MANDEVILLE. CHAPTER I. I was born in the year 1638. The place of my birth was the borough of Charlemont, in the north of Ireland. My great-uncle passed over to that country in the train of the Earl of Essex, in his famous and unfortunate expedition thither undertaken forty years before. The military reputation of my great-uncle was considerable, and he died full of years and of honour, under the pacific administration of Sir Arthur Chichester. My father, who, as well as my greatuncle, was a younger brother, was bred to the same profession, was sent over to Ireland for the advantage of being under his uncle's eye, and was at this time an officer in the garrison of Charlemont under William Lord Caulfield, a brave officer, now grown old in the service of his sovereign. Ireland was a country that had been for ages in a state of disturbance and violence. No people were ever more proud of their ancestry and their independence than the Irish, or more wedded to their old habits of living; and the policy of the English administration had not been such as to wean them in any degree from the partialities to which they were prone. The latter years of Elizabeth however had conduced much to the enfeebling of their military strength; and the pacific system of James seemed, for a long time, to be no where attended with so much success as in this island. His system in Ireland, was that of colonization, of placing large bodies of civilized strangers in every great station through the country, and undertaking, by a variety of means, to reclaim the wild Irish from what might almost be called their savage state. The government of his lieutenants and deputies was not exactly that of benignity;—it was characterized by many forfeitures, and by a vexatious inquiry, in every direction successively, into the titles by which the Irish chieftains held their estates; but it was so equally tempered with severity and firmness, as to produce the spectacle, scarcely before known, of a profound peace in the island for almost forty years. It was towards the close of this period that Thomas Lord Strafford was appointed, by Charles I, to the office of Lord-Lieutenant. In his government there was a greater proportion of sternness than in that of his predecessors; his character was in the highest degree arrogant and imperious, but there was a steadiness in his measures, and his proceedings were stamped with the features of intellect and ability,-so as to |