'If I relinquish my situation, as I do now, merely for the public good at the risque of a false construction, it becomes doubly necessary that I should receive some mark of confidence that it may not be supposed I am recalled from any opinion on the part of the ministers that I have not acted as became me.'[784]

And in a letter of the same date to Pelham, Camden says he is the servant of the public, and ready himself 'to act in Ireland, or elsewhere, in whatever manner I might be the most usefully employed.'

Camden's counsel was followed, that the Viceroy of Ireland—in such times—ought to be a military man. Lord Cornwallis, the new chief governor, went down to Connaught at the head of 20,000 troops, and Humbert surrendered. On September 8, 1798, after a fortnight's progress through the country, 96 officers and 748 French rank and file became prisoners of war; and, according to Gordon, 500 peasant auxiliaries were put to the sword. Several sympathisers, chiefly local gentry, were hanged; including, as Lord Carleton notes, Messrs. Blake, French, and O'Dowd. Thus ended Humbert's quixotic enterprise; but the previous expedition to Bantry Bay, in 1796, was very formidable; and England had not had such an escape since the Spanish Armada. In this connection Lord Carleton has another word to say; and I do not feel warranted in omitting what serves to explain some things hitherto a puzzle. Few believed that Hoche's expedition of 1796 could have escaped the vigilance and vengeance of the English fleet which had long been watching it off Brest.

'Admiral Kingsmill (a most excellent naval officer), who commanded in Cork Harbour, was one of these sceptics. He thought it impossible so large a fleet could have escaped the vigilance of all his cruisers. Kingsmill had no intelligence of it, and repeatedly said, if the French fleet was in Bantry he would suffer his head to be chopped off on his own quarter-deck. Had not the French, when they first made the land, mistaken the Durseys for Three-Castle-Head, by which they missed their port, and were several hours beating back again, they would have got so far up the bay as to have been able to effect their purpose. It is much to be lamented that an officer of high rank in the British navy, Keith Elphinstone (afterwards Lord Keith), returning from India in the 'Monarch' of 74 guns, and putting by accident into Crookhaven at the very time the two French ships and frigates were in Bantry Bay, could not be prevailed upon to put himself at the head of the ships then in Cork Harbour—the 'Powerful' of 74 guns, and three stout frigates—and block up the bay till Lord Bridport's fleet could arrive. "It was not his business." He got all the stores Kingsmill could send him, and sailed off to England. I assert this fact as positively true.—H. C.'

The signature of Lord Chief Justice Carleton is affixed to all the Government proclamations of the time. His peculiar knowledge was largely derived as a member of the Irish Privy Council, and from his relations with Cork, of which he was a native.

It was not 'the Shan Van Voght' who first announced, as the old ballad has it, that 'the French were on the sea.' The news came from Darrynane Abbey, where the waves roll in unbroken from Labrador. Daniel O'Connell's people have been accused of treasonable leanings—but unfairly. Old Maurice Connell, or O'Connell, chieftain of Darrynane, made money through 'smuggling,' but he was no rebel. Opening that scantily explored mine—the Pelham MSS.—I find Maurice Connell announcing to an under-strapper of the Government, who reports it to Pelham, that a French fleet is in Bantry Bay, and he calls it 'most melancholy intelligence.' The letter is dated 'Darrynane, December 20, 1796.' 'I give you this early information,' writes Maurice from his mountain crag, 'in order that every proper measure should be pursued on an event soe very alarming.'[785]

This timely information had the start by two days of Mr. Richard White's, who notoriously received his peerage in acknowledgment of a message of similar tenor. We learn from the old pamphlet of Edward Morgan, that 'A servant of his (White's) brought the first despatch to General Dalrymple, in Cork, of the arrival of the French, on the night of Thursday, December 22, who was but four hours going forty-two miles, Irish, on a single horse.'[786] The above is culled from Lord Carleton's copy, and it is added in his autograph, 'Mr. White, for his services on this occasion, which were very meritorious, was created Lord Bantry.'

Communication with London proved so slow in those days that reward was justly due to those who sought to mend a state of things now hard to realise. The King's messenger, when autumnal or wintry winds prevailed, had often to wait three or four weeks ere the boat could sail from Dublin to Holyhead; and on one occasion in the seventeenth century Dublin Castle was three months without letters from London.[787] Even on terra firma a snail's pace too often marked the progress of great officials who ought to have set a better example. Carew, when going from Dublin to London, lost five days in accomplishing the 'run' between Holyhead and Chester. When the winds proved propitious, and the King's messenger was an active man, he was able to deliver in Dublin in one week the despatch from Whitehall.

JOHN POLLOCK

(See p. [178], ante.)