THESE verses are affixed to the only authentic portrait of this celebrated officer, painted by Lady Bingham, and preserved at the family seat at Castlebar, in the county of Mayo.* The engravings by Tilliard from this original, represent a remarkably handsome man, in the prime of life. His titles are enumerated under, as follow: "Patrick Sarsfield, Earl of Lucan, Viscount of Tully, Baron of Rosberry, and Colonel of the Life Guards to James II.; Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in Ireland, and afterwards General Officer in the French Service. Killed in the Battle of Neerwinde, or Landen."

There are few names more worthy to be inscribed in the roll of honour than that of Patrick Sarsfield, who may be quoted as a type of loyalty and patriotic devotion. In the annals of Irish history, he stands as a parallel to Pierre du Terrail, Chevalier de Bayard, in those of France, and may be equally accounted "sans peur et sans reproche," the fearless and irreproachable knight; in his public actions firm and consistent, in his private character amiable and unblemished. tached by religious conviction and hereditary reverence for the "right divine" of kings, to the falling house of

At

Stuart, he drew a sharp sword in the cause of the monarch he had been brought up to believe his lawful sovereign, and voluntarily followed him into exile when he could wield it no longer. William III. would gladly have won his services, and offered to confirm him in his rank and property; but he listened to no overtures, and left his native country, attended by thousands of that gallant body, who afterwards, under the title of the "Irish Brigade," filled the continent of Europe with their renown, and wrested more than one hard-fought fieldt from the arms of England. "The Irish regiments whom we have driven into the service of France," said an English member of Parliament in the House of Commons, "have cost more money to Britain than the fee simple of their estates were worth." It has been computed that from 1691 to 1745, during a period of fifty-four years, not less than 450,000 Irishmen were killed in the wars of Louis XIV. and his successor. Sarsfield is the most popular hero of his country. Even the fame of Brian Boroihme, or of Malachi with the golden collar, fades before his; "caniturque adhuc barbaras apud gentes."§ Amongst the unlettered peasants of the western coun

By the Abbé M'Geoghan.

VOL. XLII.NO. CCLI.

§ Tacit. Annal.

2 M

ties, in the wilds of Clare, Limerick, and Galway, his memory is still fresh, and his name familiar in their mouths. They talk of him as if he died yesterday, and had belonged to their own generation. Ballads in his praise and traditions of his prowess may be picked up in every village. This is immortality of a different cast from that transmitted by the pages of the historian, but quite as genuine, and often founded on more solid pretensions.

The family of Sarsfield, originally of Norman extraction, is both ancient and noble. The direct descendants have long been extinct in the male line, but are perpetuated through more than one female branch. Ovid wrote eighteen hundred years gone by

"Et genus et proavos et quæ non fecimus ipsi, Vix ea nostra voco."

Birth, and ancestry, and what we have not ourselves achieved, we can scarcely call our own. The sentiment contains a just rebuke to empty pride unsustained by personal merit; but as good blood manifests itself in the higher animals, so is it something in man, and not to be undervalued, if, as it ought, and often does, it acts as an incentive to virtue, and as a rampart in defence of integrity. In the "History of Gloucestershire" by Sir Robert Atkins, it is observed that "a genealogical account of families has its peculiar use: it stimulates and excites the brave to imitate the actions generous of their ancestors, and it shames the debauched and reprobate, both in the eyes of others and their own breasts, when they consider how they have degenerated." The passage is quoted by Lodge in his "Peerage of Ireland,' with this addition: "The pedigrees of ancient houses, historically deduced, recall the memory of past ages, and afford a way to all more immediately concerned, of conversing with their deceased ancestors, and becoming acquainted with the virtues and honourable transactions of their own families, which are thus preserved from oblivion, and transmitted to them and their posterity for imitation."* The first

Sarsfield connected with Ireland was Thomas, who came with Earl Strongbow. He was also standard-bearer to Henry II., an office denoting both rank and trust. His services obtained for him an ample estate, inherited lineally by his posterity for more than four hundred years, down to Patrick Sarsfield, who, in the reign of Charles I., married Ann, heiress of Roger O'Moore, and by whom he had issue two sons and a daughter; William, afterwards knighted, the eldest; Patrick, the celebrated general, and subject of the present memoir, who succeeded to the estate after the death of his brother; and Mary, who married Colonel Thomas Rositer, of Rathmacknee Castle, in the county of Wexford.† There were Sarsfields (or Scarsefields, as it is sometimes spelled) mayors of Dublin in 1531, 1554, and 1566; and under James I. Sir William Sarsefield held the manor of Lucan, in capite, by annual service of four pair of gloves and a tabor. The Sir William next but one in descent from the above-named, married a natural daughter of Charles II. (by Lucy Walters) and sister of the Duke of Monmouth. From this union proceeds the line of Bingham, now Earls of Lucan, through an only child, Anne, who espoused a gentleman of family and substance, Agmondesham Vesey, of whom, or of another of the same name, it is recorded somewhere that"Sir Agmondesham Vesey out of his great bounty, Built this bridge at the expense of the county."

