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Saying "Gentlemen be faithful, to us prove not ungrateful,
Though seven to one engage us, give not one inch away;
Let it never be reported that they beat Limerick Clothiers,
In spite of their reproaches we'll bear the bell away."

For when first they did attack us with adzes keen and axes,
They stood as if already fixed our Clothiers to destroy;
But soon we did attack them, and nobly we did whack them
To our great satisfaction we worked them sore annoy:
"Come on, my boys," cries Bennis, we'll drive these dogs to Ennis,
How dare they fight against us? we'll make them be more meek,
We'll show them Limerick Clothiers are gentlemen and soldiers,
And if they want a licking they shall have it once a week.

Like unto sworn brothers they joined against our Clothiers,
Who behaved themselves like soldiers in the battle's fiery heat-
Like gentlemen of honor moving under Jason's banner,1

We marched to their dishonor though the rupture it was great;
For their daughters, wives and elders like poisoned Salamanders,
Laid on young Alexander with great sticks and stones,
But our undaunted heroes drove back the tribe of Neroes,
And soon applied an obstacle to our insulting foes.

Although they bred this faction they still sought satisfaction,
But not by noble action, but by the law's delay;

For these cowards base and arrant, they got a power of warrants,
Against the Blue and Orange that ever bore the sway.
But like grinning asses along the street they pass us,

Disdained even by their lasses who cry out at them shame, But since its your own seeking and for law you lie a creeping, Wait for our next merry meeting and then redeem your fame.

And to tell you their superior he was a butter taster,

An old insipid negur, that was whipped out of Cork, For turning tallow chandler he ran a race with Randle,

And showed them all a gauntlope from South Gate to the North. Then after this disaster he came to Limerick faster,

And now he's become master all over Vulcan's train,Which causes me to wonder, all, that such a base old scoundrel Should be their chief commander, or ever bear that name.

For it's well known to all people that he was prone to evil,
To Belzebub the devil we may him well compare—
For a damzel brisk and airy he very fain would marry,

But soon he did miscarry all in the County Clare.
For his virtuous wife being living, this hot blooded old devil
Would fain have been a minion of his fair elected bride-
But of his hopes deprived this old rogue soon contrived
To cut his throat in private, all by the Shannon side.

1 The Golden Fleece was the arms of the Clothiers.

Now Clothiers sit ye merry, drink brandy, wine, and sherry,
Malaga and canary, fill bumpers, do not spare,1
For equity and justice shall ever be amongst us,

Since his noble worship brave Franklin is the Mayor.
The Lord may bless his honor, and all to him belonging,
For he is worthy to be made a baronet or knight,
For quality and commons and Protestants and Romans,
And widows and poor orphans still bless him day and night.

The Lord may bless and prosper our good and noble master,
Who saved us from disaster, I mean brave Sheriff Vokes,-
For in the time of danger to us he proved no stranger,

Our rights he did maintain them and from us did ne'er revolt;
But like a wise conductor he did us aid and succour,

His men above all others, their foes they did subdue,

For like a wise Apollo his enterprise did follow,

Till we made them all acknowledge that we were the True Blues.

In the midst of these proceedings, which throw greater light on the manners of the day than some of the facts recorded in much more dignified documents, projects were afloat for building Theatres in Dublin and Cork, and subsequently in Limerick. The Theatres of the three cities had been held by the same patentee for many years subsequent to these times. Sir Edward Lovet Pearce wrote to Charles Smyth, Esq., M.P., on the subject, a letter as follows:

SR,

"Dublin, February 2nd, 17 32.

I hear from others, and from your Brother, Sr. Thos., that you are at Cork, on a design of building a play house. As our schemes of that sort for this citty are just ripe, and many gentlemen of fortune are concerned with me in a project, which will in all probality take effect, I have been at a good deal of paines to enform myself of the necessary conveniencys, and to make such a designe as may best answer our intentions. At least we are a great number who are satisfied with it, or I would not venture to recommend it to you, who probably (as we do) propose some advantage to yr. self. The meaning of all this is to tell you, that if you realy are upon such a design, and send me a plan of ye ground, with the streets that lead to it, and mention the money you expect to lay out, I will as soon possible return you a plan fitted for yr. purpose, with our scheme at large by which we raise the money and secure ourselves. I am not a judge whether ye affairs will permitt you to stay so long from yr. town of Limerick, but I hope they will, because I think it would be for yr. advantage. I know Lt.-Genel. Pearce has writt to you lately, concerning the affair of the Gates and Walls, presented by yr. Grand Jury of the Citty, but that is a business will be more adviseable in you to post pone till the time of the assizes, because the Judges may probably have some directions there in, and you may like best to hear what they will say before you send yr. answer, which I know is not expected before the assizes. I hope you will believe I offer this in friendship to you, and with reguard to Sr. Thos., yr. Brother, and that I am,

To Charles Smyth, Esq.,

at Limerick.

Yr. most humble

and obedient servant,
ED. LO. PEARCE."

! Claret and white wine were in general use. Mr. Stritch imported claret, which he sold at £55 a tun. Mr. Pierce Moroney was also a wine merchant. "A hogshead of white wine" sold for ten pounds. Imperial tea 4s. per lb. green tea 6s. per lb. in 1723; good coffee was sold in Mary-street by Mr. Holland Goddison, at 4s. per lb.

CHAPTER XLII.

CIVIC RIVALRY-ST. MICHAEL'S PARISH-THE GREAT FROST-FEARFUL sufFERINGS OF THE PEOPLE-WHITEFIELD'S VISIT TO LIMERICK AND HIS OPINION OF THE INHABITANTS THE LAND AND ITS CHANGES-MISDEEDS OF THE CORPORATORS AGAIN.

THE principal event in 1732, was a grand civic procession, which was made by Philip Rawson, Esq., the Mayor, who had been the defeated candidate a short time before, but was now desirous of showing his strength as father of the city. Accompanied by the entire corporation in costume, and the several guilds of trade, with banners, badges, &c., he went around the city or as White quaintly expresses it, "rid the fringes," levelling such encroachments as had been made on the high roads and commons of the corporation. There had not been so brilliant a procession for many years, and its effect was long remembered.

The city was confined at the time principally to the English town and Irish town; the size and population of the parish of St. Michael may be judged of from a very simple fact. The parish had been joined to that of St. John in 1709; but in 1735, the Rev. Dr. Pierce Creagh, who had officiated as Catholic pastor of St. Mary's, afterwards for many years, arrived from Rome, where he had completed his studies, bringing with him a papal bull for the Catholic archdeaconship of the city, and the parish of St. Michael belonging to it. On the 21st of February in that year, he took possession of the archdeaconship, but the parish of St. Michael being so extremely poor at the time, it was not able to support a clergyman, and Dr. Creagh heeded it not. Not only was the parish poor, but throughout the city and country much misery prevailed, and bigotry and fanaticism had full fling. Depression, dearth, and famine were generally felt to act with galling severity on the masses; whilst a few years later, a dreadful frost-the great frost of 1739, which continued for forty days, and from which many memorable incidents have been dated, was accompanied and followed by unparalleled

Ibid.

8 Ibid.

1 White's MSS. For instance, in the Pedigree of General Maurice de Lacy of Grodno, in Russia, and of the County of Limerick, it is stated he was born the year of the great frost. He died at Grodno in 1820, and was the last male descendant direct of the great Hugh de Lacy, Governor of Ireland.

To the eminently warlike County of Limerick family of De Lacy, of which Maurice De Lacy was one of the most illustrious members, and to their kinsmen the Browns of Camas, we have briefly referred in a preceding chapter. But a more comprehensive notice of them and of their noble relations, the Herberts of Rathkeale, is demanded in this History.

The family of the De Lacys in the annals of history of the last eight centuries ranks high for military prowess, and sagacity in council, and deeds of daring and importance at the Norman Conquest, and it will be found that from that time, and throughout the eight centuries of great events which happened to England and Ireland, to the present age, and throughout the great military and political achievements on the continent of Europe—in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, by the Crusaders, the Knights Templars, the Confederated Barons, down to the Irish Confederacies, and the famous Irish Brigades; and in the Civil Wars of the Norman Kings, the Conquest of Ireland, of Scotland, of Wales, the struggle for Magna Charta, the Wars of the Roses, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, down to the religious dissensions in England and Ireland, the Cromwellite Wars, the battles for religion which closed with the Treaty of Limerick, in 1691; or the military events in Spain and France, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, down to the Insurrection of 1817, when one of the Generals Lacy was sacrificed to the liberties of that country; and in the great wars of Germany, in the seventeenth and eighteenth con

miseries. Persons died of sheer starvation in the public streets, and their bodies lay unburied. The condition indeed of the people was so terrible, that

