 CHAPTER X. RAIN OF KING WILLIAM. From the date of the Treaty of Limerick, William was acknowledged by all but the extreme Jacobites, at least de facto King of Ireland. The prevailing party in Ulster had long recognized him, and the only expression of the national will then possible accepted his title. Then the Treaty signed at Limerick on the 3rd of October, 1691. For three years Ireland had resisted his power. For twelve years longer she was to bear the yoke of his government. Though the history of William's twelve years reign in Ireland is a history of prescription, the King himself is answerable only as a consenting party to such prescription. He was neither by temper nor policy a persecutor. His allies were Spain, Austria and Rome. He had thousands of Catholics in his own army, and he gave his confidence as freely to brave and capable men of one creed as of another. But the oligarchy, calling itself the Protestant ascendancy, which had grown so powerful under Cromwell and Charles II, backed as they once again were by all the religious intolerance of England, proved too strong for William's good intentions. He was, moreover, preoccupied with the grand plans of the European coalition in which Ireland, without an army, was no longer an element of calculation. He abandoned, therefore, not without an occasional grumbling protest, the vanquished Catholics to the mercy of that oligarchy, whose history, during the eighteenth century, formed so prominent a feature of the history of the kingdom. The civil articles of Limerick, which Sarsfield vainly hoped might prove the Magna Carta of his co-religionists, were thirteen in number. Still one guaranteed to members of that denomination, remaining in the kingdom, such privileges in the exercise of their religion as are consistent with the law of Ireland, or as they enjoyed in the reign of Charles II. This article further provided that their Majesties, as soon as their affairs will permit them to summon a Parliament in this kingdom, will endeavor to procure the said Roman Catholics such for the security in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance on account of their said religion. Article II guaranteed pardon and protection to all who had served King James, on taking the oath of allegiance prescribed in Article IX as follows. I, A.B., do solemnly promise and swear that I will be faithful and bear true allegiance to their Majesties. King William and Queen Mary, so help me God. Articles III, IV, V, and VI extended the provisions of Articles I and II to merchants and other classes of men. Article VII permits every nobleman and gentleman compromised in the said Articles to carry side arms and keep a gun in their houses. Article VIII gives the right of removing goods and chattels without search. Article IX is as follows. The oath to be administered to such Roman Catholics as submit to their Majesties Government shall be the oath of foresaid and no other. Article X guarantees that no person or persons who shall at any time hereafter break these Articles, or any of them, shall thereby make or cause any other person or persons to forfeit or lose the benefit of them. Articles XI and XII relate to the ratification of the Articles within eight months or sooner. Article XIII refers to the deaths of Colonel John Brown, commissary of the Irish Army to several Protestants, and arranges for their satisfaction. These Articles were signed before Limerick at the well-known Treaty Stone on the Clairside of the Shannon by Lords Grevenmore, Generals McKay, Talmish, and DeGinkel, and the Lords' Justices Porter and Coiningspy, for King William, and by Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, Viscount Galmoy, Sir Toby Butler, and Colonel's Purcell, Cusack, Dillon, and Brown for the Irish. On the 24th of February following, Royal Letters Patent, confirmatory of the Treaty, were issued from Westminster, in the name of the King and Queen, whereby they declared that, we do for us, our heirs and successors, as far as in us lies, ratify and confirm the same and every clause, matter, and thing therein contained, and as to such parts thereof, for which an act of Parliament shall be found to be necessary, we shall recommend the same be made good by Parliament, and shall give our royal consent to any bill or bills that shall be passed by our two Houses of Parliament to that purpose. And whereas it appears unto us that it was agreed between the parties to the said articles, that after the words Limerick, Clare, Kerry, Cork, Mayo, or any of them, in the second of the said articles, which words having been casually omitted by the writer of the articles, the words following, Viz, and all such as are under protection in the said counties, should be inserted, and be part of the said omission, was not discovered till after the said articles were signed, but was taken notice of before the second