the Charity Schools. 3. ‘A Charge delivered at his Annual Visitation, 1845,’ &c., 8vo, London, 1846. 4. ‘A Letter to the Bishop of Exeter on the Church Discipline Bill,’ 8vo, London, 1856. Beresford was never married. He died, 18 July 1862, at Woburn, near Donaghadee, the seat of George Dunbar, Esq., D.L., who had married one of his nieces. His remains were taken to Armagh, and buried 30 July in the crypt of the cathedral he had restored. At his funeral the Roman catholic primate, Dr. Dixon, and Dr. Cooke, the moderator of the general assembly of the presbyterian church, walked side by side.
[Cotton's Fasti Ecclesiæ Hibernicæ; Dublin University Magazine, July 1840; Addresses presented to the Lord Primate of Ireland on his attaining the fiftieth year of his episcopate, with his grace's answers, and an account of the proceedings at Armagh on 29 March 1855; Belfast News-Letter, Daily Express, and Record, 21 July 1862; Guardian, 23 July 1862; English Churchman, 24 July 1862; Times, 21, 24, 26, and 30 July, and 1 and 23 Aug. 1862; Christian Examiner, 6 Aug. 1862; Irish Ecclesiastical Gazette, 15 Aug. and 15 Nov. 1862; Gent. Mag. December 1862.]
BERESFORD, Sir JOHN POO (1768?–1844), admiral, a natural son of Lord de la Poer, afterwards first marquis of Waterford, entered the navy in 1782 on board the Alexander, under the protection of Lord Longford. Having served his full time, principally on the Newfoundland and West India stations, he was made lieutenant 4 Nov. 1790. He was then sent out to join the Lapwing frigate in the Mediterranean, and whilst in her was ' specially employed on shore at Genoa and Turin, concerting measures for the removal of the English residents, running very considerable risk in the midst of the revolutionary excitement, from which he escaped in the disguise of a peasant. In 1/94 he was appointed to the Resolution of 74 guns, bearing the flag of Rear-admiral Murray, the commander-in-chief on the North American station, by whom, in November 1794, he was promoted to the command of the Lynx sloop. His successful protection of a convoy, a few weeks later, against two French ships of superior force, the energy and skill he displayed in rescuing the Thetis frigate, which had got ashore, and the capture of a powerful French privateer, all within the next three months, won for him from the admiral an appointment to the Hussar frigate as acting captain, and he was sent, under the immediate orders of Captain Cochrane of the Thetis, to destroy some French store ships in Hampton Roads. On 17 May 1795 they met the store ships outside the Capes ; there were five of them, ail heavily armed, though still no match for the frigates. After a smart action two of them were captured, one the Prévoyante, nominally a 36-gun frigate, but having only 24 guns on board, and those only 8-pounders; the other the Raison, called a 24-gun frigate, but mounting only eighteen (James, Naval History (ed. 1860), i. 319). None the less the action was considered highly creditable, and Admiral Murray removed Beresford into the Prévoyante ; but the admiralty considered this too large for a first command, and appointed him to the Raison. In the following autumn, 25 Aug. 1796, whilst cairying 200,000l. in specie from Boston to Halifax, he fell in with the Vengeance, a French frigate of the largest size, a ship of 1,180 tons, and though nominally of 40 guns, 18-pounders, carrying actually 52 ; the Raison, on the other hand, was a 9-pounder frigate of 470 tons, and mounted 30 guns, carronades included. A running fight began, in the course of which the Vengeance, having sustained some injury, dropped astern, and a timely fog permitted the Raison to make good her escape (ibid. i. 384). In March 1797 the Raison captured a large and rich Spanish ship near the Bahamas, and drove another on shore ; during the year she made several other prizes, and towards the end of it was sent home with convoy, and was paid off. Early in 1798 Beresford was again sent to the West Indies, in command of the Unité frigate, in which, or afterwards in the Diana, he assisted in the reduction of Surinam, St. Martin, St. Bartholomew, St. Thomas, St. John, Santa Cruz, and all the Swedish and Danish dependencies (ibid, ii. 420, iii. 150), and returned home in charge of a convoy of some two hundred sail ; the preliminaries of peace were signed shortly aftenvards, and the Diana was paid off. On the renewal of the war in 1803 he was appointed to the Virginie frigate, which he commanded in the North Sea for more than a year, in which time constant cruising in bad weather had rendered the Virginie no longer seaworthy, and Beresford was ordered a passage to North America, to take command of the Cambrian frigate. In her he captured several of the enemy's privateers, and when, in consequence of the death of Sir Andrew Mitchell, 26 Feb. 1806, he had to act as senior officer of the station, the measures which he took won for him a very warm expression of regard from the merchants of Halifax on the occasion of his being superseded by Admiral Berkeley. In 1808 Beresford commanded the Theseus of 74 guns, first in the Channel, and afterwards, under Sir Richard King, off Ferrol, where the blockading squadron kept the sea for
