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gentry made to return to their duty, the difficulties which they had to struggle with in that work, the perseverance with which they pursued that design till they had accomplished it, and the zeal with which in the late king's distress they had embraced the peace of 1648. Thus qualified to speak in the behalf of those who were by the declaration to be restored, he was ready to do them all the good offices in his power; and could not but be heard with effect. He knew the court well, was esteemed by all about it, and was very fit to advise them how to proceed in their defence; but the Irish were such ill managers of their affairs, that the first step they took was to disoblige him, and refuse to follow his advice.

The duke (in his letter of Sept. 3 to his friend sir M. Eustace, who was very favourable to the cause of the restorable Irish) expresseth his judgment of what would be. the issue of their conduct in such a manner, that he could not have pronounced more surely of it, had he then seen the event :

"We are (says he) in the heat of our debates upon the great bill, and I fear the liberty, allowed the Irish to speak for themselves will turn to their prejudice, by the unskilful use they make of it, in justifying themselves, instructing the king and his council in what is good for them, and recriminating of others. Whereas a modest extenuation of their crimes, an humble submission to, and imploring his majesty's grace, and a declaration of their hearty desire to live quietly and brotherly with their fellow-subjects for the future, would better have befitted the disadvantage they are under, and have prevailed more than all their eloquence. But it is long since I have given over any hope that they would do, or be advised to do, what was best for them, or be persuaded that what might properly, and for their advantage, be said by others, would not only change its nature, coming from them, but hinder others from making use of their arguments, lest they might be suspected of communicating counsels with them; which is a reproach I will avoid almost as much, as I will the guilt of being of their party."

The Irish agents, full of their own merits, and persuaded

that they had more justice in their cause, and better pretensions to the king's favour than their adversaries, resolved to take their own measures; and the duke of Ormond, when they rejected his advice, had no party to take but to leave them to their own management, and to the fate which they were carving out for themselves. A passage which happened about this time helped to confirm him in this resolution. Cormac Maccarty, eldest son to the lord Muskery, formerly mentioned on account of the honourable part he acted toward the crown of France at the surrender of Condé, had afterwards quitted the service of that crown, and was followed by his regiment into Flanders. He there commanded it as colonel, though it went by the name of the duke of York's regiment. Upon the vacancy of a lieutenant colonel's place, he would have supplied it with one of his own officers, when the duke of York interposed in favour of Richard, the youngest son of sir William Talbot, a lawyer, and a man of good parts; who by his prudence and management had acquired a large estate, which he left to his eldest son sir Robert Talbot. Sir Robert was a gentleman of very good sense, strict honour and great bravery, very well beloved and esteemed among the confederate Irish, and having been driven by the lords justices' treatment unwillingly into the rebellion, and retaining always a true affection to his country, and good inclinations to the king's service, had constantly laboured to dispose his countrymen to peace, and persuade them to a submission to his majesty's authority. He was very active in promoting this end, whenever an opportunity offered, and was employed by the Irish as a commissioner to present 234 their grievances at Trim, and afterwards to treat of the cessation, and was one of their agents sent to Oxford. His endeavours were not wanting, and his service was considerable, in advancing the peace of 1646 and that of 1648, and he had constantly from that time adhered to

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the king's authority, and opposed the nuncio's and the clergy's faction. His prudence, credit, and interest first brought his youngest brother into the world, where the favour and eminent worth of their sister's son, sir Walter Dungan, contributed to advance him. Peter, another brother of these, and a Jesuit, was in the secret of the king's religion, and had insinuated himself into the good opinion and favour of the Spanish ministers, which gave him sometimes an opportunity of doing good offices to the duke of York. Richard came out of England into Flanders in the year 1656, lying under some suspicions of holding a correspondence with Cromwell, and of being the cause of the imprisonment of some of the king's friends lately taken up by that usurper. He took great pains to vindicate himself to the duke of Ormond and others from that calumny, and seems to have done it with success. He was a proper and graceful person, a man of good parts and great vivacity; but subject to the common frailty of youth, vanity, and infinitely ambitious. He had not been long in the Low Countries before he got into the good graces of the duke of York; and when a lieutenant colonel's place in his royal highness's regiment was vacant, he pushed to be put into that command. Colonel Muskery (for so, being eldest son to the lord of that name, he was generally styled) opposed it with great warmth, and the dispute ran so high, that it came at last to a duel between them. The duke of Ormond and chancellor Hyde represented to the king how improper it was for Talbot, who was of a different province, to be put into one of the highest commands of a Munster regiment, over the heads of a great number of deserving officers, who could not but resent their usage, and in contempt of colonel Muskery, whose personal merit, as well as his father's services, power, and interest, deserved to be considered in a better manner than by such a public declaration to the world, that they had no credit with

the prince they had served more eminently than any of their country. It was not a post for a man, whose passions had not got the better of his judgment, to desire; for the whole regiment, both officers and soldiers, was composed of Muskery's tenants and dependants. There is no character so necessary for an exiled or distressed prince to obtain and preserve, as that of being grateful to his faithful subjects, who have done, or endeavoured to do him services; it got Henry IV of France his crown; whose history furnishes the most instructive and useful lessons to any king that proposes to recover his dominions. When a prince in that circumstance has once lost his reputation in this respect, he has nothing else to lose; and though nothing can be a greater grievance, or juster cause of uneasiness to him, than to be importuned by persons conscious of their services, and to be teased with the remembrance of his obligations to them; yet he should avoid giving any reasonable grounds for the imputation of ingratitude as carefully as he would his ruin; for few persons have such abstracted notions of loyalty as to serve their master without some hopes of reward when it is in his power, and nobody will bear neglect. What was said on the subject made little impression on the king; he was easy in his nature, hated trouble, and seeing his brother had set his heart upon carrying this point for his favourite, would not interpose in the matter. 59 Talbot, being made lieutenant colonel in so remarkable a manner, could not forbear triumphing in his surmounting all the opposition made by such powerful adversaries. His success was enough to give the world an opinion of his favour with the duke of York, which alone had raised him to that post; but it was likewise magnified by three 235 of his elder brothers, (Gilbert, Peter, and Thomas,) who were at this time in Flanders, and made it their business to trumpet about their brother Dick's great interest with his royal highness. Abundance of the Irish, who had

been violent in the nuncio's party, and joined with the clergy in all their rebellious measures against the king's authority, upon their quitting Ireland, entered into foreign service. When his majesty required all his subjects to leave the French service, and repair to Flanders, there to serve under his own command, these men helped to make up the little army that he had there. It was not in the nature of the rebels of those days to be ashamed of any part of their behaviour, and these bigoted officers wanted not the folly to justify their past actions, and to lay the blame on the duke of Ormond for refusing to grant them all their demands, hoping that by aspersing his conduct they might make their own stand fair in the eye of the world. To gain the more credit to their allegations, they applied themselves to Dick Talbot, as the great favourite at court; and though he had served formerly as lieutenant of horse under his nephew sir Walter Dungan against the nuncio's party, yet being elated with his patron's favour, and addressed to by these people, the vanity of appearing considerable and making himself popular induced him to espouse the cause of these men, and to join with them and his brothers in openly bespattering the duke of Ormond with all the calumnies imaginable, and treating the chancellor with satirical reflections not easy to be digested. These men served faithfully under the king's ensigns abroad, and upon his restoration they followed him to London, and provision was made in the declaration for their being restored to their estates. They continued in England the same practice which they had begun abroad, and were continually railing against the duke of Ormond and the lord chancellor Clarendon.

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Talbot knew the secret of the duke of York's religion, and still continued his favourite; and it was by his means that he obtained the command of a troop of horse, when none or very few Roman catholics in the three