Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast,
Her sire an earle, her dame of prince’s blood;
From tender years in Britain she doth rest
With kinges childe, while she tasteth costly food.
Honsdon did first present her to mine yeen,
Bright is her hue, and Geraldine her hight,
&c. &c. &c.
This fair and celebrated Irish absentee, after having sent her
illustrious lover to Italy “to defend her beautie by an open
challenge,” in which he was victorious, married the Earl of
Clinton:--a most unsentimental conclusion to a most romantic story.
Footnote 10:
“A false muttering flew about that his execution was intended.”
Footnote 11:
“Soon after,” says Campion, “was the house of the Geraldines attaynted
by Parliament, and all of the name busily trayned out for feare of new
commotions. But Thomas Leurces, late Bishop of Kildare, schoolemaster
to a younger brother, Gerald Fitzgerald, the Earle that now liveth,
secretly stole away with the childe, first into Scotland, then into
France, and misdoubting the French, into Italy; where Cardinall Pole,
his neare kinsman preserved him till the raigne of Edward the Sixt,
with whom hee entred into high favour, and obtayned of him his olde
inheritance of Meinothe.”
Footnote 12:
The various epithets applied to these retrogradations on the scale of
civilization are very amusing. Between the “mere and uncivil Irish,”
and the “English Lords of the Pale,” were the “English Lords beginning
to wax Irish;” “degenerating,” “becoming mere Irish,” and ending by
being “very wilde Irish,” &c. &c.
Footnote 13:
O’Sullivan Beare, one of the bravest and noblest chiefs of Kerry, and
Lord of part of the paradise of Killarney, in writing to the Spanish
minister an account of his sufferings at this period, urges him “to
the speedy sending of a ship to receive him, his wife, and children,
to save them from the hands of his most merciless enemies: Making
choice (he pathetically adds) rather to forsake my ancient
inheritance, friends, followers, and goods, than any way trust to
their graceless pardon or promise.”--_Pacata Hibernia._ Here was
absenteeship in the sixteenth century!!
Footnote 14:
Elizabeth frequently discovered that her Deputies were carrying the
joke too far. On the occasion of the wanton massacre of Smerwick, “The
queen (says the Bishop of Chichester) was not _pleased_ at the
_manner_ of this execution, and was hardly _after_ drawn to admit any
excuse of the slaughter committed.” The “_manner_” was curious
enough,--“It was concluded that only the leaders should be saved, (the
leaders were Spanish officers,) the rest slain, and _all the Irish_
hanged up: which was presently put into execution, to the great
disliking of the queen, who detested the slaughter of such as yielded
themselves.”--_Baker’s Chronicle._
Footnote 15:
“The Queen was assured,” says Leland, speaking of the inhuman rigour
of Lord Deputy Gray, “that he tyrannized with such barbarity, that
little was left in Ireland for her Majesty to reign over but ashes and
dead carcases.”--_Hist. of Ireland_, v. ii. p. 227.--Here are reasons
for absenteeship quite as cogent as any which can be advanced in the
present day.
Footnote 16:
The credulity of the Irish has ever been their ruin. Some English
officers having assured certain Irish chiefs that, upon surrendering
themselves to the government, they would obtain their pardon; those
chiefs (says Leland) “embraced the counsel, submitted, and consented
to attend the Lord Deputy St. Leger to Ireland. But here the only
favour granted them was, that they were not brought to immediate
execution. They were committed to prison, their lands declared
forfeit, and granted to those on whose counsel they had
surrendered.”--_Hist. of Ireland_, v. ii.
Footnote 17:
“Then came the Irishmen of valiant hearts,
And active limbs, and personages tall.”
_Sir J. Harrington’s Translation of Orlando Furioso._
Footnote 18:
Apology, p. 58.
Footnote 19:
_Si je ne vous mange pas en oiseau, je vous mangerai en souris._
“Other times,” they say, “bring other manners;” and it is not
impossible that men, restrained by the _manners of our own times_, may
avail themselves of the circumstance of their enforced moderation, to
reproach the writer who thus recalls a fact disreputable to the
English government, with _ripping up old sores_. The fact, however, is
“germane to the matter;” for it was such forfeitures that sowed the
first seeds of that permanent absenteeism which modern ministers
affect to deplore: and it was these flagrant violations of common
justice, that first nurtured the lawless disposition in the peasantry,
which is made an excuse for the suspension of all constitutional
rights, and which is most unjustly charged on the Catholic religion.
Besides, as long as the system is continued, which withholds
emancipation, and gives over the land to the tyranny and plunder of
churchmen and their inherents, the “ripping up old sores” is both
useful and justifiable.
Footnote 20:
The only crime of which O’Rourke could be accused, was his having
received some shipwrecked Spaniards under his roof,--men, says
O’Connor, whom the most hardened barbarity could scarcely consider as
enemies. It is remarkable that O’Rourke previously to his execution
was denied a priest of his own persuasion. But Miles Macgrath, the
converted archbishop of Cashel, was sent to prevail on him to conform.
“No,” said O’Rourke firmly, “but do you remember the dignity from
which you have fallen; return to the ancient Church, and learn from my
fortitude the lesson you should have taught me, and which you ought to
have been the last to disavow.”
If there is a shadow of truth in this wild story of Leitrim, and if
Rourke did not betray the lady, he deserves canonization. Essex,
however, who shared the same fate, preserved the same honourable
secrecy; and the purity of the Virgin Queen remains intact.
Footnote 21:
The ruins of O’Rourke’s castle still exist. They are sublimely
situated on a rock that hangs and frowns over a rapid river, near
Manor Hamilton, in the county of Leitrim. A few trees are scattered
immediately about the castle, and around are heathy mountains rising
to the clouds. “O’Rourke’s noble feast” has been rendered immortal by
the translation of Dean Swift.
Footnote 22:
O’Connor Sligo resided some time in the court of Elizabeth, where he
was flattered up to his bent, though not into a permanent
absenteeship. He returned to Ireland in 1596, after obtaining a grant
to secure him in the possession of his own property; in gratitude for
which “he was extremely active in her (the Queen’s) favour, and gained
back, partly by menace and partly by cunning, many of the revolted
clans.” The celebrated O’Donnel of Tirconnel, hearing of O’Connor’s
desertion from the common cause, marched with an army to bring him to
obedience: and, in spite of the assistance of Sir Conyers Clifford and
Lord Mayo, he ravaged and destroyed O’Connor’s country.
Footnote 23:
This youth was the only son of the Earl of Desmond, already mentioned.
He had been detained a prisoner in the Tower from his infancy as a
pledge for his father’s loyalty. He was afterwards sent to Ireland as
a state engine to play off against another Geraldine who had made
claims to the forfeited Palatinate; but after he had fretted his hour
on the bloody stage of his own country, he was brought back to
England, and lingering at court for a few months in hopeless
despondency, he died in the prime of his youth, of a broken
heart.--_See_ _Pacata Hibernia_.
Footnote 24:
Upon two occasions the Earl saved a large party of English from
destruction. Macguire, chief of Fermanagh, had given the Lord Deputy
three hundred cows to free his country from a sheriff; “after which
bargain, the sheriff, one Willis, was let loose upon Fermanagh,
leading about some hundreds of women and boys, with a guard of one
hundred men, all living upon the spoils of the country.” Macguire,
having driven this model of a modern Irish police into a church, was
about to put them to the sword, when the Earl of Tyrone interposed his
authority. This same Willis was again rescued by Tyrone from an
insurrection occasioned by similar circumstances in the O’Donnel’s
country.--_See_ _Memorial to Queen Elizabeth_.
Footnote 25:
The “Irish masque,” got up to compliment the absentees at the English
court, is either a bitter satire, or a disgusting picture of the state
of Irish society at that epoch. “The King being seated (says _the
programme_) in expectation, out ran a fellow attired as a citizen,
after him three or four footmen, Denis, Donnel, Dermoch, and Patrick,”
the object of whose visit to London was not like that of many of the
Denises and Patricks of the present day, to become either _porters_,
or _reporters_, as the chances determined; but simply, as Donnel
observes, ‘to see King Yamish,’ for which purpose ‘they had travelled
a great way miles,’ having got the start of their lords or chiefs who
had come over on the same loyal errand.
_Der._ I’ fayt, tere ish very much phoyt stick here stirring to night.
He takes ush for no shquires I tinke.
_Pat._ No; he tinksh not ve be imbasheters.
_Der._ No, fayt, I tinke sho too. But tish marriage bring over a
doshen of our besht mashters to be merry, perht tee shweet faish, an’t
be; and daunsh a fading at te vedding.
_Den._ But tey vere leeke to daunsh naked, and pleash ty majesty; for
tey villanous vild Irish sheas have casht away all ter fine cloysh, as
many ash cosht a towsand cowes and garrans, I warrant tee.
_Der._ And te prishe of a cashtell or two upon teyr backs.
_Don._ And tey tell ty majesty, tey have ner a great fish now, nor a
shea moynshter to save teyr cloyth alive now.
_Pat._ Nor a devoish vit a clowd to fesh’hem out o’ te bottom o’ te
vayter.
_Der._ But tey musht eene come and daunsh in teyr mantles now; and
show tee how tey can foot te fading and te fadow, and te phip a’
Dunboyne, I trow.
_Don._ I pree dee now, let not ty sweet faysh ladies make a mock on’
him, and scorn to daunsht vit ’hem now, becash tey be poor.
_Pat._ Tey drink no bonny clabber, i’ fayt now.
_Don._ It ish better ten usquebaugh to daunsh vit Patrick.
_Pat._ By my fater’s hand, tey vill daunsh very vell.
_Der._ Ay, by St. Patrick, vill tey; for tey be nimble men.
_Den._ And vill leap ash light, be creesh save me, ash he tat veares
te biggest fethur in ty court, King Yamish.
_Der._ For all tey have no good vindsh to blow tem heter, nor
elementsh to preserve hem.
_Don._ Nor all te four cornersh o’ te world to creep out on.
_Pat._ But tine own kingdomes.
_Don._ Tey be honesht men.
_Pat._ And goot men; tine own shubshects.
_Der._ Tou hast very good shubshects in Ireland.
_Den._ A great goot many, o’ great good shubshects.
_Don._ Tat love ty mayesty heartily.
_Den._ And vill run t’rough fire and vater for tee over te bog and te
bannoke, be te graish o’ Got and graish o’ King.
_Der._ By Got tey will fight for tee, King Yamish, and for my mistiesh
tere.
_Den._ And my little maishter. Paish, paish, now room for our
mayshter.--Then the gentlemen dance forth a dance in their Irish
mantles to a solemn music of harps, which done, the footmen fall to
speak again.”
Footnote 26:
Borlase asserts that in 1650, ten years before the Restoration, 1700
died of the plague in Dublin alone; this horrible infliction was
peculiar to those “picturesque times,” which describe so well, and
which, it is a mark of literary loyalty to admire and eulogize.
“Sir, nothing against antiquity, I pray you,
I must not hear ill of antiquity.”--_B. Jonson._
Footnote 27:
The most noted beauties of the Court of Charles the Second, Lady
Barbara Villars, (Duchess of Cleveland,) the Countess of Chesterfield,
(a Butler,) the Lady Kildare, introduced by St. Evremont into his
pleasant little poem of “The Basset Table,”[28] the Countess de
Grammont, and many others, were Irish women. The delightful author of
“Mémoires de Grammont,” Anthony Hamilton, was himself an Irishman,[29]
and a branch of the illustrious house of Hamilton, which obtained from
James the First such princely possessions in the North of Ireland, and
which is still represented by the Marquis of Abercorn. The
Fitzmaurices, (Muskerry,) the O’Briens, the Butlers, the Talbots, are
names noted in the fasti of Whitehall at this period. With respect to
the Talbots, however, it is but fair to observe that the elder branch
of this ancient and patriotic family always remained permanently
resident in their splendid castle and domain of Malahide, as their
worthy representative the Member for the county of Dublin continues to
do in the present day; though the younger branch, the Lords of Carton
(now the seat of the Duke of Leinster) were prime favourites at
Whitehall, and boon companions of both Charles and James. “The Dick
Talbot” of that day, whom Charles would fain have set at odds with the
Duke of Ormonde, brought no additional rays to the original splendour,
when he added a ducal coronet to its less perishable honours. This
Colonel Richard Talbot (afterwards Duke of Tirconnel) was sent to the
Tower for having challenged the Duke of Ormonde with duplicity of
conduct with respect to the Irish Catholics, whose agent Colonel
Talbot then was. Ormonde, believing the better part of valour to be
discretion, fought shy, instead of fighting Talbot; and when rallied
on this circumstance by the King, petulantly demanded, “Is it then
your Majesty’s pleasure that at this time of day I should put off my
doublet to fight duels with Dick Talbot?”
Footnote 28:
Vous ne me parlez pas de Madame de Kildare,
I never saw personne avoir meilleure air.
Footnote 29:
His mother, the beautiful Lady Maria Butler, was daughter to the Duke
of Ormonde.
Footnote 30:
It is farther particularly notable that James, the friend and
correspondent of Pope Clement VIII. and the special protector of the
Irish Catholics, first established in Ireland a Protestant ascendancy
in parliament, in obedience to the advice of the Lord Deputy
Chichester. With the inconsistency which ever accompanies a want of
principle, he occasionally amused himself at the expense of the very
people he affected to favour. When Chichester made King James a
present of a beautiful horse, his Majesty asked him if it were an
Irish horse: on being answered in the affirmative, the King swore his
favourite oath, “Then it must be a Papist,” for he verily believed
that all things produced in Ireland were Papists, even the very
animals themselves.
Footnote 31:
None benefited more largely by these “plots of rebellion” than the
house of Ormonde. “His Grace (says Lord Anglesey in his letter to the
Earl of Castlehaven) his Grace (the Duke of Ormonde) and his family,
by the forfeiture and punishment of the Irish, were the greatest
gainers in the kingdom, and had added to their inheritance vast scopes
of land, and a revenue three times greater than his paternal estate,
as it was before the Rebellion, and most of his increase was out of
their estates who adhered to the peace of 1648, or served under His
Majesty’s ensigns abroad.” In the anonymous and curious pamphlet “The
Unkind Deserter,” it is asserted that the Ormonde estate was but
7000_l._ per annum before the civil wars in Ireland, and that in 1674
it was close upon 100,000_l._ a year; which increase arose from the
King’s grants to him “of other men’s estates,” &c. &c. &c. The history
of the last Rebellion in 1798, and of the Union, would furnish many
anecdotes of a similar increase of the wealth of Irish families; not
indeed by forfeitures, (for the mode had passed,) but by intriguing
and bullying the government out of every place at its disposal, from a
mitre to a cornetcy of dragoons,--by the wholesale and retail sale of
the country: (a vote upon a single stage of a question has been hired,
like a job-carriage, by the night;) by corrupt dabbling in every
species of public work; in short, by every disgraceful practice of the
fraudulent tradesman, the scheming adventurer, and the sturdy
mendicant. The philosopher Kirwan was wont to quote a calculation he
had made, that the money spent on carrying the Union, would have built
a bridge from Howth to Holyhead.
Footnote 32:
In James the Second’s reign some of the measures were calculated to be
of the greatest service to Ireland, and emanated from a wise and
discreet minister, formerly attached to the Protestant interest, the
second Earl of Clarendon. His instructions announced the intentions of
the legislature, or at least of the King, to introduce Catholics into
the corporations, and invest them with magistracies and judicial
offices; and he gave his opinion in favour of the legality of the
measure, though contrary to an Act of Elizabeth. But the greatest evil
which can occur to a reformation, is to have it undertaken by men of
small capacity; as their best intentions are ever marred by their
petulance and dullness. The folly with which James hurried on a
change, and the injudiciousness of some of the proposed measures,
caused his own ruin, and that of the unhappy country he made the
principal scene of his egregious weakness and incapacity.
Footnote 33:
The Irish army under Tirconnel and Sarsfield made a most vigorous
resistance against a superior and well-disciplined force; and
Limerick, the last hold, was surrendered upon terms from which it
appears that none more esteemed their valour and fidelity than King
William himself.
Footnote 34:
When James, after his flight from the battle of the Boyne, arrived in
Dublin, he had the ingratitude and ungraciousness to reflect upon the
cowardice of the Irish. He reached the Castle late at night, and was
met at its gates by the Lady Lieutenant, the beautiful Duchess of
Tirconnel, “La belle Jennings” of Grammont’s Memoirs. In return for
the sympathizing respect which marked her reception, the King is said
to have sarcastically complimented her upon the “alertness of her
husband’s countrymen.” The high-spirited beauty replied, “In that,
however, your Majesty has had the advantage of them all.” The King, in
fact, was among the first to arrive in the capital with the news of
his own defeat.
