to make any claim upon us, how unfounded soever it might be, they were sure to recover. Boyd was the judge for the Barony; he was a great rogue; Dwyer was the attorney, and he was no better. After some little experience, I put a stop to this system of cheatery and false swearing by appealing from the decision of the Barony to the County Assizes. I may say with truth, that I was the only person in the whole Barony who could be said to be really and truly in the Protestant interest, for the very few Protestants who had lived there any length of time appeared to have caught the infection, and become as bad as the Irish Papists themselves.
I was a Justice of the Peace, and in that capacity I exerted myself to the utmost to break up the intercourse subsisting between the Irish robbers and the French privateersmen, who were the best of friends, mutually aiding each other on all occasions, for the Irish seemed to look upon it as a settled point, that the enemies of the English must be their greatest friends. It was quite natural that my steady course of opposition to their evil practices should draw upon me the hatred of these people, and I soon had the evidence of its being so; for I received a message from one Skelton, a captain of an organized band of robbers in the woods, threatening me with an attack, saying that I might keep what guard I pleased, but they would manage to surprise me some day or other, and they would be with me before I had time to turn round. I caused Skelton to be informed that if he declared foxes' war I should do the same; so he and his comrades had better be upon their guard, lest I should be beforehand and seize upon some of them first. It so happened, about four or five months afterwards, I received information that a notorious robber was concealed in the cleft of a rock, close to the sea-shore,
