by giving high office to his son; but all this was no real compensation for the continued public odium.
What Lord Galway’s doom would have been, if Louis could have put all his revenge into execution, may be surmised from Luttrell’s Memorandum, 16th Feb. 1697 — “Wrote from Ghent that the cartel between England and France is broken by reason that some of the Lord Galway’s domestics, taken by the Dunkirk privateers, have been sent to the galleys.”
The Duke of Shrewsbury had written to Lord Galway in Piedmont, expressing most loyal sentiments as to the detected conspiracy of Sir John Fenwick and others. Sir John, however, mischievously insinuated that the duke was in secret correspondence with King James. King William eagerly assured the duke that the insinuation had not made any impression on him; but Shrewsbury insisted on retiring from office. The king, unable to shake this resolution, looked to Lord Galway to help him. This we learn from a letter from the Earl of Portland to the Duke of Shrewsbury, dated Kensington, Oct. (20) 30, 1696, “I will say nothing of the loss you will occasion to the king’s service in retiring; Lord Galway will, as it appears, speak to you of it himself.”
It is remarkable how at every stage in Lord Galway’s course we hear his praises sounded. Misson’s panegyric is of this date. Speaking of the French refugees, it says:— “The Earl of Galway, a brave and noble gentleman, if ever there was one in the world, is their head, their friend, their refuge, their advocate, their support, their protector. When he arrived from Turin some days ago, his house was so crowded every morning, that for a quarter of an hour after his rising it was scarce possible to get so much as to the bottom of the staircase.”
Another memorial of Lord Galway is a ledger, still preserved[1] at Vevay, in Switzerland, which shews that he maintained in that town above eighty-four members of refugee Huguenot families. Their names, the houses in which they were boarded, and the sums spent on them for the months of August, September, and October 1696 were carefully entered in this book by the almoner, and were afterwards revised by his lordship himself. The money paid during the three months amounted to £33 sterling; and the recipients were 37 orphan children, 25 other children, 10 widows, 8 women, and 2 men, the funeral charges for one orphan being included in that expenditure.
Sec. 6. — His Appointment as one of the Lords-Justices of Ireland,
and His Elevation to the Earldom of Galway.
The government of Ireland, for about thirty years after 1688, was sometimes confided to a viceroy, called the Lord-Deputy or Lord-Lieutenant, and sometimes to Lords- Justices. During the term of a viceroy’s office there were Lords-Justices also, but these were only deputies during his temporary absence from Ireland, like the Lords-Justices of England, appointed by William during his visits to Holland, or by the first two Georges for their short terms of absence in Hanover. The office of Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland was often dormant (the leading statesmen regarding it as a banishment), and a Vice-Regal Board held sway, the Lords-Justices composing it being not a viceroy’s deputies, but the king’s. It was as one of a vice-regal board that Lord Galway was gazetted on February 6th, 1697, when it was announced that “Lord Viscount Galway and John Methuen, Esq., Lord Chancellor of Ireland, were constituted Lords-Justices of that kingdom.”
To Lord Galway Ireland was not a scene of banishment; in fact, it had since 1692 been his head-quarters, and the home towards which his eye had often wandered. Detained at first by the exigencies of the campaign of 1693, he, by the casualties of war, had been suddenly required to go to Savoy, and to undertake the temporary work of an envoy-extraordinary. As there is no official record of his appointment to command the forces in Ireland in 1697, we conclude that the first commission had been kept in force, and that a deputy had been discharging his duties. The only difference in his military position was, that formerly he had the local rank of Lieutenant-General, but now, being a Lieutenant-General in the army, he had the local rank of General.
He was also a landed proprietor in Ireland. The forfeited lands were regarded by the king as suitable rewards to the supporters of his royal authority. Some public men, who maliciously studied to thwart him in everything, kept alive the sentiment that these lands should be sold, and that the national debt should be paid with their price. The king therefore led parliament to expect that the legislature
- ↑ Bulletin, vol. page 459.
