_This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of John
Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of
this story._
[Footnote 1: _Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of
Fitzpatrick._]
[Footnote 2: _Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her
heart was entirely English._]
[Footnote 3: _Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons._]
[Footnote 4: _The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wished
him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead._]
[Footnote 5: _Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish
author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said
that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of
queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's
lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the
question_. Like a child _does not import that she actually was a child:
she only sat_ like a child; _and so she might though thirty years old.
Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of age
before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the
tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after
they are past their infancy._]