in Langley Dale* is said to have been her residence. Of the beautiful ballad given below, Surtees says:— "I have only just heard, a few hours ago, the first stanza of this, evidently founded on Plumpton Park: can recover no more of the original than the two lines, which I suppose were the burden. I have filled it up as a kind of cent from such ideas and passages as occur to me at this present writing. I would give ten pounds for the original lament." As I down Raby Park did pass, I heard a fair maid weep and wail; The bonny mavis cheers her love, Within sweet Langley Dale again! The wild rose blushes in the brae, To all the joys of Langley Dale! The days of mirth and peace are fled! False Southrons crop each lovely flower, On the trial of the Countess's brother the Duke of Norfolk, in 1571, it was proved that "forsooth he had an old blind prophecy lying by him: In exaltatione Luna Leo succumbet, et Leo cum Leone conjungetur, et catuli eorum regnabunt; which belike is thus to be expounded, At the exaltation of the Moon (which was the Rising of the Earl of Northumberland, that giveth the Moon) the Lion (which is the Queen's Majesty) shall be overthrown; then shall the Lion be joined with a Lion (which is the Duke of Norfolk with the Scottish Queen, for they both bear Lions in their arms) and their whelps shall reign (i.e. their posterity shall have the kingdom)." It was sworn by one Haveling, that the Duke had sent one Havers to the Earl of Westmoreland with the message, that if the two Earls should rise he were undone. The Duke's reply was, "Indeed my brother of Westmoreland sent me his man with recommendations; and I sent him, by his man, a ring which my sister had sent me before; and also Havers, with this message, Commend me to my brother of Westmoreland, and tell him that I am well, mine innocency shall deliver me: but nothing touching any rising at all. If ever I were privy to that rebellion, then condemn me of all the treasons that you lay against me." The confessions of Northumberland, however, bear out Haveling's statement. It was also proved that when the rebels fled "into Scotland, a very bare country," they were driven to hard shifts, and sued the pope, through * A beautiful vale and ancient chase belonging to Raby Castle. Dr. Morton, for help. His Holiness granted relief, and wrote letters to comfort them, directed "Thomæ et Carolo Northumbria et Westmorlandiæ Comitibus, reliquisque nobilibus Catholicis partium Borealium Regni Angliæ. Belike so calling them noble in the fulfilling of D. Story's promise, that by their rebellious enterprize they were now of worshipful become honourable." The duke was consulted by the Bishop of Rosse, as to conveying the money to the exiles, but before it could be delivered, they had fled into Flanders, and the duke being still in the secret, it was distributed monthly there. "They lurked in Flanders a while in great necessity, without apparel, and suddenly, with this money, they were waxed gay." The duke denied this. A PROPHETIC DREAM. THE English genealogical reader will ever study with deep interest the family history of the descendants of that adventurous band, who followed Richard, Earl of Pembroke, to the conquest of Ireland. Chiefly, like their noble leader, young men of birth whose youthful extravagances had given them a wish and motive to improve their fortunes, they shared with him that manly bravery and chivalrous bearing which earned him the name of Strongbow. Even if we acknowledge that their successful invasion was but a very partial conquest of Ireland, and that the dissensions and poverty of their Celtic enemies made that invasion comparatively easy, still there was something in the hostile landing of two or three hundred warriors upon a comparatively unknown coast, to claim dominion over hundreds of thousands of a brave and hot-headed race, which is fully as well entitled to our admiring sympathy as the far less dangerous exploits of their Norman progenitors in England, or the march, planned in a similar spirit, of Pizarro upon Mexico. And when we still see, in spite of forfeitures without end, that Ormonde and Kildare, two of the most ancient Earldoms in these realms, belong to their descendants, among whom also are found such European surnames as De Courcy and De Montmorency; when we remember that one of them, the high born but unfortunate Desmonde, was the last subject who dared to wage a private and personal war with the crown and state of Britain; and another, the illustrious Wellington, the subject to whom, of living men, the crown and state are most indebted for safety and glory, we will readily feel that there is necessarily much to interest us in the private history of the Anglo Norman families of the Pale. Maurice, the gallant Lord of Prendergast, was in the possession of what in those degenerate days, would have ensured his being a very peaceful and decorous member of society, from whose luxurious mind the thought of exchanging the comforts and security of his castle, proudly frowning at ancient Pembroke, and surrounded by the cheerful village which bore the name of its feudal lord, for the dangers and hardships of a campaign among