The anomaly of political principles among the country gentlemen of Ireland at that period was very extraordinary. They professed what they called “unshaken loyalty;” and yet they were unqualified partisans of Cromwell and William, two decided usurpers—one of them having dethroned his father-in-law, and the other decapitated his king.
The fifth of November was always celebrated in Dublin for the preservation of James, a Scottish king, (after Queen Elizabeth had cut his mother’s head off) from Guy Fawkes and a barrel of gunpowder in London; then the thirtieth of January was highly approved of by a great number of Irish, as the anniversary of making Charles the First, the son and heir of the said James, shorter by his head. Then the very same Irish celebrated the restoration of Charles the Second, the son of the shortened king, and who was twice as bad as his father; and whilst they rejoiced in putting a crown upon the head of the son of the king who could not keep his own head on, they never failed to drink bumpers to the memory of Old Noll, who had cut that king’s head off; and in order to commemorate the whole story, and make their children remember it, they dressed up a fat calf’s-head, whole and white, on every anniversary of King Charles’s throat being cut, and with a red-smoked ham, which they called “Bradshaw,” placed by the side of it, all parties partook thereof most happily; washing down the emblem and its accompaniment with as much claret as they could hold, in honour of Noll the regicide!
Having thus proved their loyalty to James the First, and their attachment to his son’s murderer, and then their loyalty to the eldest of his grandsons, they next proceeded to celebrate the birth-day of William of Orange, a Dutchman, who had kicked their king, (his father-in-law) the second grandson, out of the country, and who in all probability would have given the Irish another calf’s head for their celebration, if the said king, his father-in-law, had not got out of the way with the utmost expedition, and gone to live upon charity in France, the then mortal enemy of the British nation; and as they dressed a calf’s head for the son’s murder, so they dressed sheeps’ trotters every first of July, to commemorate the grandson’s running away at the Boyne Water, in the year 1690.
One part of the Irish people then invented a toast, called, “The glorious, pious, and immortal memory of William, the Dutchman;” whilst another raised a counter-toast, called “The memory of the chesnut horse,” that broke the neck of the same King William.[[4]] But in my mind, (if I am to judge of past times by the corporation of Dublin) it was only to coin an excuse for getting loyally drunk as often as possible, that they were so enthusiastically fond of making sentiments, as they called them.[[5]]
[4]. King William’s neck was not broken, only his collar-bone; his fall from a chesnut horse, however, hastened his dissolution.
[5]. Could his majesty, King William, learn in the other world that he has been the cause of more broken heads and drunken men, since his departure, than all his predecessors, he must be the proudest ghost and most conceited skeleton that ever entered the gardens of Elysium.
As to the politics of my family, we had (no doubt) some very substantial reasons for being both Cromwellians and Williamites; the one confirmed our grants, and the other preserved them for us; my family, indeed, had certainly not only those, but other very especial reasons to be pleased with King William; and though he gave them nothing, they kept what they had, which might have been lost but for his usurpation.
During the short reign of James the Second in Ireland, those who were not for him were considered to be against him, and of course were subjected to the severities and confiscations usual in all civil wars. Amongst the rest, my great-grandfather, Colonel John Barrington, being a Protestant, and having no predilection for King James, was ousted from his mansion and estates at Cullenaghmore by one O’Fagan, a Jacobite wig-maker and violent partizan, from Ballynakill. He was, notwithstanding, rather respectfully treated, and was allowed forty pounds a year by his said wig-maker, so long as he behaved himself.