turies; the wars against Turkey, in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, those of the famous Irish Brigade, the wars by the French against Marlborough, with Catholic Germany against Sweden and Prussia, and the Russians against Turkey-in short, in every leading European event to the Treaty of Adrianople, in 1829, the family of De Lacy of Limerick has supplied a member, and achieved undying renown. From Walter De Lacy, whose daughters were married into the noble house of Fitzgerald, Earls of Desmond and Kildare, descended Hugh Lacy, Bishop of Limerick, in Queen Mary's time; the family rose and fell with the Fitzgeralds' intestine wars, in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. In the seventeenth century there were three brothers of the family settled in the County Limerick -one in Ballingarry, one in Bruree, and one in Bruff; and from those descended the famous "Pierce Lacy" who was executed by the Justices in 1617; being one of the five exempted from the pardon of 1601. His descendant, Colonel Lacy, continued the wars in Munster in 1641, and treated with Ireton at the siege of Limerick in 1651, but was excluded from the amnesty. John Bourke, Lord of Brittas, half-brother of Pierce Lacy, was executed in 1607; and in 1618, his relative married to the daughter of the Earl of Inchiquin, was created Baron Brittas; in 1641 attainted, restored, 1688 attainted and lost their properties. Cromwell expelled the Lacys root and branch, and only one of the Bruff branch escaped the slaughter by dismounting a horseman. Pierce Lacy was conspicuously engaged in the siege of Limerick, 1691. From these branches sprung the Irish Brigaders, and the French, Spanish, Austrian, Polish and Russian warriors, Marshals and Generals De Lacy and Brown, whose exploits for a century, up to the close of the last century, filled Europe with their fame. In the list of English by descent at the end of the sixteenth century, in the county of Limerick, the Lacys of Ballingarry, of the Brouve (Bruff) and of Bruree, are ranked with "the gentlemen and freeholders" of the county, as contradistinguished from the "meere Irishe," and the factions in Munster, viz. the "McSwines and M'Shees, then in faction"-the latter gallowglasses,* though at the siege at Askeaton in 1641-"John Lacie of the Brouff" is denounced, with M'William Bourke, second son of Lord Brittas, and others, by St. Ledger, Lord President of Munster, as among "the Mounster Rebelles." History teems with the achievements of the De Lacys in Russia and Austria. It was for his remarkable successes in the Council not less than in the Field, that the "famous Marshal De Lascy, the son of an Irish Exile from the county of Limerick, was loaded with so much honor by the rulers of Austria, and received from the Emperor Joseph a letter (written the day before the Emperor's death)" which is translated in his kinsman's "Cornet Pierse's Historical Researches," as follows:-" Vienna, 19th February, 1790. My dear marshal Lacy, I behold the moment which is to separate us approaching with hasty strides ! I should be very ungrateful indeed if I left this world without assuring you, my dear friend, of that lively gratitude on which you have so many claims, and which I have had the pleasure of Yes! you created my army: to you it is indebted acknowledging in the face of the whole world! for its credit and its consideration. If I be any thing I owe it to you. The trust I could repose in your advice under every circumstance, your unbroken attachment to my person, which never varied, your success in the Field as well as in the Council, are so many grounds, my dear I have seen marshal, which render it impossible for me sufficiently to express my thanks. your tears flow for me! The tears of a great man and a sage are a high panegyric. Receive my adieus! I tenderly embrace you. I regret nothing in this world but the small number of Remember me! remember your sincere my friends, among whom you certainly are the first! and affectionate friend, JOSEPH." A magnificent monument, with his effigy in bronze, is raised to him in Vienna.

In April, 1799, the renowned Suvaroff, with the above mentioned General Maurice Lacy of Grodno, and the County of Limerick, opened the Campaign, and in the words of Thiers," in three months the French lost all their possessions in Italy-the battle of Novi shut us definitively out of Italy after three years occupation." But Suvaroff left the Austrians and marched North to help Korsakoff at Zurich, but was too late and hastened home.

In the next year Napoleon "crossed the Alps," and after winning Marengo and Lombardy, he was within 50 miles of Venice when the peace of Amiens was concluded. In the war of 1805, General Maurice Lacy landed a Russian army to attack the French on their flank at Naples. But the French having won Austerlitz from the Austrians, the treaty of Presburg of December, 1805, ceded Venetia to the French, and after an Austrian occupation of 10 years it was given back to the "Kingdom of Italy."

In the succeeding wars, the Austrian army was successful against Padua and Vicenza, and In 1810, another of the Lacy threatened Venice, when the battle of Wagram followed in 1809. family landed a Spanish army at Cadiz to divert the French from Italy, by a demonstration on that flank. By the treaties of 1814-'15, France "returned to her limits of 1792," renounced Italy, and Venetia and Lombardy were reannexed to Austria.

