_Sir John Bingham._--In Burke's _Peerage and Baronetage_, article "Lucan,"
it is stated that this gentlemen was high in rank in King James's army at
the battle of Aughrim, and turned the fortune of the day in favour of
William by deserting, with his whole command, at the crisis of the battle.
A late number of the _Dublin University Magazine_ repeats this story on the
authority of Mr. Burke, and it would therefore be satisfactory to know
where the latter found a statement affecting so much the honour of the
family in question, one of the first in my native county. The dates of Sir
John's birth and marriage are not given, but the ages of several of his
children are known, and from them it follows that, supposing the father of
the first Lord Lucan not to have married till the mature age of fifty-five
or sixty, he was barely of age at the time of the battle, therefore not
likely to have been high in command. My countrymen are too much inclined,
like the French, to attribute their disasters to treachery, or to any cause
but the equal numbers and courage, and superior discipline, of their
adversaries: but they have never done so to less purpose than when they
ascribe the loss of that battle to a man who was in all probability not
born in 1691, and must in any case have been a mere boy at the time. No
peerage that I have met with gives the date of his birth, which would at
once settle the question. It seems most unlikely, if such were actually the
case, that the family, on attaining the peerage, should have revived the
title of the gallant Sarsfield (whose representatives they were), and thus
challenged public attention, always on the alert on such points in Ireland,
to their alleged dishonour and betrayal of the cause for which he fought
and fell.