town was surrendered, and that our said Justices and Generals, or one of them, did promise that the said clause should be made good, it being within the intention of the capitulation, and inserted in the foul draft thereof. Our further will and pleasure is, and we do hereby ratify and confirm the said omitted words, Viz, and all such as are under their protection in the said counties, hereby for us, our heirs and successors, ordaining and declaring that all and every person and persons therein concerned shall and may have, receive, and enjoy the benefit thereof, in such and the same manner as if the said words had been inserted in their proper place in the said second article, any omission, defect, or mistake in the said second article, in any wise notwithstanding. Provided always, and our will and pleasure is, that these our letters patent shall be enrolled in our court of chancery, in our said kingdom of Ireland, within the space of one year next ensuing. But the ascendancy party were not to be restrained by the faith of treaties, or the obligations of the sovereign. The Sunday following the return of the Lord's Justices from Limerick, shopping, Bishop of Mieth, preached before them at Christ's Church, on the crime of keeping faith with papists. The grand jury of Cork, urged on by Cox, the recorder of Kinsle, one of the historians of those times, returned in their inquest that the restoration of the Earl of Clancardy's estates would be dangerous to the Protestant interest. Though both William and George I interested themselves warmly for that noble family, the hatred of the new oligarchy proved too strong for the clemency of kings, and the broad acres of the disinherited McCarthy's remained to enrich an alien and bigoted aristocracy. In 1692, when the Irish parliament met, a few Catholic peers and a very few Catholic commoners took their seats. One of the first acts of the victorious majority was to frame an oath in direct contravention to the oath prescribed by the Ninth Civil Article of the Treaty to be taken by members of both houses. This oath solemnly and explicitly denied that in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is any transubstantiation of the elements, and as solemnly affirmed that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the Mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are damnable and idolatrous. As a matter of course, the Catholic peers and commoners retired from both houses rather than take any such oath, and thus the Irish parliament assumed in 1692 that exclusively Protestant character which it continued to maintain till its extinction in 1800. The Lord Justice Sidney, acting in the spirit of his original instructions, made some show of resistance to the prescriptive spirit thus exhibited. But to teach him how they regarded his interference a very small supply was voted, and the assertion of the absolute control of the commons over all supplies, a sound doctrine when rightly interpreted, was vehemently asserted. Sidney had the satisfaction of proroguing and lecturing the house, but they had the satisfaction soon after of seeing him recalled through their influence in England, and a more congenial viceroy in the person of Lord Capel sent over. About the same time that ancient engine of oppression, a commission to inquire into a state's forfeited, was established, and in a short time decreed that one million sixty thousand seven hundred ninety-two acres were sheeted to the crown. This was almost the last fragment of the patrimony of the Catholic inhabitants. When King William died, there did not remain in Catholic hands one sixth part of what their grandfathers held, even after the passage of the act of settlement. In 1695, Lord Capel opened the second Irish Parliament, summoned by King William, in a speech in which he assured his delighted auditors that the king was intent upon a firm settlement of Ireland upon a Protestant interest. Large supplies were once voted to his majesty, and the House of Commons then proceeded to the appointment of a committee to consider what penal laws were already enforced against the Catholics, not for the purpose of repealing them, but in order to add to their number. The principal penal laws then in existence were, one, an act subjecting all who upheld the jurisdiction of the Sea of Rome to the penalties of a primmonier, and ordering the oath of supremacy to be a qualification for office of every kind, for holy orders, and for a degree in the university. Two, an act for the uniformity of common prayer, imposing a fine of a shilling on all who should absent themselves from places of worship of the established church on Sundays. Three, an act allowing the Chancellor to name a guardian to the child of a Catholic. Four, an act to prevent Catholics from becoming private tutors and families without license from the ordinaries of their