all danger, to have witnessed such memorable scenes.[1] In 1813, when he was a grandfather and sixty-six years of age, his second wife gave birth to four infants, an event for which the Norwich Corporation voted him a piece of plate; but the whole quartette died within three months. Dr. Rigby survived them eight years.
It is a far cry from the Bastille to the Ile Ste. Marguérite; yet the 14th July echoed thither. Macdonagh, an Irish officer in the French service, had for twelve years occupied the cell of the Man with the Iron Mask. Born in Sligo in 1740, he had money left him by a great-uncle, a Jacobite refugee in France, was sent for by his guardian, and brought up in France, where he entered the army, and gained the Cross of St. Louis. In 1774, while sub-lieutenant in Dillon's regiment at Lille, he became acquainted with Rose Plunket, daughter of Lord Dunsany, and a boarder in a convent. Touched by her tale of family dissensions and her repugnance to returning to Ireland, he was secretly married to her by an Irish priest. Her brother shortly afterwards fetched her to Paris, Macdonagh going in the same coach without appearing to know her. The brother, on discovering the facts, confined her in Port Royal convent; but she appealed to the British Embassy, and there was diplomatic correspondence respecting her. "It is
- ↑ Dr. Rigby's "Letters from France." By Lady Eastlake.
