OCR Text |
Show OTHER EOYAL VISITS. Ii-eland's Experiences With, Several Predecessors of Victoria Little Good and Much Harm Resulted j From These Invasions Why Cromwell Is Hot Popular in Ireland Ire-land O'Connell and the Greatest of Liars, George the Fourth By-I By-I ron's "Royal Avatar." J J Apropos of the Queen's visit to Ire- ' ; land the Duhiin Freeman's Journal ; rublu'she; in brief the history of several ! ; occasions upon which the country was visited by kingrs of England, or by 1 ; " princes w ho afterward became kings of England i . The firpt royal victor to Ireland was i King- Henry II., who came to initiate that conquest of Ireland still incomplete .after seven eventful centuries and the 'I source of fcuch evils to both countries. King Henry landed at Crouk. near Wa-' Wa-' terford. on Octobt-r 19, 1171. There is no sovereign of the dark ages of whom iO many details remain by whicTi we r can realize the- man brave, brilliant. . clever, cruel. Two pastimes he had r which he loved above all things-to " read and discuss literature with learned men and to hunt: he had alwayti, says a chronicler, "either a "book or a bow-in bow-in his hand." When he landed in Ire-' Ire-' land he wan years of age, and had ; already been the hero of the most fa-; fa-; mouse love affair and the most famous c tragedy of the age his intrigue with ' the fair Rosamond and the martyrdom of St. Thomas of Canterbury. He marched through and subdued Lein-' Lein-' ; , st or; at Christmas held his court on ' what is now College Green, and there aftontehed the Irish by the splendor of i , his entertainments and conciliated j many by his courtesy and tact. He pent exactly six months in Ireland and then left the country for ever. One most . interesting relic of King Henry's visit fj still remains. Dublin wac in those days ' a Danish town, and the Dublin Danes I 7-esisied the English. They were Flaugh-' Flaugh-' tcred or driven out. and the city was ; 4 left uninhabited. King Henry was : i brought over to Ireland in ships be- longing to the merchants of Bristol, I . mid a a reward the king gave by char- I 1r "his ity of Dublin to the men of UriMol to inhabit." This charter from Hfr.ry, King of England, Duke of i Normandy. Duke of Aquitane and ) Count of Anjon." is Ptill extant in the strong room of the Dublin corporation, and was produced as the root of the i;- corporation's title to certain dues i claimed in an action iigainst Aleesrs. I 1 cjcastle, iried about ten years ago by the late Judge O'Hrien. It 'is in Norman Nor-man French and written on a small i piece of parchment about the size of a ; half f-'heot of notepaper. KING JOHN, i That "royal blackguard." King John, I was twice in Ireland once as viceroy I and once a? King. It is paid, indeed, J 'hat it was the intention of his father, I Henry II., to create Ireland into a sep- j - araie Kingcnm tor John, his favorite J eon; that I'ope I'rban had ratified the I prince's title to tne Irish kingdom and sent him a golden crown; that it "was I only the jealousy of the king's other I fins that prevented the dt-.-ign being carried on. John sa:lcd from Miiford, and landed in AVaterfor.l f-n Easter Thursday, IIS.",. He sirrjilv ,i,rv hi'nse'f with characteristic ra.uii:?y from the firist. allowed his courLi- : s to play rude practical jokes on the Irish chiefs who waited on him, spent on wantons the revenues of the kingdom, and lived a life of disgraceful debauchery. In a series of unsuccessful engagements with the Irish he lost almost hi.s entire army, and several of the newly-erected Norman castles were sacked by the native na-tive princes. After an inglorious eo-journ eo-journ of eight months he returned to Ireland in 1210, and although he only stayed two months very many traces of his visit still remain. For example, he divided the part of Ireland under his sway into twelve counties Dublin, Kildare, Meath, Uriel (now Louth), Carlow, -Limerick and Tipperary. It will be seen that no part of Ulster or Connaught was then in the Pale. Many castles were built by him, including we believe, the Castle of Trim, rnv a magnificent ruin, and the Castle of Limerick, s-till intact. '. Tradition has preserved and enhanced his fame as a builder. There is not a county in Ireland Ire-land that has not a King John's caa-tle; caa-tle; some the real work of the king, others not. RICHAKD II. After the lapse of a century and a half another English king." in the person per-son of Richard II., landed in Ireland. He came to try and win back a kingdom king-dom almost lost to the English. The Irish Ir-ish held all Ulster. Munster and Con-naught, Con-naught, and "all Leinster trembled at the might and puissance" of the heir of its ancient sovereigns. Art McJIuv-rough. McJIuv-rough. After various unsuccessful efforts ef-forts in war and diplomacy-Richard returned re-turned to England, and again came back to Ireland on June 2, 13L9, landing land-ing at Waterford. He was at the head of one of the largest armies ever seen 'in Europe, for it numbered fully 20,000 men. He commenced a campaign against MacMurrough. m which the Irish Ir-ish chief foiled, wore him and defeated him. He went back to England to lose both his crown and life. The queen is, I of course, the lineal descendant of King j Richard II., while in the person of Mr. j MacMurrough Kavanaugh the lineal I descendant of the Irish prince lives and j flourishes. In King Richard's train in j Ireland was a young prince of the blood ' who was knighted by the king, and af- j terwards reigned as the famous victor of Agincourt. King Henry V. OLIVER CROMWELL. Cromwell was not a king, but he was j a sovereign ruler of England. His vis- I it to Ireland may be disposed of in a I couple of lurid sentences. He landed on I Aiiiriist 1.V 1fi4!t at !iin?spnd Tsu snilwrl I from Youghal on May 29 in the following follow-ing year. He slaughtered the garrisons and population of Diogheda. and Ross; he murdered every priest he laid hands on; he killed hundreds of women and children; he burned towns, levelled fair castles, destroyed churches, ordered the people of Ireland to the bogs of Con-naught Con-naught under pain of death, and kidnapped kid-napped thousands of children for West Indian slavery. Englishmen are greatly astonished that Cromwell is not popular popu-lar in Ireland. JAMES H. AND WILLIAM III. These rival claimants to the throne were pleased in the end of the seventeenth seven-teenth century to make Ireland the cockpit in which to decide their quarrel. quar-rel. King James landed in Ireland in the year 16SS. King William two years afterwards. They met at . the, -Boyne, where William approved himself a brave end skillful- commander; and King James was disgraced, and soon j afterwards iied to France. Most interesting inter-esting relics of King William's campaign cam-paign are to be found in the city of Limerick. There, though in other hands, is the stately cathedral in which Sais-fieldand Sais-fieldand his brave followers heard their daily mass. There is the gray old tower from which the Irish cannoneers did such deadly work. There are a few remnants of the old wal's which the French officers said could be beaten down with roasted apples, but from before which the grat Dutchman was driven pell mell. Lastly, there is the large boulder on which was signed the treaty, broken ere the ink was dry. WILLIAM IV. " Two of the queen's uncles; were in Ireland one, William. Duke of Clarence (afterwards Wiliiam IV.); the other, George IV. William IV. was the "sailor "sail-or prince.4' and it was in this caDacHy he came to Ireland, being the first of the House of Guelph ever to set his foot on Irish shore. When a "middy" his vessel touched at Cove, now Queenstown, and he stayed several weeks in Cork, lodging at the house of a Quaker gentleman named Penrose, who lived -in a district called "The Marifh," then a good part of the town. These were the days of hard drinking, and, of couse, Cork loyally feasted Prince William. The prince used to come home very late and very gay, and old Mr. Penrose alwoys sat up to let him in,, thus remonstrating: "Friend William, thou art late again tonight, and not. too sober. If thou dost not amend I will write to thy father Friend George of Windsor." It is now a 110 years since this visit to Cork, and it is touching to recall the connection between the old king in his closing days and our present sovereign. King William's two children died in infancy, and the Princess ictoria decame heir to i the throne. Contrary to all tradition, the old king, positively abored the young prineefvs, his destined successor. The queen's mother, the Duchess of Kent, aiso passionately loved her daughter, and the little jealousies of the oid king and the Duchess of Kent were at once touching and amusing. George IV. All the world knows that George IV. resided in Ireland in August, 1S21, snd I stayed a few weeks in the couutry. j j He was the first English sovereign i I who ever landed in Ireland on a misson I on peace. He landed at Howth and was j received with a wild outburst of en-I en-I thusiasm. lie was in splendid humor, and he was surrounded by his usual I corps of buffoons and panders, and he has just received tiie glorious news of ! his wife's dr-ath. Pie was never quite 1 sober during his entire visit to Ireland, J and he poured out a stream of soft j speeches fuii of promise and drink. His hosts were mad with enthusiasm. The Lord Powerscourt of the day spent . thousands upon a new road through the Dargle, and a scheme of penning back . the river above the waterfall, so as to j develop it for a moment into grand j cascade. The king never went to i?ee j this pnrticulau rare show at all. O'Con- i nell preceded the king when sailing j from Dur.leary Kingstown) with a laurel wreath, and il was said, we be- j neve taiseiy, ran or ten imu me j in his excitement. Byron, that stout ! friend of the Irish, as of all Liberal causes, made the visit the theme of his I furious verses in "The Royal Avatar." In it he fiercely attacked O'Connell for having joined in the welcome to the "fourth of the fools and usurpers called George." and declared that all that remained re-mained of Ireland's greatness was "the glory of Grattan and the genius of Moore." This was most unjust to O'Connell. He simply failed to recog- nize that the king was The Greatest Living Liar. I and firmly believed that on his return i to England he would declare himself in favor of Catholic emancipation. ! When the king got back to England I he became more furiouslv r.nti-Irish j than ever, and when O'Conneil attended at-tended his lovee the king turned to the nobleman in attendance and said: j "What does that d d scoundrel want i here?" One happy incident marked the clcse of the royal visit. The king on his voyage back was caught ip a terrible stoim, and nearly died of sea-sickness, j His voyage from Kingatown to Wales j lasted a week. We manage these things I better now. |