several parishes and taking the oath of supremacy. To these the new Parliament added, one, an act to deprive Catholics of the means of educating their children at home or abroad and to render them incapable of being guardians of their own or any other person's children. Two, an act to disarm the Catholics, and three, another to banish all the Catholic priests and prelates. Having thus violated the treaty, they gravely brought in a bill to confirm the articles of Limerick. The very title of the bill, says Dr. Cook Taylor, contains evidence of its injustice. It is styled a bill for the confirmation of articles, not THE articles, made at the surrender of Limerick, and the preamble shows that the little word THOUGH was not accidentally omitted. It runs thus, that the said articles, or so much of them as may consist with the safety and welfare of your majesty's subjects in these kingdoms, may be confirmed, etc. The parts that appeared to these legislators inconsistent with the safety and welfare of his majesty's subjects were the first article, which provided for the security of the Catholics from all disturbances on account of their religion. Those parts of the second article which confirmed the Catholic gentry of Limerick, Clare, Cork, Kerry, and Mayo in the possession of their estates, and allowed all Catholics to exercise their trades and professions without obstruction, the fourth article which extended the benefit of the peace to certain Irish officers then abroad, the seventh article which allowed the Catholic gentry to ride armed, the ninth article which provides that the oath of allegiance shall be the only oath required from Catholics, and one or two others of minor importance. All of these are omitted in the bill for the confirmation of articles made at the surrender of Limerick. The commons passed the bill without much difficulty. The House of Lords, however, contained some few of the ancient nobility and some prelates who refused to acknowledge the dogma that no faith should be kept with papus as an article of their creed. The bill was strenuously resisted, and when it was at length carried, a strong protest against it was signed by Lords London Derry, Tyrone, and Duncannon, the barons of Ossary, Limerick, Killaloe, Kerry, Houth, Kingston, and Straban, and to their eternal honour, be it said, the Protestant bishops of Kildare, Elphin, Derry, Clonfort, and Killala. The only other political incidents of this rain, important Ireland, were the speech from the Throne in answer to an address of the English Houses, in which William promised to discourage the woollen and encourage the linen manufacturer in Ireland, and the publication of the famous argument for legislative independence, the case of Ireland stated. The author of this tract, the bright precursor of the glorious succession of men who, often defeated or abandoned by their colleagues, finally triumphed in 1782, was William Mullano, member for the University of Dublin. Mullano's book appeared in 1698, with a short, respectful, but manly dedication to King William. Speaking of his own motives in writing it, he says, I am not at all concerned in wool or the wool trade. I am no ways interested in forfeitures or grants. I am not at all concerned whether the bishop or the society of Derry recover the lands they can test about. Such were the domestic politics of Ireland at that day, but Mullano raised other and nobler issues when he advanced these six propositions, which lie supported with incontestable ability. 1. How Ireland became a kingdom annexed to the Crown of England. And here we shall at large give a faithful narrative of the first expedition of the Britons into this country, and King Henry II's arrival here, such as our best historians give us. 2. We shall inquire whether this expedition and the English settlement that afterwards followed thereon can properly be called a conquest, or whether any victories obtained by the English in succeeding ages in this kingdom upon any rebellion may be called a conquest thereof. 3. Granting that it were a conquest, we shall inquire what title a conquest gives. 4. We shall inquire what concessions have been from time to time made to Ireland to take off what even the most rigorous asserters of a conqueror's title do pretend to. And herein we shall show by what degrees the English form of government and the English statute laws came to be received among us, and this shall appear to be holy by the consent of the people and the Parliament of Ireland. 5. We shall inquire into the precedents and opinions of the learned in laws relating to this manner with observations thereon. 