Miss King, the sixteen-year-old daughter of Lord Kingsborough, eloped from Windsor with her second cousin, Colonel Fitzgerald, who was already married to a very beautiful lady. Her mother advertised, offering one hundred pounds reward for her recovery. Lord Kingsborough was in Ireland, but as soon as he heard of the affair he and his son, Colonel King, came to England, and with some difficulty found Colonel Fitzgerald and challenged him. So great was Fitzgerald’s disrepute that he could find no one willing to be his second; but Major Wood, who was King’s second, insisted on his asking his surgeon to fill the office for him. The doctor refused, but promised that he would keep in sight, and a fellow-surgeon having been secured, Major Wood prevailed upon him to be a witness that all was fair. Six shots were fired without effect. A parley then took place, but the duel was continued till Colonel Fitzgerald’s bullets were expended, and the combatants arranged a further meeting the next day. This, however, never came off, as both officers were arrested.
The lady in question had been taken to Ireland, and was living at the house of her father (then the Earl of Kingstown). On his release, Colonel Fitzgerald, with whom Miss King, through the intermediacy of a servant, had been carrying on communication, followed her. News of his presence reached Colonel King, who had succeeded his father in the courtesy title of Lord Kingsborough. He went to a lodging occupied by Fitzgerald, and was refused admittance, whereupon he burst the door open and entered the room, carrying with him a brace of pistols. He told Fitzgerald to take one of these, and at that moment the men grappled and a struggle ensued. The Earl of Kingstown meantime had been informed where his son had gone, and, having followed him, arrived in the midst of the fray. Thinking Lord Kingsborough was in danger of his life, he fired, and his son’s adversary fell dead on the spot.
This chapter, though dealing but in cursory fashion with the subject, must not be closed without reference to two strange incidents which ended in duels. In the first the encounter itself was fought in Hyde Park; in the second the circumstance which led to the duel was enacted there.
On 9th June, 1792, the Earl of Lonsdale and Captain Cuthbert, of the Guards, found cause of quarrel. The latter was on duty in the neighbourhood, when confusion in the traffic occurred in Mount Street; he therefore forbade any carriages to come there. Lord Lonsdale, driving by in his equipage, was almost the first to be stopped, at which his Lordship was much incensed.
“You rascal, do you know I am a peer of the realm?” he cried.
“I don’t know that you are a peer,” was the officer’s quick retort, “but I know you are a scoundrel for applying such a term to an officer on duty, and I will make you answer for it.”
A meeting was, of necessity, the consequence, but a pair of pistols on each side wrought no injury to either party. Captain Cuthbert, however, had a narrow escape, for the ball from Lord Lonsdale’s second pistol struck the button of his coat, which prevented it from entering his body.
The second incident occurred in Hyde Park in 1803. Lieut.-Colonel Montgomery and Captain Macnamara were riding there, each followed by a Newfoundland. The dogs fought. Colonel Montgomery, who did not see that his fellow-officer was near, separated the animals, and exclaimed:
“Whose dog is that?—I will knock him down.”
To which Macnamara replied: