Sir Philip Perceval. BORN A. D. 1605-DIED A. D. 1647. THE subject of our present memoir was the son of Richard Perceval, Esq., lord of Tykenham, who possessed a large property in England, and having been officially employed in Ireland, subsequently purchased those extensive estates in Munster which have been since enjoyed by his posterity. Being the friend and favourite of lord Burleigh, and having been signally useful to the queen in deciphering Spanish documents, which gave the first certain intelligence respecting the intended invasion of the Armada, his son Sir Philip entered life with advantages of no common kind, and possessed of talents and acquirements of a very high order. We accordingly find him holding official situations of trust and emolument before he was twenty. He was given immense grants of forfeited lands in the counties of Cork, Tipperary and Wexford; and having been made escheator of the province of Munster, and a commissioner of survey in 1637, he was allowed "to impark 1600 acres free warren and chace, along with many other privileges; and this manor is now the estate of the lord Egmont, and one of the noblest royalties in the three kingdoms." Having such large possessions in Ireland which were each year augmented, he gradually transferred a great portion of his English property thither, and became at length the proprietor of about 100,000 (English) acres in the finest parts of the country, besides holding numerous lucrative situations, many of which were for life. His residence in that country gave him frequent opportunities of perceiving many slight but sure indications of the fermentation that was gradually spreading through the kingdom, and early in the summer of 1641, he felt so assured of the approaching outbreak, that he instantly set about repairing his castles and places of defence, arming his followers, purchasing horses, and laying in ammunition, which proved of the utmost importance, not only to himself, but to that entire portion of the kingdom which was preserved chiefly through his instrumentality. His castle of Liscarrol was a place of so much strength, and so well defended, that it sustained a siege of eleven days against seven thousand foot, and five hundred horse, besides artillery; and his castle of Annagh, in the same neighbourhood, when subsequently attacked by lord Muskerry and general Barry, with an army of five thousand men, resisted successfully, and with much detriment to the rebels, until betrayed into their hands by the treachery of some of the garrison. The rebels carried with them to the attack of Liscarrol, one battering piece which weighed 6892 pounds, and which they placed in a hollow piece of timber, and dragged with the aid of twenty-five yoke of oxen over bogs which were impassable to any wheeled conveyance. On Tuesday, August 20th, they sat down before the castle, which was strongly defended both by art and nature. "On the south and west side of it lay plain and fruitful grounds, environed with a pleasant hill looking * Lodge. into the county of Cork, but on the north and east it was bounded with woods, bogs, and barren ground. Serjeant Thomas Ryeman commanded in it with thirty men, and a competent quantity of victuals and ammunition. The enemy planted their cannon on a little round rocky hill, within musket-shot of the castle, and Ryeman surrendered it on Friday, September 2d, in the afternoon, though he was promised relief the next morning."* That very night lords Inchiquin, Barrimore, Dungarvon, Kinalmeaky and Broghill arrived at Mallock, and on the day following was the battle of Liscarrol, which was fatal to lord Kinalmeaky, and nearly so to lord Inchiquin. They however dislodged and dispersed the rebels with great loss, seven hundred of whom were slain, while lord Inchiquin lost only twelve men. No quarter was given, unless to two or three officers, one of whom was colonel Richard Butler, a son of lord Ikerrin, who was the last to leave the field. The state of the country at this time made it necessary to establish many garrisons in the disturbed districts, and to send them provisions from a distance, as none would be supplied to them in their immediate neighbourhoods. Much want and suffering had accrued from the delays consequent on selecting convoys out of different companies, and to prevent the recurrence of this, lord Ormonde, then lieutenant-general, formed a company of firelocks for the especial purpose of conveying those provisions, and gave the command of it to Sir Philip Perceval, who expended large sums in providing it with men and arms at his own cost as they became necessary. This appointment gave umbrage, as we have already mentioned in the preceding memoir, to the earl of Leicester, who considered it an infringement on his authority, but even the lords-justices on this occasion interposed, and the commission was confirmed to Sir Philip Perceval. Early in the rebellion he had been appointed commissary-general, and had performed the duties of that important office with unexampled zeal, energy, and efficiency. He had been sent to Ireland without money, but with letters from the lord-lieutenant, and the speaker of the House of Commons, to the lords-justices, assuring them that within