6. We shall consider the reasons and arguments that may be further offered on one side and other, and we shall draw some general conclusions from the whole. The English Parliament took alarm at these bold doctrines seldom heard across the channel since the days of Patrick Darcy and the Catholic Confederacy. They ordered the book to be burned by the hands of the common hangman, as of dangerous tendency to the crown and people of England, by denying the power of the King and Parliament of England to bind the kingdom and people of Ireland, and the subordination and dependence that Ireland had and ought to have upon England, as being united and annexed to the imperial crown of England. They voted unaddressed to the King in the same tone, and received an answer from his Majesty, assuring them that he would enforce the laws securing the dependence of Ireland on the imperial crown of Great Britain. But William's days were already numbered. On the 8th of March, 1702, when little more than fifty years of age, he died from the effects of a fall from his horse. His reign over Ireland is synonymous to the minds of that people, of disaster, prescription and spoilation, of violated faith and broken compacts. But these wrongs were done in his name rather than by his orders, often without his knowledge and sometimes against his will. Rigid as that will was, it was forced to bend to the antipopery storm which swept over the British islands after the abdication of King James, but the vices and follies of his times ought no more to be laid to the personal count of William than of James or Louis against whom he fought. CHAPTER X. THE RAIN OF QUEEN ANNE The reign of Queen Anne occupies twelve years, 1702 to 1714. The new sovereign, daughter of James by his first marriage, inherited the legacy of William's wars, arising out of the European coalition. Her diplomatists and her troops, under the leadership of Marlborough, continued throughout her reign to combat against France, in Spain, Germany and the Netherlands, the Treaty of Utrecht being signed only the year before Her Majesty's disease. In domestic politics the main occurrences were the struggle of the Whigs and the Tories, immortalized for us in the pages of Swift, Steele, Addison and Bowlingbroke, the limitation of the succession to the descendants of the electress Sophia in the line of Hanover and the abortive Jacobite movement on the Queen's death which drove Ormond and Atterbury into exile. In Ireland this is the reign par excellence of the Penal Code. From the very beginning of the Queen's reign an insatiate spirit of prescription dictated the councils of the Irish oligarchy. On the arrival of the second and last Duke of Ormond in 1703 as Lord Lieutenant, the commons waited on him in a body, with a bill for discouraging the further growth of Popery to which the Duke, having signified his entire concurrence, it was accordingly introduced and became law. The following are among the most remarkable clauses of this act. The third clause provides that if the son of an estated papus shall conform to the established religion, the father shall be incapacitated from selling or mortgaging his estate, or disposing of any portion of it by a will. The fourth clause prohibits a papus from being the guardian of his own child, and orders that if at any time the child, though ever so young, pretends to be a Protestant, it shall be taken from its own father and placed under the guardianship of the nearest Protestant relation. The sixth clause renders papus incapable of purchasing any manners, tenements, hereditiments, or any rents or profits arising out of the same, or of holding any lease of lives or other lease whatever for any term exceeding thirty-one years. And with respect even to such limited leases it further enacts that if a papus should hold a farm producing a profit of greater than one-third of the amount of the rent his right to such should immediately cease and pass over entirely to the first Protestant who should discover the rate of profit. The seventh clause prohibits papus from succeeding to the properties or estates of their Protestant relations. By the tenth clause the estate of a papus, not having a Protestant heir, is ordered to be gabbled or divided in equal shares between all his children. The sixteenth and twenty-fourth clauses impose the oath of abjuration and the sacramental test as a qualification for office and for voting at elections. The twenty-third clause deprives the Catholics of limerick and gallway of the protection secured them by the Articles of the Treaty of Limerick. The twenty-fifth clause vests in her majesty all avowd-sons possessed by papists. Certain Catholic barristers living under protection, not yet excluded from the practice of their profession, petition to be heard at the Bar of the House of Commons. Accordingly, Mr. Malone, the ancestor of three generations of scholars and orders, Sir Stephen Rice, one of the most spotless characters of the age, formerly Chief Justice under King James, and Sir Theobald Butler were heard against the bill. The argument of Butler, who stood at the very head of his