Life
[?-?]; b. Leighlin Bridge, Co. Carlow; parents moved to Liverpool, 1845,
in parish of Mgr. Nugent; acolyte in St Nicholas pro-Cathedral; emig.
America, 1852; raised regiment during Civil War at own expense; social
reformer; founded St. Patrick’s Day society in Chicago; appt. Chamberlain
of the Sword and Cape by Pope, Dec. 1893; ‘preier Catholic layman’;
various govt. offices in Chicago; public speaker; lectures published;
hon. degress from Notre Dame University, and St John’s Coll. NY,
and St. Xavier’s, Cincinnati; a Laetare medallist with John Gilmary
Shea, Augustine Daly, General Newton, and Mr Charles Bonaparte. JMC
[ top ]
References
Justin McCarthy, gen. ed., Irish Literature (Washington: University
of America 1904), gives extract on Patrick Sarsfield from Eminent Irishmen
in Foreign Service, which includes George II's remark: ‘Cursed be the laws that
deprive me of such subjects!’; quotes extensively from Macaulay on
Irish Roman Catholsic of great ability, emergy, ambition; dexterous Irish
diplomats, Irish counts; Irish Kinghts of St Louis, &c., ‘who if
they had remained in the house of bondage could not have been ensigns
of marching regiments or freemen of petty corporations’; account
of Boyne (Irish losses 800-1,500 v. 300-500); ‘your majesty has won
the race’; Lenehan in his History of Limerick says, ‘the soul
of the defenders was Patrick Sarsfield’; defection of Luttrell; Sarsfield
arrived Brest, 3 1691; 450,000 Irish soldiers died on continental fields
(or perhaps 600,000); Sarsfield’s death at battle of Landen (sometimes
Neer-Winden), ‘Would to God this were shed for Ireland’; carried
to neighbouring village; ‘Ireland’s favorite hero’.
[ top ]