19th February 1804, he laid the foundations of the present city of Hobart Town. Collins was the first governor of the island, and died at his post, 24th March 1810, aged 54. " His person was remarkably handsome, and his manners extremely prepossessing; while to a cultivated understanding, and an early fondness for belles lettres, he joined the most cheerful and social disposition," says the Gentleman's Magazine, in noticing his death; but it must be evident to the readers of his book that the management of a convict settlement in accordance with the ideas of his time was little calculated to develop such characteristics. 16 124 146
Colton, John, Archbishop of Armagh and Lord-Chancellor of Ireland, was born in Norfolk early in the 14th century. In 1373 he was appointed Lord-Treasurer of Ireland, next year Dean of St. Patrick's, Dublin; in 1379, Lord-Chancellor; in138i, Lord-Justice (on the death of Edmund Mortimer); and in 1382 he was raised to the primacy by Pope Urban VI. " He was a man of great talent and activity; … was of high reputation for virtue and learning, dear to all ranks of people for his affability and sweetness of temper." In 1372, at his sole cost, he raised a body of twenty-six knights, "and being reinforced by the well-affected of the district," marched against O'Moore and O'Byrne. Archbishop Colton died at an advanced age, 27th April 1404, and was buried in the church of St. Peter, at Drogheda. His Visitation of the Diocese of Derry in 1397, was in 1850 published, from the original at Armagh, with an exhaustive preface and notes, by Dr. Reeves. 85*
Cregan, Martin, R.H.A., was born in the County of Meath in 1788. He studied art in the schools of the Royal Dublin Society, and under his countryman Sir Martin A. Shee, in London, and was one of the first exhibitors at the Royal Hibernian Academy, established in 1823. He rose to a high place as a portrait-painter in Dublin, and was for twenty-three years President of the Academy. His paintings are said to be "faithful as to likeness and effective in colour, full of feeling, but subdued and natural, characterized by much taste and fine tone and finish." He died in Dublin, 12th December 1870, aged 82, and was interred at Mount Jerome Cemetery. 233
De Clare, Richard, (page 128).—It was Maurice, not Raymond FitzGerald, that accompanied FitzStephen. Queen Victoria is said to be descended from Strongbow and Eva's daughter Isabel. Strongbow'a daughter by a former marriage became the bride of Robert de Quincey, who fell in battle with the Irish. 233
Digby, Lettice, Baroness Offaly, daughter of Gerald, Lord Offaly, granddaughter of the 11th Earl of Kildare, in 1596 married Sir Robert Digby, an Englishman, who died in 1618, leaving her a widow with seven children. Lady Digby unsuccessfully laid claim to the Barony of Offaly and the estates of her grandfather. In 1619 James I. created her a baroness, and awarded to her the barony of Geashill, in the King's County. In April 1642 she was besieged by a body of the O'Dempseys in her castle of Geashill, where she held out with great bravery for six months. The letters that passed between her and her assailants are, on her side, models of scornful determination, and on theirs, of insolent swaggering. We are told that in the course of the siege a shot having struck the wall beside her, she wiped the spot with her handkerchief, to show the assailants how little she valued their attacks. A curious incident in the contest was the construction, by the besiegers, of a piece of ordnance out of one hundred and forty pots and pans, which, after two months spent in its manufacture, burst at the first discharge. The Baroness had an opportunity of leaving the castle and getting safely away under convoy of a relief party sent from Dublin; but elected to hold out; which she did until again relieved in October 1642. She retired to Cole's Hill, in Warwickshire, where she died, 1st December 1658. 202
Drummond, William Hamilton, D.D., (page 159), Unitarian minister and author, was born at Larne, County of Antrim, in August 1778. Educated at the Belfast Academy, and at Glasgow, on 9th April 1800 he was licensed to preach by the Presbytery of Armagh, which, with that of Antrim, rejected subscription to any formula of belief. He was shortly afterwards ordained minister of Holy wood, subsequently married, and opened a boarding school at Mount Collier, in the neighbourhood of Belfast, which was for a time popular and profitable. In 1815 he responded to a call from the Unitarian congregation of Strand-street, Dublin, and passed the remainder of his life, first as its junior and afterwards as its senior minister. He devoted much attention to poetry, especially of a patriotic character, and was the author, among other pieces, of the Battle of Trafalgar, the Giant's Causeway, Clontarf, and Bruce's Invasion of Ireland, besides a translation of Lucretius. An Irish scholar, he gave to the world a volume of translations, entitled Ancient Irish
