[Sidenote] Shannon to Sumner, May 21, 1856.

In 1788, through the intervention of Lord Shannon with Mr. Pitt, he obtained a prebend of Winchester; and soon after, at the solicitation of Lord Malmesbury, was presented by the Bishop of that diocese to the rectory of Easton, which, in the course of a twelve-month, he exchanged for Upham.

He overran Cork; broke down the castles of the Barrys and Munster Geraldines; destroyed the famous bridge over the Shannon across which the O'Briens of Clare had been in the habit of descending from time immemorial upon the Pale, and after these various achievements returned triumphantly to Dublin.

From my earliest years his whole anxiety was to fit me for the part of a country gentleman, as he regarded that characterviz., I rode boldly with the fox-hounds; I was about the best shot within twenty miles; I could swim the Shannon at Holy Island; I drove four-in-hand better than the coachman himself; and from finding a hare to hooking a salmon my equal could not be found from Killaloe to Banagher.

At Tara he confounded the Druids in argument, baptized the high-king and the chief poet; and then, turning north and west, he crossed the Shannon into Connacht, where he spent seven years.