mon. John O'Kelly the young, in contradistinction to his elder brother, Charles. When the Revolution took place in England and Scotland the following year, the cause of King James was supported by Colonel Charles O'Kelly and his family, in the same manner, that he and his father had formerly adhered to the cause of His Majesty's father and brother, Kings Charles I. and Charles II. In the Parliament summoned in Dublin in 1689, by King James, after his flight from England to France, and landing in Ireland, Colonel Charles O'Kelly sat as Member for the County, and his brother, John, as Member for the Borough, of RoscomThe Colonel was commissioned, in the summer of the same year, to levy a regiment of infantry for the King's service, to be commanded by himself, with his brother John, as his Lieutenant-Colonel; and the Colonel's only son, Denis, joined the cavalry of the Irish army, in the regiment of Pierce Butler, Lord Galmoys. The infantry regiment of Colonel O'Kelly, however, was not long kept up; though we find him serving the King with the rank of Colonel, and his brother, John, with that of Lieutenant-Colonel. Lord Mountcashel's force, sent against the Enniskilliners, being routed at Newton-Butler, July 31st; the blockade of Derry being likewise raised by the royal army; and Sligo, in consequence of a false rumour, and the panic connected with these reverses, being not long after abandoned; the Enniskilliners seized that place by a detachment under Lieutenant-Colonel Gore, and made it their frontier post, for hostilities against the King's adherents in Connaught. Colonel O'Kelly, from his age, (he was then sixty-eight), and his former services in Ireland and on the Continent, was reckoned the best officer for undertaking the defence of that province, and directed by Brigadier Patrick Sarsfield to oppose the enemy there, with such a force of the country militia as could be collected; the King then requiring the national army, under himself, to be as strong as possible, in order to stop the march of Marshal Schonberg, from the North, towards Dublin. The Colonel accordingly advanced towards Boyle; which, for some time, rendered the enemy rather apprehensive of being attacked in Sligo, than desirous of acting offensively towards the South. On September 19th, however, the famous Enniskillen Colonel, Thomas Lloyd, marched from Sligo, over the Curlew mountains, with a select party of cavalry and infantry, and, next morning, about sunrise, falling, in a fog, having been only one of foot, and Lord Galmoy's one of horse. Erroneously called, elsewhere, the regiment of Lord Galway; that young nobleman's regiment fog, upon Colonel O'Kelly's force in front of Boyle, overthrew them with considerable loss. Colonel O'Kelly, on the rout of his foot, escaped with his horse, which were pursued about seven miles; and the enemy, amongst their booty, obtained the Colonel's portmanteau, with a letter from Brigadier Sarsfield, which was forwarded by Colonel Lloyd to Marshal Schonberg, at Dundalk. Nevertheless, the campaign in Connaught was terminated, on the Jacobite side, by Brigadier Sarsfield's recovering Sligo, and completely clearing that province of the enemy; "thō commanded," observes King James, "by Coll. Russell the German, and Coll: LLoyd, whom they called their little Cromwel." From this period of the Irish war, we find no mention made of Colonel O'Kelly, or any of his family, until the battle of Aughrim, in July, 1691; at which engagement, his son, Denis, then a Captain in Lord Galmoy's regiment of cavalry, had a horse shot under him. Galway soon after surrendering to the Williamite forces under Baron de Ginkell, and Brigadier Sir Henry Belasyse being appointed Governor of that town, the Brigadier's attention was directed to the reduction of the Isle of Bofin, off the western coast, then held with a garrison for King James by Colonel Timothy Royrdan (or O'Royrdan') as its Governor. The Capitulation took place August 20th, and of the Articles, signed the 19th, the third specifies, "That the Governour, Officers, and Souldiers of the said Garison, the Lord Athenree, Lieutenant Colonel John Kelly, and all the Inhabitants of the said Island, shall possess and enjoy their Estates, Real and Personal, as they held, or ought to have held, under the Acts of Settlement and Explanation, or otherways by the Laws of this Kingdom, freely discharged from