Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 16.djvu/13

 permission to exchange with Colonel Gisborne to the Irish half-pay of the late 121st (king's royal volunteers), a brief-lived regiment of foot lately disbanded in Ireland, and to retain his lieutenant-governorship on the English establishment as well (see Calendar Home Off. Papers, 1766–9, pars. 96, 136). He was made K.B. the same year. On 21 Jan. 1769 appeared in the ‘Public Advertiser’ the first of the famous letters of Junius, containing an attack on various high personages, and among others on the Marquis of Granby, then commander-in-chief. Draper, who appears to have been rather vain of his scholarship, and claimed ‘very long, uninterrupted, and intimate friendship’ with Granby, replied in a letter dated 26 Jan. 1769, defending Granby against the aspersions of his anonymous assailant. Junius retorted with sarcasms on Draper's tacit renunciation of the Manilla claims, and on his exchange with Colonel Gisborne, the latter, an everyday transaction, being represented as ‘unprecedented among soldiers.’ ‘By what accident,’ asked Junius, ‘did it happen that in the midst of all this bustle and all these claims for justice to your injured troops, the name of the Manilla ransom was buried in a profound, and since then an uninterrupted silence? Did the ministers suggest any motive powerful enough to tempt a man of honour to desert and betray his fellow-soldiers? Was it the blushing ribbon which is now the perpetual ornament of your person? or was it the regiment which you afterwards (a thing unprecedented among soldiers) sold to Colonel Gisborne? or was it the governorship, the full pay of which you are content to hold with the half-pay of an Irish colonel?’ (, second letter). Draper in reply stated that in September 1768 he and Admiral Sir S. Cornish had waited on Lord Shelburne in respect of the Manilla claims, and had been frankly told, as by previous secretaries of state, that their rights must be sacrificed to the national convenience. He continued (Draper's second letter): ‘On my return from Manilla his majesty, by Lord Egremont, informed me that I should have the first vacant red ribbon, as a reward for my services in an enterprise which I had planned as well as commanded. The Duke of Bedford and Mr. Grenville confirmed these assurances many months before the Spaniards had protested the ransom bills. To accommodate Lord Clive, then going upon a most important service in Bengal, I waived my claim to the vacancy which then happened. As there was no other vacancy until the Duke of Grafton and Lord Rockingham were joint ministers, I was then honoured with the order, and it is surely no small honour to me that in such a succession of ministers they were all pleased to think that I deserved it; in my favour they were all united. On the reduction of the 79th foot, which served so gloriously in the East Indies, his majesty, unsolicited by me, gave me the 16th foot as an equivalent. My reasons for retiring are foreign to the purpose; let it suffice that his majesty was pleased to approve of them; they are such as no one can think indecent who knows the shocks that repeated vicissitudes of heat and cold, of changes and sickly climates will give the strongest constitutions in a pretty long course of service. I resigned my regiment to Colonel Gisborne, a very good officer, for his Irish half-pay and 200l. Irish annuities, so that, according to Junius, I have been bribed to say nothing more of the Manilla ransom and to sacrifice those brave men by the strange arrangement of accepting 380l. per annum and giving up 800l.’ Junius then insinuated that Draper had made a false declaration on accepting his half-pay, which Draper likewise disproved. The correspondence ended with Junius's seventh letter. It was reopened on the republication of Junius's letters by Draper repeating his denials of Junius's statements and defending the Duke of Bedford against the gross accusations of the latter. It finally closed with Draper's ‘Parting Word to Junius,’ dated 7 Oct. 1769, and Junius's reply. The correspondence was subsequently published under the title of ‘The Political Contest’ (London, 1769). Draper was credited with the authorship of the letters signed ‘Modestus,’ replying to Junius's observations on the circumstances attending the arrest by civil process of General Gansell of the guards, but in a footnote to Wade's ‘Junius,’ i. 235, it is stated that the writer in the ‘Public Advertiser’ using that signature was a Scottish advocate named Dalrymple. While the controversy was at its height Draper lost his wife, who died on 1 Sept. 1769, leaving no issue. Draper left England soon after for a tour in the northern provinces of America, which were then beginning to attract travellers. He arrived at Charleston, North Carolina, in January 1770; journeyed north through Maryland, where he met with a distinguished reception, and at New York the same year married his second wife, Susanna, daughter of Oliver De Lancey, senior, of that city, afterwards brigadier-general of loyalist provincials during the war of independence, and brother of Chief-justice James De Lancey (, Am. Biog.) The lady's family was wealthy, but she appears to have received a pension of 300l. a year from the Irish civil establishment soon after her marriage (Calendar Home