Footnote 35:
They were estimated at the annual sum of two hundred and eleven
thousand six hundred pounds.
Footnote 36:
Letter to Sir H. Langrish.
Footnote 37:
Of this intolerance William stands in a great measure acquitted. His
known liberality subjected him to the suspicions of the party who
forged the penal statutes for Ireland, and who accused him of
infidelity, because he was unwilling to become a persecutor. When left
to act for himself, he exhibited a wisdom, wanting in the measures of
those to whom he was occasionally obliged to submit. In his
instructions to the commissioners in Scotland, dated 1689, he says
expressly, “You are to pass an act establishing that church government
which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people.”
Footnote 38:
To favour the English manufacturer, the exportation of the staple
commodity and manufacture of Ireland (wool) was prohibited on pain of
confiscation, imprisonment, and transportation!! It would be difficult
to say whether the infamy or the absurdity of such legislation is the
greatest; and indignation at the avarice of the lawgivers, is so
largely mixed with contempt for their blind ignorance, that the pen
pauses in its vituperation of measures which were so obviously their
own punishment. Be it however remarked “_en passant_,” that the
framers of these laws were the aristocracy of England, the most
educated and moral people then in existence; a striking proof of the
perfect inadequacy of abstract principles of right and wrong to the
good government of conduct. Force, and force alone, too generally
makes right, in opinion, as well as in fact; and where the power to
abuse exists, the will to injure and the sophistry to justify the
injury, will never long be wanting.
Footnote 39:
“Have they any wit in their compositions? (says Spenser in speaking of
the poetry of the Irish in his day.) Yea, truly, I have caused divers
of them to be translated unto me, that I might understand them; and
surely they savoured of sweet wit and good invention, sprinkled with
some pretty flowers of their natural device, which gave good grace and
comeliness to them.”
Footnote 40:
“Oh wretched condition of our loved compatriots, the remains of a once
happy people, steeped in blood and drenched in slaughter! Vain is your
struggle for liberty, hapless crew of a bark long tempest-tossed, and
now cast away forever. What! are we not wrecked on our own shores, and
prisoners to the Saxons? Is not the sentence passed and our excision
foredoomed? How are ye fallen from the ancient glories of your native
land! Power degraded into weakness, beauty to deformity, freedom into
slavery, and the song of triumph into elegies of despair. Nial, of the
nine hostages, look not down upon us, lest thou blush for thy captive
Gadhelians. Conn, of the hundred battles, sleep in thy grass-grown
tomb, nor upbraid our defeats with thy victories.”--_Oran_ (or song)
_of Ognive, the family bard of the last of the O’Neils._
Footnote 41:
Boyle, Berkeley, King, Dodwell, Leslie, Toland, Clayton, (Bishop of
Clogher,) Molyneux, (the friend of Locke the philosopher and champion
of Irish independence,) Helsham, Robinson, Macbride, Sullivan,
Hutchinson, Abernethy, Harris, Keating, Leland, Kirwan, Young, (Bishop
of Clonfert,) &c. &c.
Footnote 42:
Even so far back as the reign of James the First, Ireland began to
furnish her quota to the English drama. But from the middle of the
seventeenth century to something more than the middle of the
eighteenth, she produced almost all the best dramatic writers on the
British stage: Congreve, Howard, Southerne, Steele, Farquhar,
Phillips, Kelly, Jones, Orrery, (Earl of,) Tate, Concanen, Dobbs,
Bickerstaff, Brook, Centlivre, Griffiths, Jephson, Murphy, Macklin,
O’Hara, West, Goldsmith, Sheridan, &c. &c. And among the actors,
Wilks, Quin, Sheridan, Barry, Mossop, Macklin, Havard, O’Brien, Brown,
Woffington, Clive, Fitzhenry, &c.
Footnote 43:
Denham, Parnell, Swift, Sterne, Burke, Goldsmith, the Sheridans; to
whom may be added Molesworth, Millar, Wood, Webb, Pilkington, Johnson
(Chrysal), &c. &c. Even the women no longer deemed it the exclusive
purpose of their being
“To suckle fools and chronicle small-beer;”
and the elegant and witty productions of Mesdames Millar, Pilkington,
Centlivre, Grierson, Griffiths, Sheridan, Barker, Brook, contributed
to the general stock of national literature.
Footnote 44:
Jervas, (Pope’s Raphael,) Bindon, Roberts the landscape-painter,
Barrett, &c.
Footnote 45:
Miss Brook, the elegant translator and composer of the “Relics of
Ancient Irish Poetry.”
Footnote 46:
The Lord Mayo, of the early part of the eighteenth century, here
alluded to, was a model of the genuine Irish resident nobleman, living
in his rural palace, surrounded by his family, his bards, and
musicians. One of these, “his retainer,” David Murphy, composed an
Irish Ode of some celebrity, called “Tiagherna Mhaigho,” the “Lord of
Mayo,” which another of his retainers, O’Keeneghan, set to music. This
Carolan was wont to play at night in the hall of the Burkes, on his
harp. It happened that during Carolan’s last visit to Lord Mayo,
Geminiani arrived from Italy by special invitation from the amateur
Earl; and his Italian music completely usurped the attention of the
Ladies Susan and Bridget Burke, of whose praise Carolan was especially
jealous, and he frankly complained to his noble host of this neglect.
Lord Mayo, rallying the bard on his feelings, concluded by telling
him, that when he should produce the same music as Geminiani, he would
meet with the same attention. On this Carolan proposed a wager, that
he on his harp would follow the Italian in any piece of his
composition, but that Geminiani should not follow him through an Irish
planxty: the wager was accepted by the Italian, and won by the Irish
bard.
