During the time the regiment was quartered at Hull, the manufacturing districts of England were in a high state of discontent, and attempts were made to circulate inflammatory publications amongst the military. Private James Tracy, of the Eighty-Eighth, being tampered with for this purpose, received the papers, but, instead of distributing them amongst his comrades, instantly gave them up to his commanding officer, Major Nickle, furnishing, at the same time, such information as led to the apprehension and conviction of the man from whom he had received them. For this conduct Tracy received a liberal reward, as well as the approbation of Lieutenant-General Sir John Byng, commanding the district, which was conveyed to him through a letter to Colonel Ferguson.
1821
1822
1823
From Hull the Eighty-Eighth removed to Chester, and from thence, in the summer of 1821, to Liverpool, where it embarked for Ireland, landed at Dublin, and proceeded to Enniskillen, where it took up its head-quarters, furnishing sixteen officers’ detachments. In July, 1822, it moved from Enniskillen to Castlebar in Connaught, where it remained, again furnishing fifteen officers’ detachments, till December, 1823, when it marched to barracks at Naas. On quitting Castlebar it received a very flattering address from the magistrates and resident gentlemen of the town and neighbourhood.
1824
On the 16th of January, 1824, Lieutenant-General Sir Gordon Drummond was removed to the Seventy-First regiment, and the Colonelcy of the Eighty-Eighth was conferred upon Lieutenant-General Sir Henry Frederick Campbell, K.C.B., G.C.H.
1825
It was February, 1825, before the last detachment joined from Connaught, when the regiment, once more united, removed to Dublin, occupying first the Richmond, and subsequently the Royal barracks. While the Eighty-Eighth remained in Dublin, orders were issued for increasing the establishments of regiments from eight to ten companies. The zealous exertions of Lieutenant-Colonel Ferguson, aided by the high popularity the corps enjoyed, enabled the Eighty-Eighth to complete its numbers in little more than six weeks, and to be the first regiment reported as complete to the Commander-in-Chief, a circumstance honourably noticed in a letter from the Adjutant-General of the Forces to Major-General Sir Colquhoun Grant, then commanding the garrison of Dublin, under date of 20th of June, 1825. “I have it in command,” says the letter of the Adjutant-General, “to express His Royal Highness’s approbation of the zeal manifested by Lieutenant-Colonel Ferguson, the commanding officer, in thus rapidly raising the augmentation, and which being the first instance of completion yet reported, is most creditable to that officer, and the corps under his command.”
In the latter part of the summer of 1825, the regiment removed to Templemore, furnishing fourteen detachments in the counties of Tipperary and Limerick. Here Lieutenant-Colonel O’Malley joined on the 10th of August, and took the command in place of Lieutenant-Colonel Ferguson, who had been removed to the Fifty-Second Regiment. In September it received orders for the Mediterranean, embarked by divisions at Cork on the 7th and 21st of October and 12th of December, 1825, and proceeded to Corfu, where the last division arrived on the 27th of January, 1826.
1828
During the year 1828 the regiment furnished several detachments to the neighbouring islands of Ithaca, Cerigo, Calamos, and Santa Maura; the detachment in the last-named island suffered severely from a malignant fever which raged during the months of June, July, and August, and carried off thirty-six men out of seventy-five, of which it originally consisted. On the 19th of September, the head-quarters were removed to Cephalonia, on which occasion Major-General Woodford took leave of it in the following very flattering terms:—