John Goldworth Alger

“ HEPBURN, Sir JAMES (d. 1637) , Scottish soldier of fortune, was the son and heir of Hepburn of Waughton, Haddingtonshire, and cousin of Sir John Hepburn [q. v.] He served under Sir John in Germany and France, attended his funeral, and, although objected to as a protestant, succeeded to his rank as commander of the Scots brigade. Richelieu wished Lord James Douglas (1617–1645) [q. v.] to be appointed, but Cardinal de la Valette, the general in command, apparently decided in favour of Hepburn. ”

“ Sounded by Malesherbes, Edgeworth readily agreed to be the king's last confessor, and accordingly, when sentence had been pronounced, Garat, minister of justice, sent for him and took him in his carriage to the Temple. Not expecting to return alive, Edgeworth had made his will and told his mother that attendance on a dying man might detain him all night. His sister, however, guessed what his mission was. After being rigidly searched lest he had brought the king poison, he was admitted to Louis's presence. ”

“ On his ordering a retreat, according to instructions, a panic seized the cavalry, the whole force fled in confusion, cries of ‘treachery’ were raised, and Dillon was murdered by his troops under circumstances of great barbarity. The convention voted a pension to Josephine Viefville, with whom he had cohabited nine years, but, as he stated in his will made the previous day, had not had time to marry, as also to their three children, whose descendants took the name of Dillon, and are still living in France with the title of counts. ”

“ On his return to England he continued his Sanscrit studies, first at the British Museum, and after the peace of Amiens at the Paris library. On the recommencement of hostilities he was among the British subjects detained as hostages. Regarded as the only man on the continent with a thorough mastery of Sanscrit, he taught that language to Frederic Schlegel and Fauriel. At the request of Langlès, keeper of oriental manuscripts at the Paris Library, he drew up an analytical catalogue of its Sanscrit manuscripts, which till then had been catalogued only by librarians ignorant of the language. ”

“ In 1651, moreover, Robert Pugh published in his ‘Blackloe's Cabal’ (see White, Thomas) private letters written by Holden, in one of which, addressed to Sir Kenelm Digby, he said: ‘If the independents do continue to second us, I fear not but Rome will content us; if not we shall find satisfaction elsewhere, and if the pope will not send us bishops it must be done without him.’ In 1652 Holden published at Paris ‘Divinæ Fidei Analysis,’ a concise exposition of catholic articles of faith as distinguished from matters of opinion. ”

“ Infected by the fashionable Rousseau admiration for savage life, Fitzgerald made his way by compass through the woods from Frederickton to Quebec, was formally admitted at Detroit into the Bear tribe, and went down the Mississippi to New Orleans, but was refused the expected permission to visit the Mexican mines. On returning home he found himself M.P. for Kildare, became intimate with the whig leaders in London, joined in April 1792 their Society of the Friends of the People, shared their enthusiasm for the French revolution, and in October 1792 visited Paris. ”

“ After a visit to Scotland Sir John—whether he was ever knighted by Charles I is uncertain, but the ‘Swedish Intelligencer’ 1630 styles him ‘Sir John Hebron’—offered his services to France. They were eagerly accepted, and on 18 March 1633 he took leave of Louis XIII at Chantilly, before starting for Scotland to raise two thousand men. ”

“ After undergoing two domiciliary visits, in which compromising letters narrowly escaped notice, Edgeworth left the seminary in disguise for Choisy, but on the fugitive Archbishop Juigné appointing him vicar-general he joined his mother and sister in Paris. When the king's trial was impending, Elisabeth recommended Edgeworth to her brother as a pious priest, whose obscurity might save him from subsequent molestation. ”

“ Poverty obliged him to apply to the Propaganda for permission to exercise episcopal functions in Spain, and he was appointed honorary chaplain to the Spanish king, Charles II. He returned to Tuam in 1685, but in 1691 settled at Paris. Honorary chaplain to James II, he resided chiefly at the Irish College, but paid frequent visits to his diocese. In 1710, being then described as about ninety, he applied for the appointment of his nephew Dominic Lynch as coadjutor, but Dominic died before any step was taken, and no coadjutor was nominated till the year of Lynch's death. ”

“ He died, without issue, at the siege of Bergen-op-Zoom in 1747, and was succeeded by his uncle John, son of James, first duke, by his second wife, who died, also without issue, in 1757. John's half-brother Edward, sixth duke, son of the first duke by his third wife, was a zealous Jansenist, and was confined in the Bastille for his opinions, his wife (a daughter of Middleton) being twice refused the last sacraments and obliged to apply for judicial compulsion. He died at Paris in 1760, being the last male descendant of the first duke. ”

“ The young man was allowed in 1695 to return to Scotland, but was so much a prey to melancholy that his father sent him word ‘to be merry, for a pound of care will not pay an ounce of debt.’ In 1707 he was one of the Scotch Jacobites who conferred with Colonel Hooke, the Pretender's envoy, and though a catholic he stipulated that there should be security for the protestant religion. ”

“ Unveracious, therefore, though the lady was, her story may be credited that Forth casually saw the child at Christchurch, that he sent Orleans 'the handsomest filly and the prettiest little girl in England,' that, enraptured by the girl's beauty and talents, she had her conditionally baptised, conferring on her her own name, Stéphanie, and the pet name, Pamela, and that to guard against extortion by the mother, she paid the latter in 1786 twenty-four guineas for a legal renunciation of all claims. ”

“ In the following autumn the United Irishmen became a military organisation, 280,000 men, according to a list given by Fitzgerald to Thomas Reynolds, being prepared with arms, and a military committee, headed by Fitzgerald, was deputed to prepare a scheme of co-operation with the French, or of a rising if their arrival could not be awaited. Fitzgerald was himself colonel of the so-called Kildare regiment, but induced Reynolds to take his place. ”

“ DILLON, ARTHUR RICHARD (1750–1794) , general in the French service, son of Henry, eleventh viscount, and nephew of Archbishop Dillon [q. v.] , was born in 1750 at Braywick, Berkshire. Sub-lieutenant in Dillon's regiment, he was in 1767 appointed to the colonelcy, which Louis XV, reluctant to see it pass from the family, had kept vacant from 1747. He served in the West Indies during the American war, was governor of St. Kitt's during its brief occupancy by the French, visited London on the peace of 1783, and was complimented by the lord chancellor on his administration of that island. ”

“ Returning to Ireland, he contributed to the revolutionary ‘Northern Star,’ under the signature of ‘Junius Redivivus.’ These letters, according to his own account, made it prudent for him to quit Ireland, and in 1796 he was in Paris. Tone, who was also in Paris, regarded him as a spy, and complained that he forestalled him by submitting to the French government several memorandums on the state of Ireland, that he constantly crossed his path in the ministerial antechamber, tried to force his conversation on him, and by addressing him in English betrayed his incognito. ”

“ An ardent sympathiser with the French revolution, and a freemason initiated into the mysteries of the Illuminati, he was in Germany in 1792, witnessed the recapture of Frankfort by the Hessians, and was denounced, as he says, by the British ambassador for arrest, but, having received timely warning, repaired to Hamburg, and thence to Poland. He was a spectator of the struggle of 1793, was commissioned by Kosciusko to write to Lord Stanhope and to a Mr. S. (Sheridan?) soliciting British intervention, and on the suppression of the Polish rising went to Holland. ”

“ The Prince of Wales claimed the paternity, albeit Charles Windham and George Selwyn were thought to have pretensions, not to speak of Cholmondeley himself, who appears to have represented to Horace Walpole that the child was his. The prince showed great interest in the girl, but according to Raikes prohibited her on her marriage from quartering the royal arms with the sign of bastardy. ”

“ Wood, on the evidence of those who remembered Gibbes, describes him as ‘a very conceited man, a most compact body of vanity.’ His recently published will shows inordinate anxiety for the preservation of his four portraits, for the erection of a monument and bust over his tomb in the Pantheon, for the custody of his books as a separate collection at the English college at Rome, and for the publication of his manuscripts. His monument and portraits have disappeared; his manuscripts were apparently never published. The poet laureate medal is still at Oxford. ”

“ Anxious to avoid useless bloodshed, he told his men to fire over the heads of the mob. His servant was knocked off his horse by a countryman, who rode off with it and with the portmanteau containing a large sum of money, and Perth had to renounce his mission. He was not at the battle of Falkirk, having been left with two thousand men to continue the siege of Stirling. ”

“ It may be conjectured that when in 1782 she was sent over by Forth, ex-secretary to the British embassy at Paris, to be brought up with the Orleans children, and familiarise them with English, the object was to divert attention from the arrival a little later of a child known as Fortunée Elizabeth Hermine de Compton (afterwards Madame Collard) , who died in 1822 at Villers Hélon. Hermine, who, unlike Pamela, was recognised by the Orleans family in after life as a quasi-relative, was in all probability Madame de Genlis's daughter by Égalité, and was perhaps born at Spa in 1776. ”

