Soldiers & sailors > Life and daring exploits of Lord Dundonald

LIFE AND DAKIN G EXPLOITS
months, and was again dissolved in the succeeding
year, it must have cost him something more than
£200 a month, for the time that the House was
actually sitting, for the honour of representing the
“ free and independent electors of Honiton.”
No sooner had Lord Cochrane taken his seat than
he renewed his solicitations to the Admiralty for the
promotion of Lieutenant Parker, who had suffered so
severely at the boarding of the Gamo, and had re¬
mained ever since unemployed, and on half-pay ; and
of Lieutenant Haswell, who had taken the Tapageuse.
In this year a Lieutenant Sibley, for cutting out, with
the boats of a whole squadron, a French sloop of six¬
teen guns, had been promoted to the rank of com¬
mander. Cochrane did not fail to press this fact as the
fulcrum on which he rested his urgency, but without
avail, until he threatened to bring the whole matter
before Parliament. This proved effectual. Parker
was promoted, and employed, as we have seen before;
Haswell, too, gained his step. During the major
portion of the session of 1806-7 Cochrane was at sea,
and there is no record of his having taken any im¬
portant part in Parliamentary business.
In April, .1807, Parliament was again dissolved.
Cochrane knew that he had destroyed all chances of
re-election for Honiton. Nor did he desire it; for
he had been perfectly disgusted, during his short
term of membership, by the never-abated clamour of
his hungry constituents for places. Cochrane con¬
ceived the bold design of seeking the suffrages of the
electors of Westminster. Sir Francis Burdett was
confined to his house by a dangerous wound received
in a duel with a Mr. Paul (immortalised in Gilray’s