all Crown-Rents, Quit-Rents, and all other Charges, to the Date hereof:" &c. And, in the ninth of these Articles, it is stated, with reference to a due ratification of them, that there were "given Lieutenant Colonel John Kelly and Captain Richard Martin, as Security." Meanwhile Brigadier O'Donnell, who commanded the principal Jacobite force in north-western Connaught, had been carrying on a private negociation with the Williamite government; which, however, from various circumstances, became known to those, from whom he was preparing to desert. Colonel Charles O'Kelly, who was appointed to guard a strong Castle b Otherwise O'Reardan. By the second, fifth, and sixth Articles of the Capitulation, the Irish Governor and garrison of Bofin were to have liberty to near proceed, with the honours of war, arms, and bag- near Lough-glin, on the way to Sligo, met O'Donnell just before he concluded the contemplated treaty, and earnestly endeavoured to dissuade him from it. But O'Donnell, having obtained his terms, and made his arrangements, with about 1200 of his troops, first joined 800 of the Williamite militia from Ulster, and then Lieutenant-General Arthur Forbes, Earl of Granard, with 5000 more Williamite militia, and a train of artillery from Leinster, that were commissioned to reduce old Sir Teague O'Regan in Sligo. On the march of such a large force of the enemy towards that place, Colonel O'Kelly had consequently to surrender his post, about September 9th; and proceeded to Limerick, which Baron de Ginkell was then besieging. The Colonel arrived there in time to give council, which, if acted upon, would, to all appearances, have saved the town. The enemy's attack on the place, only from one side of the Shannon, had availed them nothing; and, to prevent any passage by them to the opposite or Clare side, Brigadier Clifford was duly stationed there, with a strong out-guard; while the Irish horse-camp, under Major-General Sheldon, was sufficiently near to reinforce that out-guard, in case of an alarm. Colonel O'Kelly, however, having no confidence in Clifford, on the morning of September 15th, warned Lord Lucan, either to assume himself the command where Clifford was, or else to intrust that post to MajorGeneral Wauchop. This well-timed warning was, from some fatality in the matter, neglected; and, accordingly, through the misconduct of Clifford apprehended by the Colonel, the enemy were not interrupted during the night in making such dispositions for crossing, that they were over the river next morning! Notwithstanding the further unfortunate results of the advantage thus gained by the enemy, the Colonel was still for holding out; his motto being: "CONSTANCY, NO CAPITULATION, AND CONFIDENCE IN GOD!" But, to use the words of Count O'Kelly Farrell: "The Almighty's fiat had been issued; the House of Stuart had been doomed to cease, like so many others; immoralities were to have their chastisements, as was afterwards the case with the Bourbons; and Ireland was destined to undergo a new political phase, of which Providence alone has the secret." When negociations were commenced, it was proposed by Lord Lucan, and the Roman Catholic Archbishop of Tuam, that Colonel O'Kelly, then in the horse-camp, and in whom his party reposed so much confidence, should be sent for, and consulted about managing the treaty. But, it being objected, by by those of opposite sentiments to the Colonel, that, if he came, there would be no agreement, the proposal was not acted upon. After the conclusion of the Treaty of Limerick, the veteran retired to his family residence at Aughrane, or Castle-Kelly, where, entirely separated from public affairs, he devoted the remaining years of his life to literature and religion. His first work appears to have been the Macaria Excidium, since, we are informed, it was written as a sketch of the War of the Revolution in Ireland, and soon after its termination, lest, at his advanced period of life (he being in his seventieth year when that contest ended), death might prevent him leaving the fuller narrative on the subject, which he intended. The Macariæ Excidium is not, according to a supposition respecting it, the work of a Privy Councillor of King James II.; in no list of whose Irish Privy Council is the Colonel's name to be found. Hence, it necessarily contains several statements and opinions with reference to that Monarch, and his