the unknown barbarians of the opposite coast, would have been of all follies the one farthest off. But Maurice lived, if not in the year one, about which we have heard so much since we have entered a new half century, still in the year 1169, which differed quite as much in manners and ideas from the aforesaid half century just now begun. Besides, he was a kinsman of Strongbow's; and was he, his neighbour and relative, to desert the standard of De Clare, now that it was being unfurled against a foreign foe. No! the thought was smothered as soon as it arose; and Sir Maurice, invoking a blessing upon his journey by granting his advowson and tithes of Prendergast to the commandery of Slebech, of the order of St. John of Jerusalem, formed a little army among his retainers, and set sail for Ireland at the head of ten knights and sixty archers, landing there immediately after the force commanded by Pembroke. Amid the many small engagements which followed, the Saltier vairy on a field gules, which distinguished the banner of the Prendergast, was ever found in the thickest of the fight; and when Strongbow returned to Wales, much of the responsibility of command fell to Sir Maurice. But Dermod, that renegade king of Leinster, whose vices had first opened Ireland to the invading Normans, now assumed an offensive and overbearing manner to those to whom he owed his return to his betrayed country. The insulted chiefs burned under treatment which respect for the Earl of Pembroke alone induced them to suffer from his father-in-law, as the king now was, but the hot blood of Prendergast caused such ve. hement altercations between him and Dermod, that the knight at last left the Norman camp at the head of two hundred followers, determined to sail back to the haven of Wales. Dermod using all his exertions to intercept his departure, he threw himself into the camp of Donald Fitzpatrick, Prince of Ossory, intending by his aid to succeed. But he soon found his new ally more dangerous than an open enemy; and only saved himself from the treacherous designs of Fitzpatrick by the courage of his followers, at whose head he finally fought his way back to Pembrokeshire. When Strongbow returned to Ireland, however, he persuaded his gallant kinsman to accompany him; and upon a subsequent occasion, Sir Maurice was sent from the Norman camp to escort thither his insidious foe, the Prince of Ossory. He pledged himself to the Irish Prince that he would bring him back in safety; and when he found Fitzpatrick's liberty endangered by some cabals among the Normans, he drew his sword and swore to make good his promise at the peril, if necessary, of his own life; and succeeded by his chivalric conduct in bringing Donald back unharmed to the Irish quarters. He again left Ireland in 1175, on royal summons, to oppose the rebellion of Robert, Earl of Essex, and after this nobleman's defeat, he and Robert Fitzstephen brought him a prisoner to the king, who was then in Normandy. Philip de Prendergast, the only son of Sir Maurice, was a baron of great wealth and power. He married the only child of Robert De Quincy, Constable and Standard-bearer of Leinster, who was killed shortly after his marriage (with, the chroniclers tell us, a daughter of Strongbow's) in a fight with the O'Dempseys of Offaley. With her, Prendergast, obtained the county of Kinsellagh, the towns of Enniscorthy and Ferns, and the territory of the Duffren, in Wexford, which * Regan. Ware says the invasion took place in 1171. ST. JAMES'S MAG., NO. VII. D estates came to his second son, whilst the eldest inherited Newcastle and the estates in Cork and Tipperary. The Wexford branch of the family, seated at the Gurteens, remained powerful and affluent until the forfeitures at the time of the Commonwealth drove them into exile or obscurity; but the elder line yet subsist. Seated even at this early date, at Newcastle in Tipperary, they played an important role in that turbulent County Palatine, now siding with the Butlers, now with the Geraldines, and sometimes, like their warrior neighbours, the White Knight, or the Lord de la Poer, waging a minor war to protect some injured vassal, or resist the foray of the O'Carrolls or O'Ryans. Eventually, however, they became by frequent alliances. so connected with the interests of the Butlers, that they almost uniformly followed in war or political troubles the guidance of the Earls of Ormonde. Thomas Prendergast, of Newcastle, represented one branch of that noble house, his mother being the youngest of the two co-heirs of Thomas Butler, Lord Cahir. Upon the demise of the second Lord Cahir, the title should have descended with the estates to the heirs general, to whom both were specially limited. But such a descent of either was not usual in Ireland in those days, and the cousin of the second baron seized the castles and estates of the family, and was himself advanced anew to the peerage by Queen Elizabeth in 1583. Two years afterwards it was, however, arranged between him and Prendergast, that the latter should grant him a release and surrender of his rights to title and property, which was accordingly done. But though Thomas Prendergast subsequently