Footnote 47:
The O’Connors of Ballingar, the favourite residence of Carolan.
Footnote 48:
“In the year 1740, the sublime genius of Handel roused our feelings
from the lethargy into which they had fallen.”--_Memoirs of the Irish
Bards._
Banished from London by the intrigues of a party, Handel[49] fled to
Ireland, where, with his friend Dubourg, the violin of his age, he was
received with rapture. His first public exhibition in Dublin was the
Messiah, which he performed for the benefit of the city prisons.
Whoever had the happiness of knowing the late Richard Kirwan, the
Irish philosopher, may judge of the enthusiasm of the travelled Irish
gentlemen for Italian music, and the vogue which Piccini obtained
through their means.
Footnote 49:
Pope alludes to this banishment of Handel in his Dunciad:
“Strong in new arms, lo! Giant Handel stands
Like bold Briareus with his hundred hands,--&c. &c. &c.
Arrest him, Goddess, or you sleep no more:
She heard, and drove him to Hibernia’s shore.”
Footnote 50:
St. Bridget was accustomed to pray under the shade of an oak, a
circumstance which has given its name to an Irish county, Cil doire,
the cell of the oak (Kildare.)
Footnote 51:
“Concerts were the favourite amusement in the houses of the nobility
and gentry, and musical societies were formed in all the great
towns.”--_Memoirs of Irish Bards._
Footnote 52:
The Philharmonic Society gave up its subscriptions towards building
the hospital in Townsend-street, 1753.
Footnote 53:
“Italian singers were invited over, and the fair dames of Ireland
learned to expire at an opera.”--_History of Irish Music._
Footnote 54:
Barry, Sheridan, Mossop, Diggs, Daly, Crawford, and others of a more
modern date, were all gentlemen of family, and members of the Irish
University. They lived with their own class, and some of them went to
court. The intimacy of Sheridan with successive lords lieutenant is
recorded in the life of his celebrated wife, written and recently
published by their accomplished grand-daughter.
Footnote 55:
If a desire for luxuries and refinements is in all classes the natural
check to excessive population, and to the degradation of the species,
that check is wholly wanting in Ireland. Not only the peasant, but the
tradesman sees no attainable object of enjoyment in the possession of
a class just above himself in ease and comfort, which might stimulate
his ambition. The connecting link between the rich and the poor is
wanting; for middlemen are no refiners of manners. As a familiar
illustration, let the reader imagine that, except in towns of the
first class, few vegetables beyond a cabbage or a potatoe are to be
found in the market. There is absolutely no demand for such _luxuries_
to repay the culture.
Footnote 56:
One of these rooms painted in fresco and highly decorated, remains, or
did remain a few years back, in Fishamble-street.
Footnote 57:
Marino, Frescati, Marli, Sanssouci, Tivoli, Bellevue, Maritimo, &c.
are curious monuments of the manners and feelings of the Irish
nobility of the eighteenth century.
Footnote 58:
Concerts were given in this room twice a week, for the benefit of the
Lying-in Hospital, to which it is an appendage. Previously to its
erection, these musical meetings were held for the same purpose in a
long room in Granby-row, where Castruci, the last pupil of Corelli,
performed.--See _Memoirs of Irish Bards_.
Footnote 59:
The refinement not to say dissipation, of this period was perhaps
precocious and disproportionate to the riches of the country; but this
circumstance, always perhaps inherent in a particular stage of
civilization, was in Ireland increased by peculiarities in the
distribution of national wealth, another fatal consequence of the
frequent forfeitures. Time, however, would have cured this evil, if
the tide of absenteeship had not again set in, and swept away all
improvement and prosperity from the land.
Footnote 60:
It has been said with great truth that “the politics of Molyneux long
continued to be no less revered by the Irish than the morality of
Confucius by the Chinese.” The burning of his excellent work, the
“Case of Ireland,” the prosecution of Swift’s “Drapier’s Letters,” and
the imprisonment of his spirited publisher, Faulkner, had the great
merit of bringing the doctrine of libel into public discussion, and of
first awakening the people of Ireland to the value of the liberty of
public speaking and writing, the most important of the many blessed
constitutional rights extorted from power at the Revolution. It is
pleasant to observe, that patriotism becomes an heir-loom, and to note
that the immediate descendant of William Molyneux, who inherits his
principles with his property and name, is a permanently resident Irish
gentleman!
Footnote 61:
John Ponsonby, Speaker of the House of Commons in 1756, under whom the
Irish patriots made a most successful stand on a constitutional
question of vital importance. The energy and firmness of the patriotic
Speaker, and of a majority of the members of the House of Commons, who
then (“Hear this, ye gods, and wonder how ye made them”) attended to
the business of their country, forms a brilliant feature in the
history of the times.
Footnote 62:
The friend of the celebrated Berkeley, a right good Irishman and
author of a “List of Absentees,” a class, to which he showed no
quarter.
Footnote 63:
Henry Boyle, the patriot of the Irish House of Commons in the early
part of the eighteenth century.
Footnote 64:
Connolly died Speaker of the House in 1730, lamented by all who loved
Ireland; Sir R. Walpole gave him the name of “King of the Irish
Commons,” from his astonishing influence over the Lower House.
Footnote 65:
Member for New Ross. On an important political question he rode post
to town sixty miles to be present at the debate, and arrived just in
time to give his vote.
Footnote 66:
Dolly Munroe, the reigning Irish beauty of Goldsmith’s day, to whom he
alludes in his Haunch of Venison:
“’Twas a neck and a breast that might rival Munroe’s.”
