himself, was already an ensign on the Irish establishment, whose pay the
fond parents regularly drew. This piece of preferment my lord must have
got for his cadet whilst he was on good terms with the Minister, during
which period of favour Will Esmond was also shifted off to New York.
Whilst I was in America myself, we read in an English journal that
Captain Charles Esmond had resigned his commission in his Majesty's
service, as not wishing to take up arms against the countrymen of his
mother, the Countess of Castlewood. "It is the doing of the old fox, Van
den Bosch," Madam Esmond said; "he wishes to keep his Virginian property
safe, whatever side should win!" I may mention, with respect to this
old worthy, that he continued to reside in England for a while after the
Declaration of Independence, not at all denying his sympathy with the
American cause, but keeping a pretty quiet tongue, and alleging that
such a very old man as himself was past the age of action or mischief,
in which opinion the Government concurred, no doubt, as he was left
quite unmolested. But of a sudden a warrant was out after him, when it
was surprising with what agility he stirred himself, and skipped off to
France, whence he presently embarked upon his return to Virginia.

The old man bore the worst reputation amongst the Loyalists of our
colony; and was nicknamed "Jack the Painter" amongst them, much to
his indignation, after a certain miscreant who was hung in England
for burning naval stores in our ports there. He professed to have
lost prodigious sums at home by the persecution of the Government,
distinguished himself by the loudest patriotism and the most violent
religious outcries in Virginia; where, nevertheless, he was not much
more liked by the Whigs than by the party who still remained faithful
to the Crown. He wondered that such an old Tory as Madam Esmond of
Castlewood was suffered to go at large, and was for ever crying out
against her amongst the gentlemen of the new Assembly, the Governor, and
officers of the State. He and Fanny had high words in Richmond one
day, when she told him he was an old swindler and traitor, and that the
mother of Colonel Henry Warrington, the bosom friend of his Excellency
the Commander-in-Chief, was not to be insulted by such a little
smuggling slave-driver as him! I think it was in the year 1780 an
accident happened, when the old Register Office at Williamsburg was
burned down, in which there was a copy