twenty days the earl of Leicester would follow with £100,000 for the supply of the army, and that in the mean time Mr Frost, the commissioner in London, would forward to them any provisions required. None of these specious promises were performed, and after apportioning and dispensing whatever provisions could be obtained from the ill-supplied stores of Dublin, Sir Philip had no alternative but either to see the army driven to starvation and mutiny, or to supply their pressing necessities out of his own purse. He accordingly distributed £1380, which, with the enormous multiplied losses that were entailed on him by the rebellion, left his wife and children, who resided in London, with scarcely the common comforts to which they had been habituated. He accordingly petitioned parliament to refund to them a small portion of the money he had so liberally advanced, and an order was issued for paying them £200, which however never was given though often solicited. A passage, which we extract from Carte, will give some idea of those losses: * Carte. "Sir Philip Perceval had lost by the rebellion a landed estate of £2000 a-year, personal estate of £20,000, and the benefit of several offices worth £2000 a-year, which he held for life. He had as clerk of the crown of the king's bench, been at a very great charge to make up records of indictments of high treason against three thousand of the rebels, and those for the most part noblemen, gentlemen, and freeholders, and been obliged to prosecute two thousand of them to an outlawry. He had, without any charge to the state, raised and armed a competent number of soldiers, horse and foot, and maintained them for a year to defend his castles of Liscarrol and Annagh in the remotest and most exposed quarters of the protestant party in Munster. He had done the like with regard to those of Temple, Conila, and Walchestown, till the treaty of cessation, and had maintained his house of Castlewarning, about nine miles from Dublin, for some years after. He had relieved three hundred distressed English for twelve months together in Dublin, and having been made commissary-general of the victuals of the army, he had spent £2000 of his own estate in that service, besides goods of his own, and what money and goods he could procure of others; had contracted an arrear of £4000 and upwards, for entertainments due to him for his several employments in the war; and had engaged himself in more than £10,000 for provisions to feed the army, having never refused to engage himself or his estate for them upon any occasion." When in 1645 he attended the English House of Commons to solicit the repayment of a portion of this heavy expenditure, they had the baseness to resist his just claims on the plea of his having been a party to the cessation, which they designated as "a dangerous plot," and notwithstanding his able and unanswerable "vindication," from which we extracted a paragraph in our memoir of the duke of Ormonde, they persevered in rejecting his suit, nor did he at any subsequent period receive the slightest compensation for such sacrifices. His noble and disinterested ardour for the preservation of the kingdom was not however to be quenched, even by personal wrong, and we find him in subsequent years meeting every emergency with the same liberal and self-sacrificing spirit, and when in 1645 the officers of the Irish army, who continued to be exposed to injustice and sufferings by the unprincipled conduct of the government, had to lay their grievances before parliament, they gave their most unqualified testimony to the meritorious efforts and sacrifices of Sir Philip, and added, "that he was the only instrument under heaven of their preservation." As the rebellion advanced, and the public funds diminished, he was still impelled on each new emergency, to draw upon his own personal resources, and before the protracted struggle terminated, he had expended £18,000, for which neither he nor his family ever received any indemnification. The numerous garrisons he still continued to support in the south, were powerfully instrumental in obstructing the advances of the overwhelming forces led by lord Mountgarret, from the counties of Kilkenny and Tipperary, who, after proceeding as far as the Ballihowra mountains, and meeting with successive checks and oppositions, at length retired, and subsequently dispersed. In 1644, when the king consented to meet the deputies from the Irish confederates at Oxford, he appointed Sir Philip as one of the commissioners; and when the marquess of Ormonde wrote to lord Digby secretary of state upon the subject, he refers him to Sir Philip as the person capable of giving him the fullest information, and he adds, "and now that I have mentioned Sir Philip Perceval, I may not pass him by, without a very particular recommendation, as of a man exceedingly knowing in all the affairs of this kingdom; that hath been before, in the war, in the treaty, and since the cessation, extremely industrious to advance the king's service," &c., &c. This testimony gains some additional importance from the moment at which it was given. Sir Philip took a most prominent and decided part in the fruitless transactions at Oxford, strenuously resisting