Born in 1630, Tyrconnel was twenty years of age when Cromwell came to Ireland and besieged Drogheda. Even at that early age he was well known for his reckless courage, and he was certainly one of the most gallant defenders of the town. He owed his escape to the fact that he was so dangerously wounded that he was placed amongst the dead, and he took advantage of the lonely battlefield to make his way out of Drogheda disguised as a woman. Coming to London, Tyrconnel was arrested by Cromwell, but escaped to the Continent, where he quickly determined to enter the inner circle of the royal exiles. Charles and his brother, the Duke of York, later James II., did not care for the society of a person who lacked the finer polish, and who found his acquaintances at the point of the sword. Tyrconnel, however, was crafty enough to sum up James's character, and by offering to go to England and assassinate Cromwell, he was at once taken into the confidence of the duke. Fortunately, it was soon realized that such a foul deed would merely serve to strengthen the Commonwealth in England, and certainly extinguish all hopes of another Stuart régime. It is not at all unlikely that Tyrconnel knew this; anyhow, he gained his ambition, and by the time the Restoration was accomplished, he was one of the royal prince's most trusted companions.
Unfortunately for Tyrconnel, he cast in his lot with the Duke of York, and twenty-five years passed before his patron was in a position to give him his earldom. Talbot, who was a product of the battlefield, was not likely to shine in the court of Charles II. He played a part in it for a time, and he was the hero of several love affairs, but he had not the courtly graces of a Buckingham or a Rochester. Women were afraid of provoking him, for he brooked no rivalry, and the man who in one week fought five duels in London and wounded his opponent every time was no fit companion for ladies whose fame depended upon the number of conquests they made, but they admired his courage and success. In his only really serious love affair Tyrconnel was rejected, and the lady married Sir George Hamilton. Richard Talbot also found consolation, but some years later, when his wife had died, he married Lady Hamilton, a widow with six children.
Charles was speaking more than the truth when he declared that no one would ever assassinate him to make James king, and Talbot, leading an aimless life in London, a beggared gambler, distrusted by the old aristocracy and feared by the new, sought vainly for adequate employment for nearly ten years. Then in 1669 Charles appointed him Commander-in-Chief in Ireland on the earnest and persistent solicitation of the Duke of York. London society was not displeased to get rid of the bully so easily, for in their estimation Ireland was still a place of exile, especially so in view of the comfortable statesmanship practised by Charles and his satellites in the palace of Whitehall. Talbot went to Ireland eagerly, knowing that the qualities which had won for him contempt in London would idealize him in Ireland. With the aid of the Duke of York, and also helped by the indolence of Charles, he knew that he could make his office of Commander-in-Chief at least equal to, if not more powerful than, the viceroyalty. Ormonde had been superseded by Lord Robarts, and Talbot detested the duke, whose religion made him unpopular with the Duke of York and his friends.
'Lying Dick Talbot'
On the accession of James II., Richard Talbot—Macaulay's 'Lying Dick Talbot'—was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and his powers as Commander-in-Chief increased. It was the king's ambition to make himself independent of Parliament by means of the army, and he hoped that Tyrconnel would bring the army in Ireland to such a state of efficiency that would render it an important asset in the struggle between the king and his subjects. To a man of Talbot's temperament unlimited power was a spur to unlimited ambition, and successive viceroys found themselves in a humiliating position. The noted duellist and bully—the man at whom half London sneered and whom the other half feared—was set in authority over some of the best blood in the kingdom, and although they complained bitterly to the king, there was no redress.
The state of the country
The nomination of Tyrconnel to the vice-royalty was, therefore, the only way out of James's difficulties in Ireland. Nearly every class in the country welcomed the appointment. The new viceroy proceeded to strengthen his own position rather than that of the king's. He had been instructed to pack the state and the bench with Catholics, but Tyrconnel, with thoughts of the future, selected creatures of his own, and in a short time he was master of the country. The bench, the corporations, the Justices of the Peace, were all subservient to him. He made and unmade laws, and the spectacle of a bully ruling a country might have made the world laugh had it not been so tragic. The disarmed Protestants were left to the mercy of the criminal classes and the legalized highway robbers; consequently many of the most prosperous and law-abiding families were compelled to leave their lands and homes and emigrate to England. Justice was a travesty; householders in Dublin had to keep watch all night to guard their property because the fear of punishment for crime no longer existed. The viceroy and his wife reigned in Dublin Castle, where sectarianism influenced every single act.
Lady Tyrconnel, who had been in her youth one of the most fascinating of the group of ingenuous beauties gathered about the court of Charles II., was in her middle age ugly, spiteful, and fanatical. Her husband was rough and coarse; she was feline and fanciful, but she adapted herself to the ways of his policy, and the Catholic religion found in her a devout adherent. She was not popular in Ireland, however. The mother of six children, she was fond of recalling the glories of her Whitehall past. Secretly she disliked James, and even at times broke out into petulant diatribes against her husband's patron; but all the time she aped the youth of her early years, and tried to hide the plain present by means of paint.
There was no room for the finer arts of life in Tyrconnel. He was now acting the statesman, and the result was very soon evident. Ormonde, despite his defects and dislike for the ultra-patriots, had succeeded in improving the condition of Ireland, and his successors had been willing to continue his social policy if they could not improve upon it. The Earl of Tyrconnel, however, was not the man to imitate others, no matter how praiseworthy such imitation might be, and in less than a couple of years he 'reduced Ireland from a place of briskest trade and best-paid rents in Christendom to utter ruin and desolation.' Dublin had progressed amazingly under Ormonde, and it seemed as if the capital city would rise to a place amongst the most important cities of the world, when Tyrconnel came to set it back a hundred years. England had never done anything for Dublin or any other town in Ireland, and the progress of the capital had been made in the face of the bitterest opposition and the most relentless persecution. London, Bristol, and the other ports of England were jealous of Dublin, and they were able to get edicts passed interfering with the shipping and the trade of the country, in order that they might not lose in competition. Dublin, however, rose superior to edicts and statutes, and by the end of the seventeenth century it was not a mean city. Even in London it was realized with something approaching wonder that Dublin was not to be despised. For five hundred years it had been the headquarters of the English colony, but it was in Tyrconnel's day entirely Irish. The English families had been merged in the Irish, and the result was a population anxious for peace and freedom from the persecutions entailed by religious squabbles and political struggles.
The Earl of Tyrconnel was too patriotic, however, to let the country rest. His crude mind was full of ambitious schemes, and from England James fed him with ambitious food. Between them they were to make England, Ireland, and Scotland wholly Catholic, and in the remote event of England failing the king, Ireland was to be made a French protectorate, so that the supremacy of the Catholic religion might remain undisputed.