Footnote 67:
See some of Right Hon. John Philpot Curran’s Verses preserved in his
Life by his son William Henry Curran--a work full of interest with
respect to matter, and full of beauty with respect to style. The
account given in its pages, of the convivial and intellectual meetings
of “the Monks of the Screw” at the Priory (Mr. Curran’s villa) forms a
brilliant but painful contrast to other orgies now celebrated in
Dublin, which alas! are neither social nor intellectual!
Footnote 68:
Lord Clare.
Footnote 69:
Dr. Franklin.
Footnote 70:
The penal laws had been multiplied and rigorously executed under
George the First. On the accession of George the Second, for the first
time since the Revolution, the unfortunate Catholics, who by a feeble
and foolish fiction of the law of the land, were “not supposed to
exist,” ventured to approach the throne by a public act of their body;
and they presented an address of congratulation at once dignified and
loyal.
Footnote 71:
Forbidding Catholics to bear arms either by sea or land.
Footnote 72:
When Lord Chesterfield arrived in Ireland, all the Catholic places of
worship were closed. A Mr. Fitzgerald saying mass in the obscure
garret of a condemned house, an immense crowd had assembled, and the
floor giving way, the officiating priest with many of his flock were
buried in the ruins, and the greater number were maimed or wounded.
Lord Chesterfield, horror-struck at the event, ordered that all the
chapels in the capital should be opened on St. Patrick’s day, and they
have never since been closed.
A zealous Protestant thinking to pay his court to the Lord Lieutenant,
came to inform him that one of his coachmen was a Roman Catholic, and
went privately to mass. “Does he, indeed?” said his Lordship, “then I
shall take care that he never drives me there.”--_Chesterfield’s
Memoirs._
The Bishop of Waterford relates that the vice-treasurer, Mr. Gardiner,
a man of good character and considerable fortune, waited upon Lord
Chesterfield, one morning, and in a great fright told him that he was
assured upon good authority that the people in the province of
Connaught were actually rising; upon which the Viceroy looked at his
watch, and with great composure answered him, “It is nine o’clock, and
time for them to rise; I believe, therefore that your news is true.”
This system of alarm, be it observed, continues in all its vigour to
the present day; and the actual Viceroy has to withstand the falsehood
of the designing and the credulity of the nervous, full as much as any
of his predecessors.
Footnote 73:
In a contest for constitutional rights (1755), the Earl of Kildare
placed himself at the head of the liberal party, which was then
technically designated “the patriots:” and the agents of the Castle
and the Church faction having represented to the King that the Irish
House of Commons was bent on destroying the royal prerogative, for the
purpose of preparing his Majesty’s expulsion, the Earl, with “the
oulde bloode of the Geraldines” boiling in his veins, denied the
calumny, and composed and with his own hand presented a memorial to
the king, proving historically that the Irish were to a fault the
upholders of the royal prerogative, and lovers of kingly government.
For this spirited conduct, which recalls the opposition of the
Kildares of old to the ministers of Henry the Seventh and Eighth, he
received the glorious appellation of Father of his country.
Footnote 74:
The terrorism of former times having now yielded to a more salutary
system, the expression of public feeling took a variety of forms. It
was at this period that political toasts came into fashion, introduced
into social meetings through the convivial talents of a Mr. Carter,
son to the Master of the Rolls. His toast of “May all secretary
bashaws and lordly high-priests be kept to their proper tackle, the
sword and the bible,” became a charter sentiment at all public and
private dinners. The lordly high-priest was Archbishop Stone, and the
bashaw was Lord G. Sackville, who brought all the pedantry of the
schools to his official diplomacy, and added the superciliousness of
fashion to the hauteur of conscious supremacy.
Footnote 75:
The numbers of those who voted were 102 for, and 122 against the
measure. The tax proposed was two shillings in the pound upon rents
and profits of landed property in the hands of those who did not
reside in Ireland for six months in each year, from 1773 to 1775.
Footnote 76:
It is stated in the public prints that 350,000_l._ are, at this day,
taken annually from the county of Kilkenny alone.
Footnote 77:
Cead mille faltha.
Footnote 78:
It is worth citing, that Sir Cecil Wray, one of the most violent
opponents of the extension of Irish trade, observed at this time to
the House, “that the true grievances of Ireland were the Irish Pension
List, the Sinecure Offices, the Roman Catholic Disabilities, and the
Absentees.”
Footnote 79:
It was to the loyalty of the people of Ireland at this period, that
the Lord Lieutenant of the day alluded, when, in his speech from the
throne, he observed, “That the united and great military preparations
of the House of Bourbon seemed only to have roused the courage and
called forth the exertions of his Majesty’s brave and loyal subjects
of this kingdom of Ireland; and I have only to lament that the
exhausted state of the treasury has hitherto put it out of my power to
give those exertions the most extensive and constitutional operation,
by carrying the militia law into effect.
Footnote 80:
These half measures are, however, in the present state of affairs
almost inevitable.--A divided cabinet founded upon a divided state of
public opinion, opposes an insuperable barrier to a frank and honest
reform: and oscillations of principle and of practice must attend the
effort to manage factions so nicely balanced.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
PROSPECTUS
OF
SIR JONAH BARRINGTON’s
HISTORIC ANECDOTES OF IRELAND
DURING HIS OWN TIMES,
WITH SECRET MEMOIRS OF THE UNION;
Illustrated by Delineations of the principal Characters connected with
those Transactions, curious Letters and Papers in fac simile; and
numerous Original Portraits, engraved by the elder HEATH.
To be completed in Ten Numbers, in Royal 4to.
Price 12s. 6d. each.
PRINTED FOR HENRY COLBURN,
NEW BURLINGTON STREET.
