Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 16, 2025
They received a gracious answer to this address, which was a further encouragement to the king to put his own private designs in execution; towards the same end the letter contributed not a little, by inflaming the fears and resentment of the nation against France, which in vain disclaimed the earl of Melfort as a fantastical schemer, to whom no regard was paid at the court of Versailles.
They regarded him with profound distrust; they considered him as at heart an Englishman; and not a day passed without some indication of this feeling. They were in no haste to grant him a supply. One party among them planned an address urging him to dismiss Melfort as an enemy of their nation.
He still maintained an active correspondence with the neutral chiefs, and kept Melfort well informed of all he had done and proposed to do for his master's service. I shall conclude this chapter with an extract from the last despatch he sent to Ireland.
But Melfort was not even an Englishman; he had never held office in England; he had never sate in the English Parliament; and he had therefore no pretensions to a dignity peculiarly English. He was moreover hated by all the contending factions of all the three kingdoms.
Near adjoining to it is a village called Long Melfort, and a very long one it is, from which I suppose it had that addition to its name; it is full of very good houses, and, as they told me, is richer, and has more wealthy masters of the manufacture in it, than in Sudbury itself.
Another, at whose head was Tyrconnell, endeavoured to dissuade his Majesty from this course, but he at length decided in favour of the plan of Melfort and his friends. Accordingly, he marched out of Dublin, amid torrents of April rain, on the eighth of that month, intending to form a junction with Hamilton, at Strabane, and thence to advance to Derry.
Meanwhile James had gone down to his army, which was encamped round the basin of La Hogue, on the northern coast of the peninsula known by the name of the Cotentin. Two noblemen were honoured with the same distinction, Powis, who, among his brother exiles, was now called a Duke, and Melfort, who had returned from Rome, and was again James's Prime Minister.
The first, headed by the earl of Middleton, insisted upon receiving security from king James that the religion and liberties of England should be preserved; whereas the other party, at the head of which was the earl of Melfort, resolved to bring him in without conditions, relying upon his own honour and generosity.
A fortnight was devoted by James in Dublin to daily and nightly councils and receptions. The chief advisers who formed his court were the Count d'Avaux, Ambassador of France, the Earl of Melfort, principal Secretary of State, the Duke of Tyrconnell, Lieutenant-General Lord Mountcashel, Chief Justice Nugent, and the superior officers of the army, French and Irish.
Tyrconnell, Berwick, Sir Richard Nagle, who had succeeded the Earl of Melfort as chief secretary for King James, all ranked before him at the board, and when Saint Ruth arrived to take command-in-chief, he might fairly have complained that he was deprived of the chief reward to which he had looked forward.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking