1605. Was James Woulfe.
From this date till 1613 scarcely a year passed without the dismissal of
the chosen Catholic magistrates, and substitution by royal mandate of
Protestants. In 1613 George Woulfe, grandfather[7] of the proscribed
Captain of the same name as above, then sheriff (the title assumed since
1609), with his colleagues, John Arthur, and the mayor, David Creagh,
was deposed for refusing the oaths of supremacy, &c.
[Footnote 7: So I was assured, many years ago, by the late Lord
Chief Baron Wolfe, from whom I also learned that all these
magistrates certainly sprung from the same stem, though how they
should be respectively placed as to constitute a form of
genealogy, I cannot now exactly indicate.]
In 1647 Patrick Woulfe was sheriff; but from 1654, when the city
surrendered to Ireton, until June 1656, Limerick was ruled by twelve
English aldermen. In 1656 Colonel Henry Ingolsby became mayor, and the
regular order of magistracy was subsequently pursued.
I cannot at present trace the genealogy in strict deduction, although I
believe it all might be collected from the subsisting papers of the
family in the county of Clare; at least from Garret, the first-named
bailiff in the preceding list. In my boyhood I saw some pedigree of it
in the hands of an antiquary named Stokes, but which it would now be
difficult to discover. If the present Sir Frederick A. G. Ouseley,
Bart., son of my old schoolfellow, the late Sir George, be in possession
of the papers of his grandfather, Captain Ralph Ouseley, I think it
likely that some documents relating to General Wolfe's family, in its
ancient line, will be found, as I recollect hearing Captain Ouseley, a
resident of Limerick, speak of them.