For the conversion of my father I have to thank my dear mother, Miss Bell Brady, daughter of Ulysses Brady of Castle Brady, county Kerry, Esquire and J.P.  She was the most beautiful woman of her day in Dublin, and universally called the Dasher there.  Seeing her at the assembly, my father became passionately attached to her; but her soul was above marrying a Papist or an attorney’s clerk; and so, for the love of her, the good old laws being then in force, my dear father slipped into my uncle Cornelius’s shoes and took the family estate.  Besides the force of my mother’s bright eyes, several persons, and of the genteelest society too, contributed to this happy change; and I have often heard my mother laughingly tell the story of my father’s recantation, which was solemnly pronounced at the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the town.  Roaring Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, and laid the necessary information the next morning against his brother; but his conversion caused a coolness between him and my uncle Corney, who joined the rebels in consequence.

This great difficulty being settled, my Lord Bagwig lent my father his own yacht, then lying at the Pigeon House, and the handsome Bell Brady was induced to run away with him to England, although her parents were against the match, and her lovers (as I have heard her tell many thousands of times) were among the most numerous and the most wealthy in all the kingdom of Ireland.  They were married at the Savoy, and my grandfather dying very soon, Harry Barry, Esquire, took possession of his paternal property and supported our illustrious name with credit in London.  He pinked the famous Count Tiercelin behind Montague House, he was a member of ‘White’s,’ and a frequenter of all the chocolate-houses; and my mother, likewise, made no small figure.  At length, after his great day of triumph before His Sacred Majesty at Newmarket, Harry’s fortune was just on the point of being made, for the gracious monarch promised to provide for him.  But alas! he was taken in charge by another monarch, whose will have no delay or denial,—­by Death, namely, who seized upon my father at Chester races, leaving me a helpless orphan.  Peace be to his ashes!  He was not faultless, and dissipated all our princely family property; but he was as brave a fellow as ever tossed a bumper or called a main, and he drove his coach-and-six like a man of fashion.

I do not know whether His gracious Majesty was much affected by this sudden demise of my father, though my mother says he shed some royal tears on the occasion.  But they helped us to nothing:  and all that was found in the house for the wife and creditors was a purse of ninety guineas, which my dear mother naturally took, with the family plate, and my father’s wardrobe and her own; and putting them into our great coach, drove off to Holyhead, whence she took shipping