Unforeseen circumstances, over which the Author had no influence or
controul, had altogether checked the progress of this Work, suspended
the publication of its latter parts, and left them on the Publisher’s
shelves unadvertised and uncirculated.
This temporary relinquishment had given rise to unfounded and injurious
reports of its suppression; an object which never was for one moment in
the contemplation of the Author, nor sought for, or even suggested, by
the Government of England.
On the contrary--the lamentable and unimproving march of Ireland from
the period of the Union having fully proved the deceptious prospective
given to that fatal measure by its mistaken or corrupt supporters, and
exciting a novel interest and grave reflections of vital importance to
the British Empire, the Author had determined to seize upon the first
available opportunity of fulfilling his engagement to the friends and
patrons of the Work, by its completion.
Those friends were not confined to one party. They were mingled in
all--they comprised several of the highest orders of society--many who
held, and some who still hold important stations in the Government of
both countries;--and the commencing parts of the Work having been
honoured by the approbation and encouragement of His present Majesty and
other Members of His Royal House, it was with deep regret the Author
found himself, from a succession of causes, for several years unable to
fulfil his intentions, and gratify his own laudable ambition, by
compiling into a compact Memoir, the most important Historic events of
Ireland. In many of those he was himself a not unimportant actor. He
possessed also the advantage of individual intimacy or acquaintance with
the most celebrated personages of all parties; without which, and the
fidelity of a contemporary and independent pen, the delineation of their
characters and the record of their conduct, if not lost for ever, would
have descended to posterity with imperfect details and an ambiguous
authenticity;--or have left a wide chasm in a highly interesting epocha
of British History.
The fallacious measure of a Legislative Union,--the progress of which
from commencement to consummation the Author energetically resisted--has
proved by its inoperative or mischievous results, the justness of that
resistance. And he now, in common with many of the most distinguished of
its original supporters, deeply deplores its accomplishment. But
established by lapse of time--confirmed by passive assent--and
complicated with some beneficial, and many political and financial
arrangements, its tranquil reversal seems to have passed feasibility.
Yet--as an hereditary friend to British connexion--the Author hopes, by
the revival and completion of this History, to open wide the eyes of
Great Britain to the present dangers of Ireland--to draw aside the
curtain of ignorance and prejudice by which her history has been so long
obscured--to compare her once rising prosperity with her existing
miseries--to discover the occult causes of their continuance and the
false principles of her misrule--to display her sacrifices for
England--and to unmask her libellers in both countries.
Developments such as these may rouse the Legislature to probe her wounds
to their depth--to employ her labour--to succour--to foster--and to rule
her on the broad principles of a steady and philanthropic policy--and to
relinquish for ever that system of coercive Government, which an
experience of many centuries has proved to be destructive of almost
every thing--except her crimes and her population.
The British people should also learn that the absence of the ancient
Nobles and protecting Aristocracy of Ireland,--drawn away by the Union
from their demesnes and tenantry to the Seat of Legislation, and
replaced only by the griping hands and arbitrary sway of upstart
deputies,--increases in proportion with the miseries and turbulence of
the lower orders; and that the luxuriance of vegetation which clothes
that capable Island, has, through the same causes, become only a
harbinger of want, or the forbidden fruit of a famished peasantry.
It should therefore be the object of every pen and of every tongue, to
render the Union as innoxious as its paralyzing nature can now admit of;
to recall the proprietors of the Irish soil to a sense of their own
security and their country’s welfare; and thereby strengthen the ties
which should bind the two nations together, in equality, prosperity, and
affection--on the firmness and durability of which _species_ of
connexion depends, not only the constitutional security of England
herself, but perhaps the political existence of both countries.
Such is the Author’s view in the completion of this Work. The obstacles
to its progress are surmounted, and its publication is now in the hands
of those who will spare nothing to render it worthy of its object, and
ensure a lasting and beneficial record to the United Empire.
It is fortunate for Ireland, and disastrous to her calumniators, that a
recent and great event has at once exposed the misrepresentations of her
enemies, and displayed a great source of her misfortunes. The visit of a
conciliating King to a distracted people rapidly disclosed their native
character, and produced a burst of unfeigned, unanimous, genuine
loyalty--never before experienced in such profusion by any Monarch from
his subjects. The equivocating language of diplomacy was rejected for
awhile. The King was a Patriot, and the People were loyal. For the first
time they were allowed to approach each other. Both were sincere--and
both were ardent. In a few days, the King became despotic in the
affections of the Nation, and his Ministers descended into a comparative
insignificance. When he arrived, he was respected as a British King--but
when he departed, he was adored as an Irish Monarch. He saw at once that
the existence of faction and discord was incompatible with the peace and
the prosperity of Ireland; and that she hung on Great Britain, as a
withering limb upon a healthful body--essential to its symmetry, but
useless to its functions and injurious to its Constitution.
There was but one remedy--conciliation. His Majesty saw its efficacy and
commanded its adoption.--But his commands were disobeyed by the _Regal
Rebels_[81]--and Ireland is still seen withering and cankering--by the
obstinacy of intolerant faction, the irritation of local tyranny, and
the multiplying mischiefs resulting from disobedience to the benevolent
and wise commands of the only British King who ever yet set foot on the
Irish shore as a friend, and as a patriot.
Footnote 81:
Mr. Grattan’s definition of men, “Who make their loyalism a pretence
to perpetuate their supremacy,--and distract the peace of a Country
under colour of protecting it.”
------------------------------------------------------------------------
NEW BOOKS,
PUBLISHED BY HENRY COLBURN,
8, NEW BURLINGTON-STREET,
(Removed from the Library in Conduit Street.)