In the Napoleon correspondence now publishing, is a remarkable letter from Napoleon to Count Lacy, taken from the memoirs of Cornet Pierce of the Russian service, in which Napoleon

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when provisions were exhausted, they had recourse to every means to sustain life even to cats, dogs, mice, carrion, putrid meat, nettles, docking,

suggests the re-formation of an expedition to Ireland, to liberate the Catholics of that country, which he desires equally for the Catholics of Poland. It is dated from the place where the famous interview between him and Alexander took place, two days after that interview. The proposal fell through. He says,

General-Your illustrious master permits me to address you-your country and your faith have all my sympathies. The noble devotion of Ireland's sons, which have produced such sacrifices through so many ages (generations), inspires the hope that you will seek to benefit your country and your faith, and to restore her proscribed sons. Your name will inspire confidence, thousands would flock to your banner, and the antient enemy of our common faith might be humbled to the wishes of both your royal master and myself. Think of this, and if favorably let me hear from you. Accept my high consideration of your renown and your ancestry, &c. &c. Napoleon.

General Maurice Lacy."

A Pedigree of this warlike race, written in Spanish, shows that members of the family of De Lacy served in the armies of Spain after the siege of Limerick, and that in 1796, the children of Anna Maria de Lacy, who married Timotheus O'Scanlan, resided in Madrid. The Right Rev. Robert Lacy, Catholic Bishop of Limerick, who died in 1761, was a member of and an ornament to the Bruree Branch of the De Lacy family. General Maurice de Lacy of Grodno in Russia, and of the County of Limerick, died in 1820.* Not less illustrious were their relatives the Browns-George Brown, Baron of Camas, and his descendants, of whom Ulysses or Ulick Brown of Camas, in the Co. of Limerick, Esq., was Colonel of a Regiment of Horse in the service of the Emperors Leopold and Joseph, created in 1716, by the Emperor Charles VI. a Count of the Holy Roman Empire, (his younger brother George receiving a like dignity at the same time, being General of Foot, Councillor of War, and Colonel of a Regiment of Infantry, under the said Emperors), was father of the deservedly famous Ulysses Maximilian Brown, Count of the Holy Roman Empire, one of their Imperial Majestys' Privy Counsellors, and Coun. cillor of War, Field Marshal, Colonel of a Regiment of Foot, Commander of Prague, Commanding-General of the Kingdom of Bohemia, and Knight of the White Eagle of Poland. He was born in Germany in 1705, and began to serve in 1718, marched with his uncle after the peace of Passarvoviz in Hungary, to Italy, the war having begun that year in Sicily. In the years 1731-2 he served in Corsica, and was grievously wounded at Callasana, which he took sword in hand. In the years 1733-34 and '35, as Major-General in the wars of Italy, he behaved with great distinction in the battles of Parma and Guastalla.

In 1735-38-39, in quality of Lieutenant-General, he commanded in Hungary, and in 1740 after the death of Charles VI., with a handful of men in Silicia, he opposed the King of Prussia, and though he had not 3,000 men, disputed that country with his Majesty and his numerous army, foot by foot, for the space of two months. In 1741, he was at the battle of Moliz, in Silicia, and the next year in that of Zalray in Bohemia, where he kept head of Marshal Broglio's army of 30,000 men, though he had not above 10,000, being the same year at the siege of Prague. In 1740, he attacked Prince Conti's army, at Deckendorff on the Danube, and after forcing seventeen forts from the French, and taking the town sword in hand, he passed that river and occasioned the route of the French out of all Bavaria; in perpetual memory of which glorious passage of the Danube, a marble pillar is there erected, with the following inscription :-Therese Austraciæ Augustæ Duce Exercitus Carolo Alexandro Lotharinguio, septemdecim superatis hostibilus Villis, captoque Deckendorfio, resistentibus undis, resistentibus Gallis, Duce Exercitus, LUDOVICO BORBONIO CONTIO, transvit hic Danubium Ulysses Maximilianus, S. R. I. Comes de Broune. Locum tenens Campi Marshallis die 5o Junii 1743.

There are several other achievements recounted of this illustrious Limerick man, who in 1726, married Maria Philipina, Countess of Martinez in Bohemia, daughter of George Adam, Count Martinez, one of his Imperial Majesty's Privy Counsellors, sometime Ambassador at Rome, Vice-King of Naples and Knight of the Golden Fleece-and had issue two sons, Philip George Count Browne, one of their Imperial Majesty's Chamberlains, and Colonel of foot, and Ulysses, active Chamberlain, Colonel of Foot and Knight of Malta.

Field Marshal U. M. Brown called to Hungary by his uncle, was wounded at the battle of Prague, and died 1757. Count John Brown was killed at the siege of Prague; Count George Brown, who married the daughter of the Russian Duke Whitten hoof, was at Rathcahill, in the County Limerick, in 1792. Connected also with the De Lacys and Browns, as also with the Courtneys, Earls of Devon, were the Herberts of Rathkeale, in the County of Limerick, who descended from Sir William Herbert, Lord of Cardiff and Earl of Pembroke, the fifth of

*The Biographie Universelle-Michaud-A Paris-gives an interesting memoir of Count Peter Lacy and his son.

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