Lt.-Colonel Henry Peard Driscoll (1792-1869) Q.C., J.P., was an Anglo-Irish officer court-martialled and discharged from the British Army at Montreal. Remaining there he edited two newspapers and became well known as a lawyer, poet and wit. Early life In 1792, Henry Peard Driscoll was born in Dublin. He was a son of Timothy Driscoll (1760-1835) K.C., "for many years known on the Munster circuit as a barrister of considerable practice," and his wife Mary Ann Campbell (d. 1816), daughter of the Rev. Dr John Campbell (1724-1772) B.A., LL.B., LL.D., of Newgarden House; Vicar-General of Tuam, Co. Galway. His first cousins included Mrs Richard Graves and Lt.-Col. Joseph Netterville Burton, the father of Captain Sir Richard Francis Burton and Lady Stisted, wife of the Lieutenant Governor of Ontario. Also on his mother's side, he was related to the first cousins Sir William Collis Meredith, 2nd Chief Justice of Quebec, and Sir Richard Graves MacDonnell, briefly the Governor-General of Nova Scotia. In 1806, Driscoll entered Trinity College, Dublin. After graduating, he chose a military career and was commissioned as an Ensign into the 2nd Battalion of the 67th (South Hampshire) Regiment of Foot, going with them to Spain. The battalion saw little action, spending most of its time guarding the garrison at Cartagena. Military service At the outbreak of the War of 1812, Driscoll received a lieutenancy in the newly formed 99th/100th Regiment and came to Canada. The regiment was sent to the frontier on the Niagara Peninsula and participated in most of the actions fought there, performing a brilliant feat of arms by the surprise and capture of Fort Niagara in the winter of 1813. At the Battle of Chippewa his regiment suffered heavy losses. In 1817, Lieutenant Driscoll was court-martialled at Montreal and discharged from the British army "for having falsely, calumniously, and maliciously traduced the character of his commanding officer, Brevet Major John Martin" in an address he gave before Lt.-General Sir Gordon Drummond at the conclusion of the war in 1814. Legal career Driscoll remained in Montreal, where he studied for the bar in the offices of Denis-Benjamin Viger. At the same time as his studies, he edited the Herald newspaper while living on Rue Saint-Paul, and in 1819 he was the editor of the Courant too. In May 1823, Driscoll was called to the Bar of Lower Canada. He got on rapidly, gaining the reputation of being