1823-26, was now drawing to a close. In 1827 Great Britain, France, and
Russia were all united in securing the independence of the country,
which was recognised by a treaty between the three Powers in that year,
and in January following Count Capo d'Istria was elected President of
the new republic. There remained, however, the difficulty of extracting
the same acknowledgment from the Sultan, and from his powerful and
practically independent vassal, Mehemet Ali Pacha of Egypt, whose aid he
had invoked, and whose son Ibrahim held much of the revolted country.
But in 1828 the Allies at last came to an arrangement with Mehemet, and
by a convention concluded by Sir Edward Codrington, that potentate
agreed to evacuate the Morea and to deliver all captives. There then
remained the difficult work of fixing boundaries, of taking over such
parts of the country as were occupied by the Turkish and Egyptian
forces, and of reconciling the inhabitants of those portions of the
Hellenic territory which had not been allowed by the Powers to attain
their independence to a continuance of the Turkish rule. Of these the
island of Crete with its heroic Spakiotes, who had never acknowledged
the Sultan as their sovereign, was perhaps the most troublesome and
difficult. There remained also the incidental suppression of the piracy
which still continued. This duty, as before, fell mainly to the share of
Captain Yorke in the _Alligator_.

From a journal among the Hardwicke MSS. at the British Museum, I am able
to trace my father in that service from September 1, 1830, onwards. He
was then ordered to visit Volo, Salonica, and the neighbourhood, 'owing
to the reports of piracies lately committed, and to express all manner
of good will to all parties excepting such pirates, whom I am ordered to
destroy should I fall in with them.' On his arrival at Napoli at the end
of August he found the admirals of France and Russia and the
Commissioners for settling the boundaries of the new republic. 'The work