The latter gentleman, Sir Thomas Willoughby, of Parham, was brother to Robert Lord Willoughby, the last English governor of Paris, whose name is recorded among the greatest soldiers of that age, and mentioned by Hume, in chap. XX. of his English history, edit, of 1767.
Sir Francis Willoughby, who prevented the castle of Dublin from being seized by Roger Moore’s partisans, is spoken of by Dr. Leland[1]; and the stout resistance made by the fifth Lord Willoughby, of Parham, against the parliamentary forces sent to reduce Barbadoes, in 1651, is noticed by Bryan Edwards, in his Political and Commercial Survey of the British West India Islands, vol. I. p. 343.
The motto of that branch of the family to which Sir Nisbet J. Willoughby belongs, originally “Courage sans Peur,” is now “Verite sans peur.”
The subject of the following memoir is a son of the late Robert Willoughby, of Cossall and Aspley Hall, both in the county of Notts, and of Cliffe, in Warwickshire, Esq., by Barbara his second wife, one of the daughters of James Bruce, of Wester Kinlock (and the family of Airth), Esq., by Janet, daughter of Sir Edward Gibson, Bart, of Pintland, N.B. and Barbara his wife, daughter of the Hon. John Maitland, spn of Earl Lauderdale.
Mr. Nisbet Josiah Willoughby was born in 1777; and he commenced his naval career, as a midshipman on board the Latona frigate. Captain Albemarle Bertie, May 12, 1790. Subsequent to the Spanish armament, we find him serving in the Edgar 74, Captain Anthony J. P. Molloy; Alligator 28, Captain Isaac Coffin; and Vengeance, a third rate, bearing the broad pendant of Commodore Pasley, commander-in-chief at Sheerness.
On the 13th Jan. 1793, Mr. Willoughby joined the Orpheus 32, Captain Henry Newcome, then about to sail for the coast of Africa, where he assisted in cutting out four French brigs and a schooner, April 22 and 24 in the same year. The capture of these vessels, and Mr. Willoughby’s subsequent shipwreck, when conducting one of the brigs to Sierra Leone, have
- ↑ See Leland’s History of Ireland, Vol. III. p. 110 et seq.
