of Waterford. He married in 1741 Mary, daughter of Luke O'Shiel, an heiress. Originally in the French navy, and afterwards a shipowner at Nantes, he was introduced in 1745 to the Young Pretender, Charles Edward, by Walter Rutledge, a banker at Dunkirk [see Rutledge, James], and undertook to convey him to Scotland. Walsh was granted by the French government the frigate Elisabeth, of 67 guns, as a privateer, which, on the pretext of a cruise off the Scottish coast, was ready to act as escort to his own brig, the Doutelle, of 18 guns, on which the prince was to embark, Walsh accompanying him. On 20 June, four days after starting from Belleisle, the Elisabeth attacked an English vessel, the Lion, off the Lizard. The prince was anxious that the Doutelle should comply with her captain's entreaty to assist her, but Walsh, whom he describes as ‘a thorough seaman,’ feeling responsible for his safety, refused, and threatened, if the prince insisted, to order him down to his cabin. The combatants were both disabled, and the Elisabeth went back to St. Nazaire, while the Doutelle, continuing the voyage, landed the prince at Lochnanuagh, Inverness-shire. Walsh was knighted by Charles Edward, and presented with 2,000l. and a gold-hilted sword. After three weeks' stay on the coast, he returned to Nantes, and, albeit a French subject, was on 20 Oct. created an Irish earl by James Edward. It appears from one of his letters to Richard Augustus Warren [q. v.] that he knew nothing of English. In 1753 he received a certificate of French noblesse, and he died, apparently in St. Domingo, about 1759. He left a son, Antoine Jean Baptiste Paulin, who died without surviving male issue, and a daughter, Marie Anne Agnes, who in 1763 married a cousin, Antoine Walsh of Nantes. Walsh had a brother, François Jacques, who in 1755 was created Comte de Serrant, and whose descendants are still settled in France.
[La Chenaye Desbois' Dict. de la Noblesse; Courcelles' Hist. des Pairs; Voltaire's Siècle de Louis XV, chap. xxiv.; Young Pretender's Letter to Edgar, in Mahon's Hist. of England, vol. iii. App. p. xviii.; Narrative of Æneas Mackintosh in Jacobite Memoirs; Blordier's Essai sur Serrant, Angers, 1822; Vicomte Walsh's Souvenirs de Cinquante Ans (pref.); Chambers's Hist. of Rebellion; Lyon in mourning, Scottish Hist. Soc. vols. xx–xxii. s.v. ‘Walsh;’ Archives of Nantes; G. E. C[okayne]'s Complete Peerage, viii. 44.]
WALSH, EDWARD (1756–1832), physician, born in 1756 in Waterford, was eldest son of John Walsh, a merchant, of Ballymountain House, co. Waterford. Robert Walsh (1772–1852) [q. v.] was his younger brother. After early education at Waterford, he studied medicine at Edinburgh and at Glasgow, where he graduated M.D. in 1791. Before leaving Waterford he founded a literary society there, an account of which by him appeared anonymously in the ‘British Magazine,’ 1830 (ii. 99–105). A poem by him gained a prize of a silver medal offered by this society, and on being appropriated some years after by one of the competitors for the Dublin College Historical Society medal was also successful (Brit. Mag. ii. 100). In 1792 Walsh published a poem, ‘The Progress of Despotism: a Poem on the French Revolution,’ which was dedicated to Charles James Fox. In the ‘Anthologia Hibernica’ he published about the same time a proposal for a universal alphabet. While a student in Edinburgh he published several sketches of some merit, one of which (a view of the side of Calton Hill on which a facial resemblance to Nelson could at that time be traced) appeared in ‘Ackerman's Repository.’
Walsh began his professional career as medical officer on a West Indian packet. He was afterwards physician to the forces in Ireland, being present at the battles in Wexford in 1798, and at the surrender of Humbert at Ballinamuck. He also served in Holland in 1799, and at the attack on Copenhagen (2 April 1801), where his hand was shattered. He was afterwards sent with the 49th regiment to Canada, where he spent some years studying Indian life. He collected a vast amount of information for a statistical history of Canada, but never published the work. He was present during most of the battles in the Peninsular war, and at Waterloo, and also served in the Walcheren expedition. He held for some time the post of president of the medical board at Ostend. He died on 7 Feb. 1832 at Summerhill, Dublin.
He published a ‘Narrative of the Expedition to Holland’ (London, 1800, 4to), and a collection of poems entitled ‘Bagatelles’ (1793); and wrote for the ‘Edinburgh Medical Journal,’ the ‘Amulet,’ &c. A portrait of him was painted by John Comerford [q. v.], and an engraving of it appeared in the ‘Dublin University Magazine’ (1834, vol. iii.).
[Dublin Univ. Mag. 1834; Allibone's Dict. of Engl. Lit.; Notes and Queries, 3rd ser. xii. 415; United Service Journal, June 1832; O'Donoghue's Poets of Ireland; Addison's Roll of Glasgow Graduates, 1898.]
WALSH, EDWARD (1805–1850), Irish poet, the son of a sergeant in the Cork militia, was born in Londonderry, to which his
