Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/419

 detached corps, which was placed under the command of Generals Gould, Stewart, and Leslie successively. On the conclusion of the war in 1784 his regiment was reduced and he went on half-pay, but in the previous year he had been elected M.P. for Mullingar to the Irish House of Commons, and he now prepared to devote himself to politics. He was noted as an eloquent speaker even in those days, when the Irish House of Commons abounded in eloquent speakers, and he was eventually made secretary at war in Ireland in 1796, an office which he held until he resigned his seat in 1799. In 1793 he raised the famous 87th regiment, with which he accompanied his old friend, now Earl of Moira, to the Netherlands in 1794. He was present in Lord Moira's famous march to join the Duke of York in that year, and was wounded at the battle of Alost (Royal Military Calendar, ed. 1820, ii. 117). He was present at the operations at Quiberon and Isle Dieu in 1795. In 1799 he threw up his official position to go to the Mediterranean as brigadier-general at Gibraltar, and after serving in the same capacity in Minorca, he accompanied Sir Ralph Abercromby's expedition to Egypt at the head of a brigade, consisting of the 2nd, 30th, 44th, and 89th regiments. With this brigade he did good service at the battles of 8, 13, and 21 March, especially at the latter, where his brigade had to bear the brunt of the French attack with Lord Cavan's, and suffered most severely. His activity in Egypt was immense; he organised a dromedary corps there; he commanded the brilliant expedition into the desert of 17 May, when with two hundred and fifty cavalry he took six hundred French prisoners with two hundred horses and four hundred and sixty camels; and in spite of serious illness he galloped to Alexandria in August, and commanded in the capture of the castle of Marabout on 17 Aug., which insured the surrender of the city. Lord Hutchinson omitted to mention his name in his despatch, but ample reparation was done to him by the handsome language used about him by Lord Hobart in the House of Commons, when moving a vote of thanks to the army in Egypt (ib. ii. 123). His last daring achievement was in bringing home despatches in the following year from Naples through the midst of the banditti who then infested Italy. In 1802 he was promoted major-general, and made private secretary to the Prince of Wales, a post he resigned in 1804 to take up the appointment of lieutenant-governor of Guernsey. In 1805 he was created a baronet, received the royal license to wear the order of the Crescent, conferred on him for his Egyptian services, and was granted an additional crest and supporters to his arms. In Guernsey he made himself very popular, and at the same time very useful. The close neighbourhood of the Channel Islands to France made it most important to maintain an efficient garrison in them, and Doyle greatly increased this efficiency by improving the local militia, of which he made his favourite nephew, Colonel J. M. Doyle, inspector, and making the inhabitants proud of their forces. He generally improved the island, especially by persuading the people to make good roads, and he got the States to vote him 30,000l. for supplies, a larger sum than had ever been granted to any other governor. He was promoted lieutenant-general in April 1808, and was obliged to leave Guernsey, owing to the reduction of the staff there in 1815, in spite of the remonstrance of the States of the island, which also voted him a vase. He was made a K.B. in 1812, promoted general on 12 Aug. 1819, and made governor of Charlemont, and it is said (ib. ii. 125) that he was even selected for the task of organising the Portuguese army in 1809, which was eventually entrusted to Lord Beresford, and only missed the appointment by an accident to the official letter. His reputation as an organiser was undoubtedly very high, and that he could win popularity is well shown by the enthusiastic reception he met with in Guernsey when he visited the island in 1826, and by the pillar set up to his memory there. The government's ill-treatment of his nephew, Sir [q. v.], in 1828 greatly preyed upon his mind and weakened his health, and he died in Somerset Street, Portman Square, on 8 Aug. 1834. As he was unmarried, the baronetcy conferred upon him in 1805 became extinct, but it was revived (18 Feb. 1828) in the person of Sir Francis Hastings Doyle, the son of his youngest brother, General Welbore Ellis Doyle. General Welbore Doyle, himself a distinguished soldier, commanded the 14th regiment and led the attack on Famars in 1793, and died commander-in-chief in Ceylon in 1797 (, Reminiscences, pp. 369–72).



DOYLE, JOHN (1797–1868), painter and caricaturist, was born at Dublin in 1797. He studied drawing under an Italian landscape-painter named Gabrielli, and in the Royal Dublin Society's schools. He was also a pupil of the miniature painter [q. v.] In 1821 he came to London; but, although he