profession, to us almost in its entirety, and commands our admiration by its solidity and dignity. Never was national cause more worthily pleaded. Never was the folly of religious persecution more forcibly exhibited. Alluding to the monstrous fourth clause of the bill, the great advocate exclaimed, It is natural for the father to love the child, but we all know that children are but too apt and subject, without any such liberty as this bill gives, to slight and neglect their duty to their parents. And surely such an act as this will not be an instrument of restraint, but rather encourage them more to it. It is but too common with the son, who has a prospect of an estate, when once he arrives at the age of one and twenty, to think the father too long in the way between him and it, and how much more will he be subject to it, when by this act he shall have liberty, before he comes to that age, to compel and force my estate from me, without asking my leave, or being liable to account with me for it, or out of his share thereof, to a moiety of the debts, portions, or other encumbrances, with which the estate might have been charged before the passing of this act. Is this not against the laws of God and man? Against the rules of reason and justice, by which all men ought to be governed? Is this not the only way in the world to make children become undutiful, and to bring the gray head of the parent to the grave with grief and tears? It would be hard from any man, but from a son, a child, the fruit of my body, whom I have nursed in my bosom, and tendered more dearly than my own life, to become my plunderer, to rob me of my estate, to cut my throat, and to take away my bread, is much more grievous than from any other, and enough to make the most flinty hearts bleed to think on it. And yet this will be the case if this bill pass into law, which I hope this honourable assembly will not think of, when they shall more seriously consider, and have weighed these manners. For God's sake, gentlemen, will you consider whether this is, according to the golden rule, to do as you would be done unto? And if not, surely you will not, nay you cannot, without being liable to be charged with the most manifest injustice imaginable, take from us our birthrights, and invest them with others before our faces. When Butler and Malone had closed, Sir Stephen Rice was heard, not in his character of counsel, but as one of the petitioners affected by the act. But neither the effecting position of that great jurist, who from the rank of chief baron had descended to the outer bar, nor the purity of his life, nor the strength of his argument, had any effect upon the oligarchy who heard him. He was answered by quibbles and cavels, unworthy of record, and was finally informed that any rights which Papus pretended to be taken from them by the bill was in their power to remedy, by conforming, which in prudence they ought to do, and that they had none to blame but themselves. Next day the bill passed into law. The remnant of the clergy were next attacked. On the 17th of March, 1705, the Irish commons resolved that informing against Papus was an honourable service to the government, and that all magistrates and others who failed to put the penal laws into execution were betrayers of the liberties of the kingdom. But even these resolutions, rewards, and inducements were insufficient to satisfy the spirit of persecution. A further act was passed in 1709, imposing additional penalties. The first clause declares that no Papist shall be capable of holding an annuity for life. The third provides that the child of a Papist, on conforming, shall at once receive an annuity from his father, and that the Chancellor shall compel the father to discover, upon oath, the full value of his estate, real and personal, and thereupon make an order for the support of such conforming child or children, and for securing such a share of the property, after the father's death, as the court shall think fit. The 14th and 15th clauses secure jointures to Popus' wives who shall conform. The 16th prohibits a Papist from teaching, even as assistant to a Protestant master. The 18th gives a salary of thirty pounds per annum to Popus' priests who shall conform. The 20th provides rewards for the discovery of Popus' prelates, priests, and teachers, according to the following whimsical scale. For discovering an archbishop, bishop, vicar general, or other person exercising any foreign ecclesiastical jurisdiction, fifty pounds. For discovering each regular clergyman, and each secular clergyman, not registered, twenty pounds. And for discovering each Popus' schoolmaster, or usher, ten pounds. The twenty-first clause empowers two justices to summon before them any Papist over eighteen years of age, and interrogate him when and where he last heard Mass said, and the names of the persons present, and likewise