and held it for several days. So this joyous welcome was indeed heartfelt, especially as the Captain’s wife was at this time expecting her second baby. The other letter was occasioned by sorrow:
Treehoge.
1 Dec. 1762.
Son Robert
I do sincerely join in your griefe, for the death of so good a wife and Mother of your young children. Had I thought I would have been usefull I would infalibly have gon to Belfast, on receipt of your brothers short Letter, even over all the obstructions which was in my way. I hope rational religious consideration will in time meetigate and abate your griefe and sorrow. She having lived a pious life of well doing, and tho now absent from the body is present with the Lord, enjoying immortal happyness, which, as you loved her, you ought not to grudge her of, as in case you spend your life as I hear she did, it will be the best preparation for dying the death of the Riteous, as I believe she did; and you may meet again in a state of purity and uninterupted happyness. And I rely on the Divine Providence for the well being of your young Children, and you know it is appointed for us all to die, which ought to be ever in remembrance. I am sensible that your case is piteous, and no doubt perilous, your best way to take [it] is, to set the Lord always before you, and to acknowledge him in all your ways, and he is faithfull, who has promised to care for you and yours and hold up your goings by directing your paths in the way of Riteousness and Peace and Happyness which is, and always shall be, my earnest desire while I continue in the this world. But being now advanced in the sixty sixth year of my age during which time I have gone through many troubles and nevertheless have experienced much of the goodness of the Divine Providence: and tho I shun not fatague, I find a weekness growing upon me, which are the symptoms of mortality. I therefore conclude, that the time of my departure is not far of. Happy, thrice happy are they who having the Sting of Death removed are arived in safety and happyness beyond the dangers and troubles of this present State. I would say more but you have and can have better help than I can give you which I hope you will not fail to have due recourse unto and so conclude
Dear Son your
affect father
Frans Joy.11
In spite of his forebodings Francis Joy had still many years before him – indeed he outlived both his sons. In the course of his long life much history had been enacted – Marlborough’s victories had resounded through Europe, two Jacobite risings had collapsed and the Hanoverian dynasty sat firmly on the English throne and, most significant of all, the American colonies had wrested independence from a domineering and unsympathetic British government. News would have reached him too, just before his death, of that other great movement for liberty – the Revolution in France.
In Ireland, the aim for which he had striven had, seemingly, been achieved. The Volunteers, so closely identified with his own family – as will be shown – had firstly guarded the shores of Ireland from invasion, and then by the pressure of their support had enabled Grattan to win in 1782 the independence of her parliament. One wonders if the old man, advocate to the end of constitutional reform, was ever troubled by the thought of where that armed force might lead. We do not know, and at any rate, even at ninety-three, there was still a public duty to perform. Parliamentary independence had been won, but parliamentary reform was urgent, for the great landowners and their reactionary influence still dominated the Irish Parliament in Dublin. The election of 1790 was in full swing, and in County Antrim the contest was a trial of strength between the independent candidates sponsored by the merchants and the freeholders, and the representatives of the party in power. Every vote would be needed. Francis was infirm and suffering greatly from his leg, but, he who had never “shunned fatigue”, gathered up his ebbing strength and, in spite of all “obstructions”, had himself transported from Randalstown to the polling booth at Antrim town, every jolt on the rough road inflicting still more pain. When his astonished grandson from Belfast met him and exclaimed in amazement “What brought you here, Sir?”, the characteristic answer was instantly forthcoming: “The good of my country.”12 The Independent candidates, the Hon. John O’Neill and the Hon. Hercules Rowley, were triumphant by a small majority [in the county of Down the election was still more momentous. There, after a terrific struggle, one of the seats was wrenched from the clutches of the wealthy and powerful Downshire family, by Robert Stewart, a handsome lad of barely twenty-one. When, in the following January, the newly elected Parliament assembled it included also another young man – Capt. Arthur Wellesley. Eight years later John O’Neill was to meet his death in tragic circumstances in Antrim town, while the other two were well on their way to the fame that awaited them as Viscount Castlereagh and the Duke of Wellington respectively], but within three weeks, on June 10th 1790, Francis Joy died.
By a curious coincidence the brief paragraph in the Belfast News-Letter modestly announcing the death of its founder, is immediately followed by a more lengthy notice of the death of Dr. Benjamin Franklin in Philadelphia, – two men whose sympathies in their separate spheres were closely akin.
His remains were brought back to the town that owed him so much, and Francis Joy lies buried where once was the graveyard of the Parish of Belfast.
It is not without significance that the story of the Antrim election was remembered and recorded by his granddaughter Mary Ann McCracken.
CHAPTER 2
HENRY AND ROBERT JOY
1720–1785
The first authentic glimpse of Francis Joy’s sons is found in a letter from Henry to Robert, written in 1745 from Carrickfergus. The Young Pretender had lately raised his forces in Scotland and there were rumours of an attempted invasion of the Antrim coast. As in previous warnings of danger, hundreds of stalwart young men from the neighbouring counties rushed to augment the garrison at Carrickfergus, at that time a place of far greater strategic importance than Belfast, making “a handsome appearance, and going through their exercise with great regularity and exactness”1 when they were reviewed by the Earl of Antrim, Lord Lieutenant of the county. Henry Joy was one of these, and, full of importance and excitement, he wrote to his brother on October 30th, less than six weeks after Charles Edward’s victory at Preston Pans:
Dear Bro.
We are sent down here to keep Garrison, how long we are to remain I cannot tell… I dont believe this place was better garrisoned these many years. The reasons of our coming here you will find in our Paper enclosed. There is no getting furloes and I dont know how we’ll get our business managed and my Father begs you may come down – there are four out of our house viz. Father, I, Michael and Billy Dunn, and the other people have published two papers and design to continue it, but meet with no manner of encouragement, I believe they’ll be obliged to drop it. You must excuse my seldom writing, we are so prodigiously hurried and in continual alarms.
Yours in great haste,
Henry Joy.2
The rival publication was almost certainly the short-lived Belfast Courant,3 and there is more than a suggestion of professional rivalry in its appearance. The Courant was started in 1745, printed by John Magee on paper manufactured by James Blow, both men being already well-established printers in Belfast. Probably they resented the intrusion into their domain of the enterprising lawyer, and determined to retaliate. However, their effort met with little success and continued for only one year.
Brother Robert was in Dublin. Perhaps he was visiting Mr. Slator and his famous paper mills at Saggart and Clondalkin; perhaps, too, he had been one of the vast number who during two days had filed past the coffin of the great Dean of St. Patrick’s, for Jonathan Swift4 had died just one week before the letter from Henry was written – Jonathan, who fifty years earlier, as the young prebend at Kilroot, had made his way so many times along the shore of the lough to Belfast in his ardent wooing of Jane Waring, his Varina.