Viceroy, the Duke of Tyrconnell, as well as other members of the King's government, which require to be checked and corrected by such official documents and personal memorials as we have of that government, and of those who formed a portion of it. It might also be wished, with respect to the Macaria Excidium, that, as a work on a military period, its contents had been more of a military, and less of a political, nature. But, considered on the whole, or as intended to be a brief, yet general, outline of the War of the Revolution from one belonging to the race, religion, and cause with which its author was connected, the Macaria Excidium may be safely pronounced, a contribution to the history of that period, for which we have reason to be grateful to Colonel O'Kelly. The Colonel's second historical work, long preserved in the French branch. of the race of O'Kelly, or that of O'Kelly Farrell, was known among the family as "The O'Kelly Memoirs." The volume containing them was in existence down to the French Revolution under Louis XVI.; when it was in the It may be observed here, in reference to a notion which has existed, as to the Colonel having written his work originally in Irish, that Mr. O'Donovan, whose opinion, on a question of the kind, may be regarded as decisive, thinks, from the whole internal evidence of the work, such could not have been the case. The idea, too, of its having been "written origi possession nally in Syriac," or (according to the meaning of the word, as explained in the key) the French language, would only appear to have been adopted, as a portion of the general mystery connected with the production. The reasons for this mystery, those acquainted with the history of Ireland, for a long period after the Treaty of Limerick, will sufficiently understand. possession of Count John James O'Kelly Farrell, then Minister Plenipotentiary from that Monarch to the Elector of Mayence; but was unfortunately lost in the disturbances of that disastrous period. These Memoirs are stated to have embraced a narrative of the two wars in Ireland, in which the author served, or the Parliamentarian and Cromwellian war which commenced in 1641, as well as the subsequent War of the Revolution; and, so far as can be judged from the copies, yet preserved, of the key to the real names of the characters introduced in the work, or "Clef pour l'intelligence des Mémoires du Colonel Charles O'Kelly de Skryne, sur les guerres d'Irlande, de 1641 et suivans, et de 1689 et suivans," the Memoirs gave a fuller description of the latter contest, than the account in the Macariæ Excidium. This would appear by the key containing appellations for several characters connected with the events leading to that contest, and for others who took part in it; which characters are not named at all in the Macaric Excidium. Thus, we have "Bellosis" for Lord Belasys; "Clarindus" for Lord Clarendon; "Damathus" for Lord Sunderland; "Dorus" for Lord Dover; crus" for Lord Rochester; "Lucretus" for Colonel Henry Luttrell; "Maurius" for the Duke of Monmouth; "Meleander" for the Roman Catholic Primate of Ireland, Dr. Dominick Macguire; "Micanor," or "Nicanor" for Colonel Nicholas Purcell, Baron of Loughmoe; "Petrarcha" for Father Petre, the Jesuit; "Symonidossa" for the Honourable Colonel Simon Luttrell, of Luttrell's-town". From this circumstance, and those previously mentioned, it would seem Colonel O'Kelly at first only wrote the Macaria Excidium, in order that some account, though it were but an epitome, of the war, on the Jacobite side, might remain from his pen, ere he died; but that, when he lived longer than he had expected, he treated the subject more fully, in the Memoirs which have unfortunately been lost. And this last account, as the larger one, very probably contained details, in military matters, which would tend to lessen what has been complained of as the comparative deficiency of such, in the Macaria Excidium. Colonel Charles O'Kelly died at Aughrane, now Castle Kelly, in 1695, aged about seventy-four; leaving such a character for learning, patriotism, bravery, loyalty, and piety, as reflects honour on his memory. The Colonel had by his wife, Margaret O'Kelly (daughter of Teige O'Kelly, d Could Colonel O'Kelly have derived the idea of writing his history, under fictitious names, IRISH ARCH. SOC. d Esq., from Dryden's famous "Absolom and Achitophel "? |