1. MEMOIRS OF SAMUEL PEPYS, Esq. F.R.S. Secretary to the Admiralty in
the Reigns of Charles II. and James II. comprising his Diary, deciphered
from the Original Short-hand MSS. in the Pepysian Library, and a
Selection from his “Private Correspondence.” Edited by RICHARD LORD
BRAYBROOKE. In 2 vols. royal 4to. printed uniformly with Evelyn’s
Memoirs, and embellished with Portraits and other Engravings by the
first Artists.
The Diary commences immediately before the Restoration, when Mr. Pepys
sailed with the Earl of Sandwich to bring over the King from Breda, and
is continued almost uninterruptedly for ten years, containing much
curious matter not to be found in any other history of that eventful
period. Independently of the political transactions of the period, the
pages abound with private anecdotes of Charles II. and his Court; and
Mr. Pepys’ peculiar habits of observation led him generally to record
the most curious characteristics of the times in which he lived.
2. The MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS of JOHN EVELYN, Esq. the celebrated Author
of “Sylva,” or, a Discourse of Forest Trees, Memoirs, &c. Now first
collected and edited, with Notes. Printed uniformly with Evelyn’s
Memoirs, in 1 vol. royal 4to. and embellished with Engravings, price 3l.
10s. boards.
3. SYLVA: or, a DISCOURSE of FOREST TREES, and the Propagation of
Timber, to which is added the “Terra.” By JOHN EVELYN, Esq. A new
Edition, with Notes by the late A. HUNTER, Esq. F.R.S. &c., in 2 vols.
4to. embellished with numerous plates, price 5l. 5s. boards.
4. MEMOIRS of the COUNTESS DE GENLIS. Illustrative of the History of the
Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. Written by Herself. Editions in
French and English.
⁂ This work will be found to abound in Anecdotes of the most Eminent
Literary and Political Characters, who figured at the latter end of the
Eighteenth, and the commencement of the Nineteenth Centuries.
5. TREMAINE; or, the MAN of REFINEMENT; a New and revised Edition. 3
vols. post 8vo. 31s. 6d.
6. A SECOND SERIES OF SAYINGS AND DOINGS; or, SKETCHES FROM LIFE. Second
Edition. 3 vols. post 8vo. 31s. 6d.
“Full of wise saws and modern instances.”--SHAKESPEARE.
7. A SECOND SERIES of HIGHWAYS and BY-WAYS, or TALES of the ROAD-SIDE;
picked up in the French Provinces by a Walking Gentleman. Containing
Caribert the Bear Hunter; the Priest and the Garde du Corps; and the
Vouee au Blanc, or Maid devoted to the Virgin. A New Edition, in 3 vols.
post. 8vo. 30s.
“I hate the man who can travel from Dan to Beersheba, and say, ’Tis all
barren.”--STERNE.
8. DON ESTEBAN; or, MEMOIRS of a SPANIARD. Written by Himself. In 3
vols. post 8vo. 27s.
This Work forms an excellent supplement and companion to the admirable
Letters of Don Leucadio Doblado. In giving a detailed history of his
life, Don Esteban professes to present a faithful picture of the
manners, habits, and customs of his countrymen. “He takes the reader
into the interior of their private houses; introduces him to their
Tertulias, Balls, Assemblies, and public places; leads him to the
Romerias, Convents, Nunneries, and Palaces; and gives him an insight
into the national private character of the Spaniards.--The work,
besides, contains an account of the state of the Spanish Court under
Ferdinand, which is worthy of Gil Blas, and puts us in mind of that
Novel.”--(GLOBE AND TRAVELLER.)
9. GAIETIES and GRAVITIES. A Series of Essays, Comic Tales, and Fugitive
Vagaries. Now first collected. BY ONE OF THE AUTHORS OF THE REJECTED
ADDRESSES. 3 vols. post 8vo. 27s.
10. REMINISCENCES OF MICHAEL KELLY, of the King’s Theatre, and Theatre
Royal Drury Lane; Abroad and at Home: including a period of nearly Half
a Century: with original Anecdotes of many distinguished Persons,
Political, Literary, and Musical. Dedicated, by permission, to His
Majesty. In 2 vols. 8vo. with a portrait.
11. MEMOIRS of the COURT of FRANCE, during the Residence (above thirty
years) of the MARQUIS DE DANGEAU, Now first translated from the French,
with Historical and Critical Notes. In 2 vols. 8vo. 28s.
This very curious Work will be found to contain a great number of Secret
Anecdotes and Facts, hitherto unknown, respecting the Courts of France
and England.
12. A NEW FRENCH EDITION of the MEMOIRES de DANGEAU, with a Supplement
by M. LE MONTEY, containing curious Autograph Notes, by an Anonymous
Courtier of the same period. In 3 vols. 8vo. price 28s.
13. CAPTAIN C.S. COCHRANE’S JOURNAL of a RESIDENCE and TRAVELS IN
COLOMBIA, during the years 1823 and 1824. In 2 vols 8vo. with a Map, and
coloured Plates, 30s.
14. MEMOIRS and RECOLLECTIONS of COUNT SEGUR, Ambassador from France to
the Courts of Russia and Prussia. 8vo. English, 12s.; French 10s. 6d.
The Count de Segur was connected by ties of friendship or consanguinity
with all the remarkable personages of the Courts of Louis XV. and XVI.
and was engaged in the intercourse of Affairs and Society with Catharine
II., Frederic the Great, Potemkin, Joseph II., Gustavus III.,
Washington, Kosciusko, La Fayette, Mirabeau, and Napoleon, as well as
with the Chiefs of the Aristocratical and Democratical Parties, and the
most illustrious Writers of the times, of whom he records the most
interesting particulars.