a Proclamation of Outlawry declared against Rev John Prendergast Walsh, calling for him to surrender to the Sheriff. The offence was a debt of £203 13s 3d and was heard at the Queen’s Bench on 9 September 1852. In 1857 an article was published in the Cheltenham Mercury - Saturday 31 October 1857 - detailing outstanding debts of a gentleman called Rev. Walsh, identified by a wooden leg and who had fought at Waterloo. A "mob" of town tradesmen had attended his house on 22 September, demanding payment of their outstanding bills. Walsh replied in a letter to the newspaper on 9 November, denying all charges made by the paper and blaming "two or three of the lower order of tradesmen" for the altercation. Two weeks later a letter written by Thomas Blakeman, the secretary of the London Association for the Protection of Trade, was published. His attention had been drawn to these earlier correspondence and he wrote that he had been trying to obtain outstanding debts from Rev Walsh for several years on behalf of his members. He also cited other places where Walsh had lived and where debts were still outstanding; these included Canterbury, Steeple (near Maldon, Essex), Shrewsbury, Oswestry and Wrexham. Hoghton In 1860 Walsh was appointed as a relief vicar in Hoghton, Lancashire, in place of the incumbent, Rev. J Shortt, who took leave of absence for the sake of his health. Walsh and his family moved into the rectory in Shortt's absence. The agreement appeared to be for a year, or perhaps longer if Shortt's health did not improve. This lack of clarity led to a misunderstanding between the two clergymen. Shortt wrote that he would return at the end of one year but Walsh rejected this, saying that he was not prepared to relinquish either the position, or the residence of the rectory, until the end of the two year full term. The parishioners expressed their disapproval of Walsh's stance by forming a committee with Thomas Eastwood as chairman. Several accusations were made against Walsh including details of his past financial difficulties. These were all published in the Preston Chronicle in June 1861 in a long article. Walsh responded with a letter/article in the same newspaper that ran to nearly three columns. He refuted many of the accusations and it appeared that Eastman may have been misinformed about some of the events. However, Walsh