touching the resonance of any Popus' priest or schoolmaster, and if he refused to give testimony, subjects him to a fine of twenty pounds, or imprisonment for twelve months. Several other penal laws were enacted by the same parliament, of which we can only notice one. It excluded Catholics from the office of sheriff, and from grand juries, and enacts that, in trials upon any statute for strengthening the Protestant interest, the plaintiff might challenge a juror for being a Papist, which challenge the judge was to allow. By a royal proclamation of the same year, all registered priests were to take the oath of abjuration before the twenty-fifth of March, seventeen-ten, under penalty of premonier. Under this proclamation, and the tariff of rewards just cited, there grew up a class of men, infamous and detestable, known by the nickname of priest-hunters. One of the most successful of these traffickers in blood was a Portuguese Jew, named Garcia, settled at Dublin. He was very skillful at disguises. He sometimes put on the mean of a priest, for he affected to be one, and thus worming himself into the good graces of some confiding Catholic, got a clue to the whereabouts of the clergy. In seventeen-eighteen, Garcia succeeded in arresting seven unregistered priests, for whose detection he had a sum equal to two or three thousand dollars of American money. To such an excess was this trade carried that a reaction set in, and a Catholic Bishop of Ossary, who lived at the time these acts were still enforced, records that the priest-catcher's occupation became exceedingly odious both to Protestants and Catholics, and that himself had seen ruffians of this calling assailed with a shower of stones, flung by both Catholics and Protestants. But this creditable reaction only became general under George II, twenty years after the passage of the act of Queen Anne. We shall have to mention some monstrous additions made to the Code during the first George's reign, and some attempts to repair and perfect its diabolical machinery, even so late as George III. But the great body of the Penal Law received its chief accessions from the oligarchical Irish Parliament under Queen Anne. Hitherto we have often had to point out how with all its constitutional defects, with the law of poinings, obliging heads of bills to be first sent to England, fettering its freedom of initiative, how notwithstanding all defects the Irish Parliament had asserted, at many critical periods, its own in the people's with an energy worthy of admiration. But the collective bigots of this reign were wholly unworthy of the name of a Parliament. They permitted the woolen trade to be sacrificed without a struggle. They allowed the bold propositions of Mullenew, one of their own number, to be condemned and reprobated without a protest. The knotted lash of Jonathan Swift was never more worthily applied than to the Legion Club, which he has consigned to such an unenviable immortality. Swift's inspiration may have been mingled with bitter disappointment and personal revenge, but whatever motives animated him, his fearless use of his great abilities must always make him the first political, as he was certainly the first literary character of Ireland at that day. In a country so bare and naked as he found it, with a bigotry so rampant and united before him, it needed no ordinary courage and capacity to evoke anything like public opinion or public spirit. Let us be just to that most unhappy man of genius. Let us proclaim that Irish nationality bleeding at every poor and in danger of perishing by the wayside found shelter on the breast of Swift, and took new heart from the example of that bold churchman, before whom the Parliament, the bench of bishops, and the viceroy trembled. CHAPTER XII. A popular history of Ireland, Book X. Read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHAPTER XII. The Irish soldiers abroad during the reigns of William and Anne. The close of the Second Reign from the Siege of Limerick imposes the duty of casting our eyes over the map of Europe, in quest of those gallant exiles whom we have seen, in tens of thousands, submitting to the hard necessity of expatriation. Many of the Miath and Lentster Irish, under their native commanders, the Kavanaugh's and Nugents, carried their swords into the service of William's ally, the Emperor of Austria, and distinguished themselves in all the campaigns of Prince Eugene. Spain attracted to her standards the Irish of the Northwest, the O'Donnells, the O'Reilly's, and O'Garras, whose regiments, during more than one reign, continued to be known by flames of Ulster origin. In 1707 the Great Battle of Almanza, which decided the Spanish succession, was determined by Omahaone's foot and Fitz James's Irish horse. The next year Spain had five Irish regiments in her regular army, three a foot and two of dragoons, under the command