DESMOND, Earls and Countesses of. [See Fitzgerald.]
D'ESPAGNE, JEAN (1591–1659), French protestant pastor and theologian, born in 1591 in the Dauphiné, was pastor at Orange in 1620, and then at the Hague, which he seems to have left in 1629, under disagreeable circumstances, if we may trust a very hostile pamphlet published against him in London in 1657 (Réponse aux questions de M. Despagne adressées à l'Eglise francoise de Londres, London, 1657, apparently written by a M. Herbert).
From the Hague he came to London, wrote his first work on the lawfulness of the ‘Duello’ (‘Antiduello, or a treatise in which is discussed the lawfulnesse and unlawfulnesse of single combats,’ 1632; republished in the same year under the title of ‘Antiduello. The Anatomie of Duells with the Symptomes thereof,’ &c.) D'Espagne became pastor to a French congregation in London, which met, through the kindness of the Earl of Pembroke, ‘in Durham House in the Strand, and after that was pulled down at the chapel in Somerset House, which was procured for that assembly by order of the House of Lords’ (New and General Biog. Dict. 1798).
D'Espagne evidently adopted a somewhat independent line among his countrymen and co-religionists, not only venturing to criticise Calvin—which won him the posthumous encomiums of Bayle—but holding aloof from the older French church of London. He accused the latter of millenarianism and other folly. They in turn accused him of schism. The controversy raged angrily, and appears to have been carried in some form before the House of Lords, who adjudicated in D'Espagne's favour (see pamphlet already ut supra).
D'Espagne's books and pamphlets relate to a variety of subjects. Some were translated into English, and the collected works were translated into German. A catalogue is in Haag's ‘La France protestante.’
D'Espagne died on 25 April 1659. There is a mediocre portrait of him in the translated ‘Essay on the Wonders of God,’ published in London by his executor in 1662.
[Didot's Nouvelle Biographie Générale, and works quoted above.]
DESPARD, EDWARD MARCUS (1751–1803), executed for high treason, was the youngest of six brothers, who were all in the army, except the eldest [see Despard, John], and was born in Queen's County, Ireland, in 1751. He entered the army as an ensign in the 50th regiment in 1766, and was promoted lieutenant in 1772, when his regiment was stationed at Jamaica, where he quickly showed his talent for engineering. In 1779 he was appointed engineer in the expedition to San Juan, and so greatly distinguished himself, that Captain Polson wrote in his despatch to the governor of Jamaica: ‘There was scarcely a gun fired but what was pointed by Captain Nelson of the Hinchinbrooke, or Lieutenant Despard, chief engineer, who has exerted himself on every occasion.’ On his return he was promoted captain into the 78th regiment, but still employed in engineering in Jamaica. From this work he was removed by the governor, Sir John Dalling, in 1781, when he was appointed commandant of the island of Rattan on the Spanish main, whither certain English logwood-cutters had retired when driven from Honduras by the Spaniards, and soon after of the whole Mosquito shore and the bay of Honduras. Dalling recalled him in a hurry to superintend the military defences of Jamaica, when the island was threatened by the great fleet of the Comte de Grasse. All apprehension on this score was removed by Rodney's great victory, and in August 1782 Despard was permitted to take command of an expedition, consisting of the settlers of Cap Gracias à Dios, at the head of whom, with the help of a few English artillerymen, he took possession of all the Spanish possessions on the Black River. He received the special thanks of the king for these services (see Bannantine, Memoirs of Colonel Despard, p. 13), and was, at the special request of the House of Assembly of Jamaica, made a colonel of Provincials by Sir Archibald Campbell, who had succeeded Governor Dalling on 9 Nov. 1782. By the treaty of peace of 1783 Spain granted the peninsula of Yucatan to the English logwood-cutters, on condition that they should do nothing but cut logwood, and in March 1784 Despard was directed to take over the new territory. In this capacity he gave so much satisfaction that, at the special request of the settlers themselves, he was appointed by Campbell to be superintendent of his majesty's affairs there on 1 Dec. 1784, with the very inadequate salary of 500l. a year. He was at first most successful, and obtained leave from the Spanish authorities for the English to cultivate vegetables, and also the cession of a small island for the residence of a pilot. But his popularity did not last long; the old settlers on the peninsula, seven hundred in number, objected to the existence among them of the two thousand logwood-cutters from the Mosquito shore,
