the county of
Carlow, had served long in France, and had brought back to his native
Ireland a sharpened intellect and polished manners, a flattering tongue,
some skill in war, and much more skill in intrigue. His elder brother,
Colonel Simon Luttrell, who was member for the county of Dublin, and
military governor of the capital, had also resided in France,
and, though inferior to Henry in parts and activity, made a highly
distinguished figure among the adherents of James. The other member for
the county of Dublin was Colonel Patrick Sarsfield. This gallant officer
was regarded by the natives as one of themselves: for his ancestors on
the paternal side, though originally English, were among those early
colonists who were proverbially said to have become more Irish than
Irishmen. His mother was of noble Celtic blood; and he was firmly
attached to the old religion. He had inherited an estate of about two
thousand a year, and was therefore one of the wealthiest Roman Catholics
in the kingdom. His knowledge of courts and camps was such as few of his
countrymen possessed. He had long borne a commission in the English Life
Guards, had lived much about Whitehall, and had fought bravely under
Monmouth on the Continent, and against Monmouth at Sedgemoor. He had,
Avaux wrote, more personal influence than any man in Ireland, and was
indeed a gentleman of eminent merit, brave, upright, honourable, careful
of his men in quarters, and certain to be always found at their head in
the day of battle. His intrepidity, his frankness, his boundless good
nature, his stature, which far exceeded that of ordinary men, and the
strength which he exerted in personal conflict, gained for him the
affectionate admiration of the populace. It is remarkable that the
Englishry generally respected him as a valiant, skilful, and generous
enemy, and that, even in the most ribald farces which were performed by
mountebanks in Smithfield, he was always excepted from the disgraceful
imputations which it was then the fashion to throw on the Irish nation,
[215]

But men like these were rare in the House of Commons which had met at
Dublin. It is no reproach to the Irish nation, a nation which has since
furnished its full proportion of eloquent and accomplished senators, to
say that, of all the parliaments which have met in the British islands,
Barebone's parliament not excepted, the assembly convoked by James
was the most deficient in all the qualities which a legi