of Lacy, Lawless, Wogan, O'Reilly, and O'Gara. But it was in France that the Irish served in the greatest number, and made the most impressive history for themselves and their descendants. The recruiting agents of France had long been in the habit of crossing the narrow seas, and bringing back the stalwart sons of the Western Island to serve their ambitious kings, in every corner of the continent. An Irish troop of horse served, in 1652, under Turin, against the Great Condé. In the campaigns of 1673, 1674, and 1675, under Turin, two or three Irish regiments were in every engagement along the Rhine. At Altenheim, their commander, Count Hamilton, was created a major general of France. In 1690 these old regiments, with the six new ones sent over by James, were formed into a brigade, and from 1690 to 1693 they went through the campaigns of Savoy and Italy, under Marshal Katanat, against Prince Eugene. Justice McCarthy, Lord Mountcashel, who commanded them, died at bereges of wounds received at Stafardo. At Marsiglia, they routed in 1693 the Allies, killing Duke Schomburg, son to the Huguenot General who fell at the Boyne. The new, or Sarsfield's, brigade was employed under Luxembourg, against King William, in Flanders, in 1692 and 1693. At Namur and Ingen, they were greatly distinguished, and William more than once sustained heavy loss at their hands. Sarsfield, their brigadier, for these services, was made Marichel de Camp. At Landon, on the 29th of July 93, France again triumphed to the cry, Remember Limerick. Sarsfield, leading on the fierce pursuers, fell mortally wounded. Pressing his hand upon the wound, he took it away dripping with blood and only said, Oh, that this was for Ireland. In the War of the Spanish Succession, the remnants of both brigades, consolidated into one, served under their favorite leader, the Marshal Duke of Barrick, through nearly all his campaigns in Belgium, Spain, and Germany. The Third Lord Clare, afterwards Field Marshal Count Thoman, was by the Duke's side at Phillipsburg in 1733, when he received his death wound from the explosion of a mine. These exiled Clare O'Brien's commanded for three generations their famous family regimen of dragoons. The first who followed King James abroad died of wounds received at the Battle of Ramilies. The Third, with better fortune, outlived for nearly thirty years the glorious day of Fontenoy. The Irish cavalry regiments in the service of France were Sheldon's, Galmoys, Clare's, and Kilmallot's. The infantry were known as the regiments of Dublin, Charlemont, Limerick, and Athelone. There were two other infantry regiments, known as Lutrell's and Dorington's, and a regiment of Irish marines, of whom the grand prior Fitz James was Colonel. During the latter years of Louis XIV, there could not have been less, at any one time, than from twenty thousand to thirty thousand Irish in his armies, and during the succeeding century, authentic documents exist to prove that four hundred and fifty thousand natives of Ireland died in the military service of France. In the dreary reigns of William, Anne, and the first two Georges, the pride and courage of the disarmed and disinherited population abiding at home drew new life and vigor from the exploits of their exiled brethren. The channel smuggler and the vagrant ballad singer kept alive their fame for the lower class of the population, while the memoirs of Marlborough and Eugene, issuing from the Dublin press, communicated authentic accounts of their actions to the more prejudiced or better educated. The blows they struck at Landon, at Cromona, and at Almanza, were sensibly felt by every British statesman, when, in the bitterness of defeat, an English king cursed the laws that deprived him of such subjects, the doom of the penal code was pronounced. The high character of the famous captains of these brigades was not confined to the field of battle. At Paris, Vienna, and Madrid, their wit and courtesy raised them to the favour of princes, over the jealousy of all their rivals. Important civil and diplomatic offices were entrusted to them, embassies of peace and war, the government of provinces, and the highest administrative offices of the state. While their kinsmen in Ireland were declared incapable of filling the humblest public employments, or of exercising the commonest franchise, they met British ambassadors abroad as equals, and checked or countermined the imperial policy of Great Britain. It was impossible that such a contrast of situation should not attract the attention of all thinking men. It was impossible that such reputation should shine before all Europe, without reacting powerfully on the fallen fortunes of Ireland. End of A Popular History of Ireland, book 10. Read by Cibela Denton in Carrollton, Georgia, in February 2009. For more free audiobooks or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org.