rebels, but to exterminate them, and all who should harbour them, with fire and sword. The insurgents grew desperate, and besieged the lordpresident in the city of Athlone, where he was at length relieved by the earl of Ormonde. Clanricarde, though justly irritated at the conduct of the Irish government, remained unshaken in his loyalty, and still continued his zealous and efficient exertions for the re-establishment of tranquillity. Towards the latter end of this year a convention was held at Kilkenny by the chief portion of the Roman catholic nobility, prelates, and clergy, in which they professed their allegiance to the king (while they violated his authority and prerogative,) and their intention of being guided by the laws of England, and the statutes of Ireland, as far as they were not inconsistent with the Roman catholic religion. They enacted many laws and regulations, and when the order of government had been adjusted they selected their provincial generals. Now that the rebellion had taken a more specious and civilized form, and that the lords-justices had made themselves so obnoxious to all the high-minded and loyally-disposed, they hoped to gain over lord Clanricarde to their standard, particularly as the maintenance of the Roman catholic faith was one of their chief and most ostensible objects. They accordingly nominated him to the chief command in Connaught, and appointed colonel John Burke as his lieutenant-general. No inducement, however, or specious representation could alter lord Clanricarde's determination; he rejected all their overtures, scorned their sophistical arguments, and with unshaken loyalty adhered to the broken fortunes of his master, notwithstanding the threats and excommunication of his own clergy, which they resorted to as a last resource. When lord Ranelagh the president of Connaught quitted his government in despair, intending to lay before Charles the ruinous and faithless conduct of his justices, Clanricarde still continued at his post, though abandoned to his difficulties and his best acts maligned. Lord Ranelagh was seized immediately on arriving in Dublin, and put into close confinement, so that even the faint hope the earl might have entertained of receiving succour from the king's supporters was dissipated. As the position of the king's affairs became more desperate in England, he was proportionally anxious to bring the rebellion in Ireland to a termination, and expressed his willingness to receive and consider the complaints of the recusants. He accordingly issued a commission under the great seal of England, to the marquess of Ormonde, the earl of Clanricarde, the earl of Roscommon, viscount Moore, and others, to meet the principal recusants and transmit their complaints; to the bringing about of this arrangement the lords-justices opposed every obstacle. It was however at length effected, and the recall of Sir William Parsons followed, on the exposure of his iniquities. The province of Connaught was nearly reduced to desperation, the rebels were every day increasing in numbers, and were possessed of many of the most important forts. Lord Clanricarde's towns of Loughrea and Portumna, were all that in the western province remained in the possession of the royalists. About this period the marquess of Ormonde concluded a treaty with the insurgents for the cessation of arms for a year, to which lord Clanricarde and several other noblemen were parties. In 1644 he was made commander-in-chief of the military

