Many will recall the details of this famous cause célèbre. Pretty Miss Longworth, a Roman Catholic girl of high family, met and was loved by the Protestant Major Yelverton, whom she nursed in the Crimea. A secret marriage was arranged after both had returned to Ireland, and a hurried journey was made from Waterford to Rostrevor. They rowed down the lough to the little chapel next morning, and were married by the parish priest. In after years came the desertion of the bride and an action for maintenance, which was decided by an Irish jury in the lady’s favour, but subsequently reversed by the House of Lords. Probably no mixed-marriage case ever excited so much interest in the three kingdoms, and even yet the chapel and the village are inextricably associated with this sad story of love and betrayal.

CHAPTER XI.
THE BOYNE VALLEY

DROGHEDA, at the mouth of the Boyne, first calls to mind the memorable siege by Cromwell, and the “Battle of the Boyne.” In 1649 Cromwell landed at Dublin with an army of twelve thousand men besides artillery. Drogheda was the first place he attacked. The assailants were twice repulsed, but the third attack, led by Cromwell in person, was successful; and then commenced that indiscriminate slaughter which has rendered the name of the Protector execrated throughout Ireland.

It was a plain, matter-of-fact, brutal warfare, this, but the battle of the Boyne—associated with the doubly historic little river which rises out of one of Ireland’s famous “holy wells,” in the county of Kildare—possesses more largely the elements of romance than many another, though they were more bloody and the results of greater moment.

Here, within a mile of Drogheda, where the unlovely obelisk still marks the spot, was fought, in 1690, the celebrated battle between the Prince of Orange and his father-in-law, James II. The armies were nearly equal in strength, thirty thousand men. Five hundred were killed on the side of William of Orange, and one thousand on the other. The account of the flight of James II., taken from Köhl’s “Ireland,” is interesting:

“James II. displayed but little courage in this memorable battle. He abandoned the field even before the battle was decided, and made a ride of unexampled rapidity through Ireland. In a few hours he reached the castle of Dublin, and in the following day he rode to Waterford, a distance of one hundred English miles. Nevertheless, James sought to throw the whole blame of the defeat on the Irish. On arriving at the castle of Dublin, he met the Lady Tyrconnel, a woman of ready wit, to whom he exclaimed, ‘Your countrymen, the Irish, madam, can run very fast, it must be owned.’ ‘In this, as in every other respect, your Majesty surpasses them, for you have won the race,’ was the merited rebuke of the lady.”

An obelisk to-day marks the spot where William commenced the attack, and where Schomberg fell. The inscription which it bears is significant, sectarian, and sentimental, it is true; but it is explanatory of much that makers of guide-books have often neglected or ignored.

“Sacred to the glorious memory of King William the Third, who, on the first of July, 1690, passed the river near this place to attack James the Second at the head of a Popish army, advantageously posted on the south side of it, and did on that day, by a single battle, secure to us, and to our posterity, our liberty, laws, and religion. In consequence of this action James the Second left this kingdom and fled to France.

“This memorial of our deliverance was erected in the 9th year of the reign of King George the Second, the first stone being laid by Lionel Sackville, Duke of Dorset, Lord Lieutenant of the Kingdom of Ireland.

“1736.”