“ About this time Duke Bernard of Weimar joined the French service, and the remnant of the Scots brigade which accompanied him was incorporated, much to the delight of the men, in Hepburn's regiment, which thus became 8,300 strong. ”

“ Henriette had married a Hamburg merchant, Mathiesson, and Pamela hoped there to be able to recover the Orleans annuity. Her children seem to have stayed behind. She shortly afterwards married Pitcairn, the American consul at Hamburg, by whom she had a daughter (who was married and living at New York in 1835) , but a separation soon ensued. She is next heard of as encountering, about 1812, in a Dover hotel, Casimir, another of Madame de Genlis's adopted children, and as giving her English creditors the slip by accompanying him to Paris. ”

“ He probably represented America in revolutionary demonstrations, and in the winter of 1792, during Madame Du Barry's visit to London in search of her stolen diamonds, he took lodgings at an inn at Louveciennes, won over two of her servants to the side of the revolution, held a club in her house, and procured an order for seals to be placed on her papers and valuables. On her return in March 1793 he drew up a list of ‘suspects’ for arrest, her name being the first, and on 1 July he escorted the municipality to the bar of the convention, where authority to apprehend her was obtained. ”

“ The male line by Melfort's first marriage died out in 1800 with Baron Perth, to whom the Drummond estates had been restored, and who bequeathed them to his daughter, Lady Willoughby de Eresby. John, the second earl or duke (1682–1754) , took part in the rising of 1715, and was succeeded by his son James, who, having lost his feet in the German wars, could not go to Scotland in 1745, but sent his brother Louis, comte de Melfort, who was wounded and captured at Culloden. ”

“ Young Holker sold his patrimony in order to erect a cotton-mill, and spent two years at Manchester to acquire the necessary knowledge. He married Elizabeth, daughter of John Hilton or Hulton, a Manchester tradesman. Brought up an ardent catholic and Jacobite, Holker was with difficulty dissuaded by his wife from joining the Young Pretender in Scotland in 1745. When the prince entered Manchester, Holker joined his forces with the rank of lieutenant, and was captured with the other Manchester volunteers at Carlisle. ”

“ Goldsmith states that in February 1803, on refusing to insert articles vilifying the English royal family and government, he was arrested, was incarcerated for forty-eight hours in a loathsome cell, was then taken to Dieppe in the hope that Peltier would be given up in exchange for him, and had just cleared the harbour when counter orders arrived, whereupon he was taken back to Paris, and was invited to resume the editorship. ”

“ When Mansfeldt's army was disbanded next year, Hepburn led the Scottish companies to take service in Sweden, where his high military qualities won the favour of Gustavus, who in 1625 made him colonel of one of his Scottish regiments (of which the Royal Scots regiment in the British line, the old 1st foot, is the direct representative) . Hepburn's regiment was engaged in the invasion of Polish Prussia, and especially in the defence of Mewe in 1625 ”

“ In March 1794 he was commissioned by Nicholas Madgett and John Hurford Stone, men in the employ of the French foreign office, to ascertain the chances of success for a French invasion of England or Ireland. Arriving in London, he conferred or corresponded with radical politicians, who all deprecated an invasion. He also renewed acquaintance with the Duchess of Kingston's former attorney, Cockayne, who betrayed his plans to Pitt. Cockayne accompanied Jackson to Dublin, and gave information to the authorities which led to the intercepting of Jackson's letters. ”

“ His kinsman, Arthur Dillon, archbishop of Narbonne, would have at once given him a benefice in commendam, but MacCarthy could not conscientiously accept a sinecure. The revolution interrupted his studies at the Sorbonne, and drove him back to Toulouse, where he profited by his father's large library, and helped to educate his younger brothers. ”

“ HOOKE, LUKE JOSEPH, D.D. (1716–1796) , catholic divine, son of Nathaniel Hooke (d. 1763) [q. v.] , was born at Dublin in 1716. He was educated for the priesthood at the seminary of St. Nicolas du Chardonnet, Paris, graduated D.D. at the Sorbonne about 1736, and in 1742 was appointed to one of the six chairs of theology at the Sorbonne. In 1751 an outcry was raised against him for having allowed Martin de Prades, a bachelor of divinity, to argue a thesis which covertly advocated encyclopædist doctrines. ”