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[From the Dublin University Magazine.]
MAURICE TIERNAY, THE SOLDIER OF FORTUNE.
CHAPTER I. "THE DAYS OF THE GUILLOTINE."
Neither the tastes nor the temper of the age we live in are such as to induce any man to boast of his family nobility. We see too many preparations around us for laying down new foundations, to think it a suitable occasion for alluding to the ancient edifice. I will, therefore, confine myself to saying, that I am not to be regarded as a mere Pretender because my name is not chronicled by Burke or Debrett. My great-grandfather, after whom I am called, served on the personal staff of King James at the Battle of the Boyne, and was one of the few who accompanied the monarch on his flight from the field, for which act of devotion he was created a peer of Ireland, by the style and title of Timmahoo—Lord Tiernay of Timmahoo the family called it—and a very rich-sounding and pleasant designation has it always seemed to me.
The events of the time—the scanty intervals of leisure enjoyed by the king, and other matters, prevented a due registry of my ancestors' claims; and, in fact, when more peaceable days succeeded it, it was judged prudent to say nothing about a matter which might revive unhappy recollections, and open old scores, seeing that there was now another king on the throne "who knew not Joseph;" and so, for this reason and many others, my great-grandfather went back to his old appellation of Maurice Tiernay, and was only a lord among his intimate friends and cronies of the neighborhood.
That I am simply recording a matter of fact, the patent of my ancestors' nobility now in my possession will sufficiently attest: nor is its existence the less conclusive, that it is inscribed on the back of his commission as a captain in the Shanabogue Fencibles—the well-known "Clear-the-way-boys"—a proud title, it is said, to which they imparted a new reading at the memorable battle afore-mentioned.
The document bears the address of a small public house called the Nest, on the Kells Road, and contains in one corner a somewhat lengthy score for potables, suggesting the notion that his majesty sympathized with vulgar infirmities, and found, as the old song says, "that grief and sorrow are dry."
The prudence which for some years sealed my grandfather's lips, lapsed, after a time, into a careless and even boastful spirit, in which he would allude to his rank in the peerage, the place he ought to be holding, and so on; till at last some of the government people, doubtless taking a liking to the snug house and demesne of Timmahoo, denounced him as a rebel, on which he was arrested and thrown into jail, where he lingered for many years, and only came out at last to find his estate confiscated and himself a beggar.