NOTES ON TALE IV.
This tale was written for Anne Liddel countess of Offory, wife of John Fitzpatrick earl of Offory. They had a daughter Anne, the subject of this story.
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[ Vide Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, in the family of Fitzpatrick.]
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[ Queen Anne in her first speech to the parliament said, her heart was entirely English.]
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[ Lady Offory had miscarried just then of two sons.]
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[ The housekeeper, as soon as lord Offory came home, wished him joy of a son and heir, though both the children were born dead.]
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[ Some commentators have ignorantly supposed that the Irish author is guilty of a great anachronism in this passage; for having said that the contested succession occasioned long wars, he yet speaks of queen Grata at the conclusion of them, as still sitting in her mother's lap as a child. Now I can confute them from their own state of the question. Like a child does not import that she actually was a child: she only sat like a child; and so she might though thirty years old. Civilians have declared at what period of his life a king may be of age before he is: but neither Grotius nor Puffendorffe, nor any of the tribe, have determined how long a king or queen may remain infants after they are past their infancy.]