sports team, teams of eleven players on a cricket field, field, at the centre of which is a cricket pitch, pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two Bail (cr ...

for

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

in one match in the 1906 season. He was born at

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, now in Myanmar and died at

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. In some sources, his third name is written as "Tripp"; in others, his last two names are hyphenated as "Selwyn-Payne". Selwyn Payne's only first-class cricket came in the match against a feeble

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants.) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South East England. It is bordered by Berkshire to the north, Surrey and West Sussex to the east, the Isle of Wight across the Solent to the south, ...

at the United Services Ground, Portsmouth in 1906; he batted at No 10 in Somerset's only innings and made 15. He was commissioned as a second lieutenant in the fourth battalion of the

Somerset Light Infantry The Somerset Light Infantry (Prince Albert's) was a light infantry regiment of the British Army, which served under various titles from 1685 to 1959. In 1959, the regiment was amalgamated with the Duke of Cornwall's Light Infantry to form the Som ...

in 1907. Early in the

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he was back in the Somerset Light Infantry in the seventh battalion, being promoted from temporary second lieutenant to temporary full lieutenant in October 1914. In November 1914 (though it was not gazetted correctly for four months), he was transferred from the Somerset Light Infantry to the Motor Machine Gun Service, which operated machine guns mounted on motorcycles. This division was transferred a year later to the bigger

Machine Gun Corps The Machine Gun Corps (MGC) was a Regiment, corps of the British Army, formed in October 1915 in response to the need for more effective use of machine guns on the Western Front (World War I), Western Front in the World War I, First World War. Th ...

and in 1916 Selwyn Payne was gazetted as a temporary captain within the Corps with seniority as a temporary lieutenant in the Somerset Light Infantry backdated retrospectively to September 1914. That appears to have been contradicted by a promotion to temporary captain within the Machine Gun Corps (Motor) backdated to March 1916 but not gazetted until 1919, when he was transferred to the Machine Gun Corps (Infantry) division. He left the army on 11 November 1919 and retained the rank of captain.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Payne, Richard 1885 births 1949 deaths English cricketers Somerset cricketers Machine Gun Corps officers Somerset Light Infantry officers British Army personnel of World War I Motor Machine Gun Service officers 20th-century English sportsmen