the absurd and exorbitant demands of the Roman Catholics, while with less than his usual judgment, he pressed the equally exorbitant claims of the opposite party. At the conclusion of that treaty, where nothing was concluded, he found he had become so obnoxious to the Irish, that it would be unsafe to return amongst them, and receiving the most earnest and pressing applications at the same time from the parliament through his friend Holles, he was at length prevailed upon to join their ranks, and represent the borough of Newport in Cornwall, which had been long kept vacant for him, probably through the interest of Pym, who was his near relation. In the year following, when the parliament sent over Sir Robert King, Mr Annesley and others, with large supplies of money and provisions to their long neglected army in Ulster, both Sir Robert and Sir Philip Perceval had the courage or the folly successively to try what their personal influence, and specious representations could effect, in attempting to warp the exalted and invulnerable loyalty of the marquess of Ormonde, but they quickly relinquished the thankless and hopeless undertaking. The province of Ulster, which had still great cause for dissatisfaction in the nominal protection, but real neglect of the parliament, selected Sir Philip for the management of its affairs at the other side of the channel, and he executed his trust with such zeal and fidelity, that he quickly excited the jealousy of the independent party. This was soon after, much heightened by his firm and conscientious opposition to those deep and dark designs which circumstances were daily developing. They in vain assailed his character with accusations and slanders which were triumphantly repelled, and at length relinquished, as each new investigation only brought to light fresh instances of selfdevotion, zeal, and integrity, in the various offices which he had held, during a period of unequalled trial and difficulty. On the termination of the cessation in 1647, the army in Munster, under the command of lord Inchiquin, committed to Sir Philip the direction and management of their interests, "a commission (as things then stood,) of great difficulty and hazard; but he cheerfully undertook it upon this sole principle, which he ever professed, that he would willingly contribute his life and fortune for the public or his friend; both which he verified by his constant practice." ""* The army of lord Inchiquin was at this period exposed to great privations, and Sir * Lodge. Philip was secretly endeavouring to incite the earl to the step he so soon after took, of casting off the trammels of his hard task-masters, and again enlisting himself on the side of monarchy. His efforts and intentions were probably suspected, for the bitter and rancorous attacks of the independents were again renewed, and they even passed a vote "that no man, who consented to the cessation, should sit in parliament," for the sole purpose of excluding him from that assembly. To these charges he made an animated and successful defence, and resumed his seat, with added honour from the signal defeat of enemies, though supported by power and unrestrained by principle. This daring and determined faction daily gaining ground, at length impeached several of the leading members of the house, who had opposed their measures, and compelled them reluctantly to withdraw from the contest; while a small but resolute band headed by Sir Philip Perceval, still continued to contest the ground with them inch by inch, notwithstanding the rapid approach of the army, nor did he desist from his arduous labours, until by their "dishonest victory" they had actually become masters of the city. He then retired into the country until the following September, when he learned that his enemies were again actively engaged in seeking for fresh causes of accusation, and intended impeaching him for his conduct as commissarygeneral. He instantly returned to London and demanded his trial, but from the groundless absurdity of the charges, it was still postponed. A strong remonstrance against the general measures and proceedings of the independents, was at this moment forwarded to him by the army commanded by lord Inchiquin, which he fearlessly presented, and though alone and unsupported amongst his enemies, he was upheld by his own integrity, and their constrained respect. His constitution however was undermined by the long continuance of his mental and bodily labours, and he at length sunk under an illness of only a few days duration. He died November 10th, 1647, regretted and respected by all parties, and was buried in the church of St Martin-in-the-fields, Westminster; primate Usher preaching his funeral sermon. The parliament, to mark their respect for his memory, took upon itself the expenses of his funeral, and voted £200 to lady Perceval for the purpose. Sir Philip had married in 1626, Catharine, grand-daughter of Sir William Usher, clerk of the council, by whom he had nine children; five sons and four daughters. Dr Robert Maxwell, bishop of Kilmore, wrote the following epitaph, which was engraved on his monument:— Epitaphium clarissimi viri Philippi Perceavelli, Qui nisi (sed quis non multis) peccasset in uno |