1. Edward Despard was born in 1751 in Coolrain, Camross, Queen's County, in the Kingdom of Ireland, the youngest of eight surviving children of William Despard, a Protestant landowner of Huguenot descent, and Jane Despard.
22 Facts About Edward Despard
1. 2.
Edward Despard was boarded at the Quaker School in Ballitore, County Kildare, which, looking beyond basic literacy, instructed children in mathematics, the classics and, uniquely in Ireland, modern languages.
3.
Edward Despard enrolled as an ensign in the 50th Foot.
4.
Edward Despard's work required him to lead "motley crews", including free blacks, Miskitos and others of mixed-ancestry.
5.
Edward Despard fought alongside Horatio Nelson in the San Juan expedition of 1780.
6.
Edward Despard distributed land by lottery in which, the Baymen noted in their petition to London, "the meanest mulatto or free negro has an equal chance".
7.
Edward Despard supplied Grenville with a 500-page report in which he characterized the Baymen as an "arbitrary aristocracy".
8.
Edward Despard buttressed his argument with the results of the magistracy election in which he had stood shortly before he left, winning a resounding majority on an unprecedented turnout.
9.
Edward Despard arrived in London together with her and their young son, James, as his acknowledged family.
10.
Edward Despard joined the London Corresponding Society, and was quickly taken on to its central committee.
11.
Edward Despard took the United Irish pledge "to obtain an equal, full and adequate representation of all the people of Ireland" in a sovereign parliament in Dublin.
12.
At a time when the Irish movement was turning increasingly towards the prospects for a French-assisted insurrection, Edward Despard would have found it represented in LCS and other radical circles in London, by the brothers Arthur and Roger O'Connor, and by Jane Greg.
13.
At this point, it appears that Edward Despard held "a pivotal position between British republicans and France".
14.
Edward Despard was seized attending a meeting of 40 working men at the Oakley Arms public house in Lambeth.
15.
Edward Despard was prosecuted by Attorney General Spencer Perceval, before Lord Ellenborough, the Lord Chief Justice in a Special Commission on Monday, 7 February 1803.
16.
The Oakley Arms did not appear from the testimony to have been the headquarters of the conspiracy, and Edward Despard had only been there on one occasion before his arrest.
17.
Together with John Wood, 36, John Francis, 23, both guardsmen, Thomas Broughton, 26, a carpenter, James Sedgwick Wratton, 35, a shoemaker, Arthur Graham, 53, a slater, and John Macnamara, a labourer, Edward Despard was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.
18.
Edward Despard averred that while "outward forms of worship were useful for political purposes", he thought "the opinions of Churchmen, Dissenters, Quakers, Methodists, Catholics, Savages, or even Atheists, were equally indifferent".
19.
Edward Despard was permitted a final meeting with his wife during which, according to reports, "the Colonel betrayed nothing like an unbecoming weakness".
20.
Edward Despard spent some time in Ireland, a guest of Valentine Lawless, 2nd Baron Cloncurry who had been detained with Despard in 1798.
21.
Edward Despard made his way towards the carriage he assumed was his, "and there appeared a flashy Creole and a flashy young lady on his arm, and they both stepped into it".
22.
Edward Despard appears as a character in the fifth series of the popular British television drama Poldark, played by Vincent Regan.