in Connaught, under the marquess of Ormonde, and in the same year he was promoted to the dignity of marquess, with limitation to his issue male. He was also made a member of the privy council, and zealously exerted his increased influence and power for the benefit and tranquillization of the country. An attempt was made during the campaign of Cromwell to recover Ulster from the parliamentary army, by a conjunction of the northern Irish with the British royalists of this province, under the command of the marquess of Clanricarde; this however was defeated by the intrigues of lord Antrim, and the Irish refusing to follow any leader but one of their own selection. During the long and factious struggle of the Roman catholic prelates with lord Ormonde, Clanricarde marched with his forces to oppose the progress of Ireton and Sir Charles Coote towards Athlone, when the sentence of excommunication was published at the head of his troops, so as to discharge them from all obedience to the government. No representations of the moderate party could induce those haughty prelates to revoke the sentence of excommunication, and all that could be obtained from them was a suspension of it during the expedition for the relief of Athlone. When at length their insolent and obstinate resistance drove Ormonde from the kingdom, he appointed Clanricarde as his deputy with directions to act as circumstances and his own judgment should direct. Had Clanricarde consulted his own interest or safety he would never have undertaken so thankless and dangerous a responsibility; but his was too noble a nature to let personal considerations weigh for a moment against a sense of duty, and his zealous and devoted attachment to the king made him anxious to preserve even the semblance of his authority in Ireland; and he also thought that by continuing the war even at disadvantage in that country, he might in some degree divert the republican army from concentrating their forces against the king and the English royalists. Clanricarde accordingly accepted the office, but had to encounter a difficulty in the very outset, in getting the instrument which was to bind both parties, drawn with sufficient simplicity to prevent its covering dangerous and doubtful meanings. The Roman catholics had now a chief governor their own religion, and Ireton was disappointed in his advance upon Limerick, so that the Irish, still possessing that city, Galway and Sligo could have made a good stand against the republicans. Ireton made propositions through his agents to the assembly to treat with the parliament, and the fatal influence exerted by the nuncio still predominated and induced the clergy to listen favourably to these proposals. Clanricarde indignantly represented the treachery and baseness of such conduct, and the leading members of the assembly joined in expressing the same sentiments, saying, "it is now evident that these churchmen have not been transported to such excesses by a prejudice to the marquess of Ormonde, or a zeal for their religion, their purpose is to withdraw themselves entirely from the royal authority. It is the king and his government which are the real objects of their aversion, but these we will defend at every hazard; and when a submission to the enemy can be no longer deferred, we shall not think it necessary to make any stipulations in favour of the secret enemies of our cause. Let those men who oppose the royal authority be excluded from the benefits of

of

our treaty." The clergy, little accustomed to such language, at length submitted, and the treaty was rejected. They still, however, retained their hatred to Clanricarde, and held secret and seditious conferences.

At

The success of the republicans daily increased, but still Clanricarde, with desperate fidelity, adhered to the royal cause, and aided by some Ulster forces, took the castles of Ballyshannon and Donegal. length, on the dispersion of his troops and the total exhaustion of his own resources, he yielded to the stern necessity of his position, and accepted conditions from the republicans.

His Irish estate, of £29,000 a-year, was sequestered, and he retired to Summerhill, in Kent, where he died in 1657. He married early in life the lady Ann Compton, daughter of the earl of Northampton, and by her had one daughter, who married Charles, Viscount Muskerry.

THE BUTLERS.

JAMES, DUKE OF ORMONDE.

BORN A. D. 1607-DIED A. D. 1688.

THOMAS, the tenth earl of Ormonde, who was among the most illustrious warriors and statesmen of the sixteenth century, was yet living in the next at an extreme old age, at his house on Carrick-onSuir, where he died in his 88th year, in 1614. As he had no male heir his estates were limited to Sir Walter Butler of Kilcash, his nephew, and grandson to the ninth earl. Sir Walter's eldest son Thomas, by courtesy lord Thurles was drowned 15th December, 1619, near the Skerries, in his passage from England, twelve years before his father's death. By his lady, Elizabeth, daughter of Sir John Pointz of Acton, in the county of Gloucester, he left seven children, of whom James the eldest is the subject of the following memoir.

This distinguished statesman is said by Carte to have been born at Clerkenwell in London in 1610, but Archdall shows from the unquestionable evidence of an inquisition taken at Clonmell, April, 1622, before the king's commissioners and twelve gentlemen of the county of Tipperary, that his birth took place in 1607. The words of the inquisition are "Predictus Thomas vicecomes Thurles, 15th die Decembris, anno dom., 1619, obiit et quidam Jacobus Butler, communiter vocatus dominus vicecomes Thurles, fuit filius et hæres præfati Thomæ Butler, et quod præfatus Jacobus Butler, tempore mortis prædicti Thomæ fuit ætatis duodecim annorum, et non amplius." Carte refers to the difference of date thus maintained, but mentions that he never obtained a sight of the inquisition, and therefore considers it insufficient ground for rejecting the duke's own statement, which makes it 1610.

At the period of his birth his father was under the displeasure of Sir Walter Butler for having married contrary to his wish. And when he went with his lady into Ireland, they lived for some time in the