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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 for
Ireland. My father's body accompanied us in the finest hearse and
plumes money could buy; for though the husband and wife had
quarrelled repeatedly in life, yet at my father's death his high-
spirited widow forgot all her differences, gave him the grandest
funeral that had been seen for many a day, and erected a monument
over his remains (for which I subsequently paid), which declared him
to be the wisest, purest, and most affectionate of men.
In performing these sad duties over her deceased lord, the widow
spent almost every guinea she had, and, indeed, would have spent a
great deal more, had she discharged one-third of the demands which
the ceremonies occasioned. But the people around our old house of
Barryogue, although they did not like my father for his change of
faith, yet stood by him at this moment, and were for exterminating
the mutes sent by Mr. Plumer of London with the lamented remains.
The monument and vault in the church were then, alas! all that
remained of my vast possessions; for my father had sold every stick
of the property to one Notley, an attorney, and we received but a
cold welcome in his house--a miserable old tumble-down place it was.
[Footnote: In another part of his memoir Mr. Barry will be found to
describe this mansion as one of the most splendid palaces in Europe;
but this is a practice not unusual with his nation; and with respect
to the Irish principality claimed by him, it is known that Mr.
Barry's grandfather was an attorney and maker of his own fortune.]
The splendour of the funeral did not fail to increase the widow
Barry's reputation as a woman of spirit and fashion; and when she
wrote to her brother Michael Brady, that worthy gentleman
immediately rode across the country to fling himself in her arms,
and to invite her in his wife's name to Castle Brady.
Mick and Barry had quarrelled, as all men will, and very high words
had passed between them during Barry's courtship of Miss Bell. When
he took her off, Brady swore he would never forgive Barry or Bell;
but coming to London in the year '46, he fell in once more with
Roaring Harry, and lived in his fine house in Clarges Street, and
lost a few pieces to him at play, and broke a watchman's head or two
in his company,--all of which reminiscences endeared Bell and her
son very much to the good-hearted gentleman, and he received us both
with open arms. Mrs. Barry did not, perhaps wisely, at first make
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