Anne Vesey, the offspring of this match, married Sir John Bingham. Their second son, Charles-his elder brother being dead-was created Baron Bingham in 1776, and promoted to the Earldom of Lucan in 1795.

Patrick Sarsfield, the general of James II., married the Lady Honoria de Burgo, second daughter of William, seventh Earl of Clanricarde. The union was short, and proved childless. After his death in 1693, his widow took for second husband James FitzJames, Duke of Berwick, by whom she left offspring. She was considerably the Duke's senior, and survived their nup

tials only a few years. The inscription on her tomb at Pontoise, near Paris, signifies that she was buried there on the 25th of February, 1698, her remains having been transported from Pezenas, near Montpelier in Languedoc, where she died. The Duke of Berwick outlived her many years, and was killed at the siege of Phillipsburgh, in 1734. The learned Father Gelasius M'Mahon honoured the memory of this lady with an epitaph, which, while it enumerates her many virtues, affords a good specimen of the Latinity of the day:

"Perspice quisquis ades memorique ex Marmore disce,

Gemma sub hoc Tumulo quam pretiosa jacet ;
Inclyta stirpe ducum, regalis sanguinis auctrix,
Lecta Ducis conjux, principi digna parens,
Clanricard natam, Ormond et Clancarti neptem,
Berwici dominam, plorat Ierna nurum.
Integritas, virtus, florensque modestia morum,
Gaudia sunt cælo, cætera luctus habet.
Pontis sacra Domus commissam pignus honors,
Mortua demeritas poscit Honora vires."

The genealogical memoranda transcribed above are principally taken from an old and authentic pedigree of the family of Sarsfield, in the possession of one of their direct descendants, attested by William Hawkins, Ulster King at Arms. If not interesting in themselves, they will at least be admitted as important links in connecting the chain of collateral relationships. The name is not yet extinct in Ireland, but may be traced in the counties of Cork and Waterford. A few years since a man of powerful make and lofty stature, bearing that distinguished patronymic, kept a public-house on the road from Drogheda to Dunleer, about three miles and a-half from the former town.

He

was a well-known, remarkable character, not unlike King Joyce of the Killeries, and many now living will remember him. He either claimed to be, or was generally reputed as the representative of the great hero; if so, it must have been through an illegitimate channel, as it is well ascertained that the first Earl of Lucan had no children by his marriage.

Voltaire, whose writings for the most part are a tissue of shallow, gilded falsehoods, or sophistries, recommended by wit and pungent sarcasm, has said (Siecle de Louis XIV.), that the Irish, brave as the bravest in France and Spain, have always fought shamefully at home. If he had chosen to say unsuccessfully, he would have been nearer the truth.

We may rather wonder

that they fought at all. The records of sad Hibernia contain many Floddens, but no Bannockburn. It appears astonishing that they have never been consulted by poets for subjects of tragedy. There is scarcely a page which might not be recommended as teeming with material, unless, indeed, the reality, when investigated, should appear too great to permit the usual embellishments of fiction. This constant issue of disaster is less to be attributed to the want of courage than to the absence of unanimity—a fatal and unerring cause of failure, quaintly but emphatically expressed in a verse of the old ballad, entitled, "A Farewell to Patrick Sarsfield," written originally in Irish, in 1691, and translated as follows:

"I'll journey to the North, over mount, moor, and

wave

'Twas there I first beheld, drawn up in file and

line,

The brilliant Irish hosts-they were bravest of the

brave,

But, ochone! they scorned to combine !"

James II. was not a man to reconcile conflicting opinions, to soothe down opposing animosities, or to teach the doctrine that union constituted power. He sought not to gain his end by a fusion of all parties, but by the undue predominance of one over the other. His cause became that of a sect rather than of the nation. Blind, unmitigated bigotry was too inherent in his nature, and quite unfitted him for the task he had undertaken.

His

first proclamations held out promises of tolerance and equal dealing, which his subsequent actions nullified. Soon after he arrived in Ireland, Sarsfield asked commissions for two of his relatives, who were Protestants, and offered to become bound himself for their fidelity. James refused his most loyal and attached adherent, saying, that he would trust none of them; and was heard to add loudly, when coming out from his place of worship, that a Protestant stunk in his nostrils. Alas! that noble and devoted blood should be sacrificed like water to uphold the rights of such a monarch !

We have scarcely any knowledge of the early life of Patrick Sarsfield, and no positive information of the exact date of his birth, but there is every reason to conclude that he was still a young man when he was killed. Being destined for the profession of arms, he was educated in one of the French military