married another of the Butlers, Eleanor, sister to the eleventh Earl of Ormonde, and continued during life on friendly terms with the lord of Cahir, some jealousies still survived between the two kinsmen and their respective allies. Thomas died in 1626, and his heir, a young man of most estimable character, was killed in the course of the following year by another noble member of the house of Butler, the Lord Dunboyne; and it was in the olden halls of Cahir that this outrage was committed. On the eleventh of June, 1628, Lord Dunboyne was tried by his peers, the Lord Aungier being Lord High Steward, for the murder of James Prendergast, Esq. The issue of the trial, however, was favourable to him, the Lord Dockwra alone of his judges pronouncing him guilty. The next generation of this family, came in for more of fortune's smiles, for among the very small number of claims for restoration of confiscated estates which the Cromwellian settlers in Ireland allowed to be adjudicated upon by the Parliamentary Commissioners in 1660, we find that of Thomas Prendergast, who obtained a decree of Innocency, as the legal term was, and recovered his ancient patrimony of Newcastle. It is of one of his sons, Sir Thomas Prendergast, Kt. and Bart., that we are about to relate a singular but well authenticated story. Early appointed to a regiment of horse, he had already risen to the command of a troop, when the revolution took all chance of promotion away from the Irish Catholics. Ardent and sanguine in temper, he was persuaded to promise adhesion to Lord Aylesbury's conspiracy for the restoration of King James, which was unfortunately altered by some of the inferior leaders into the Assassination Plot. From such a perversion of the original plans his honorable mind recoiled with horror; and it is well known to readers of English history how, when compelled by religious feeling to place the King upon his guard, he nevertheless withstood with fortitude both promises and threats, even when they came from the mouth of William himself; absolutely refusing to give the names, or assist in convicting any of the conspirators, until that friend at whose solicitations he had become a party to the original plot, gave information against him. For his conduct then, and subsequently, he was warmly praised in both houses; and the King having marked his own sense of it by a grant of one of the forfeited estates, the Parliament when subsequently revoking even the grant to the successful De Ginkell, Earl of Athlone, confirmed that only which was made to Sir Thomas Prendergast. His subsequent life was a busy one. In love, war, and politics, the three main objects of human ambition, he was alike successful. In love's gay realms, he obtained from that gentle god the fair and well dowered hand of Penelope Cadogan, the only sister of the gallant General Cadogan, whose dashing bravery, worthy of his ancient lineage and descent from Britain's .earliest monarchs, subsequently won him the Earldom and high commands which doubly ennobled his later years. In those bloody but glorious fields which owned Mars as presiding deity, and which at that period were to all Europe the only valued school of good breeding, he found himself where early inclination and education led him. He was again placed on active service, and of the many achievements which added glory to the banners of England in Anne's stirring reign, there were but few where his charger was not foremost in the fight, In politics, also, he performed his part. Returned member for Monaghan in 1703, on the interest of Lord Cadogan, he attached himself to the party of that nobleman, the friend of Marlborough, in England-whilst in matters which only concerned Ireland, he voted with his illustrious cousin, the great and unfortunate Duke of Ormonde. The periods when war and politics left him leisure for calmer enjoyments he spent in the company of Love-now in London mixing in the gay bubble wafting stream of fashion-now in Ireland adorning his new properties with woods and gardens, or resting his busied mind amid the time honored towers and groves of Newcastle. Its proud battlements, the safeguard of his family for five centuries, looked over the broad expanse of the lovely Suir, which after leaving Cahir Castle, the seat of the tragical event in his family, we have already described, here washed the walls of his ancestral residence, on its picturesque way to Clonmell and Waterford-towns which had once looked to the Prendergasts and their kinsmen the De la Poer's, for feudal protection and friendly aid, but where commerce was already beginning to create a class hostile to the rough and proud aristocrats who formerly ruled them. But the Irish towns still contained many a sturdy retainer whose fathers had bled for the old Catholic chieftains in the disastrous wars which may be said to have gone on without ceasing from the time of Elizabeth to that of Anne, and who looked with clanish love and respect upon each son of the house they fought for of old. James Cranwell was one of these. Born in Clonmell, his father's residence was close to old St. Francis' Abbey; and though the humble brethren who once inhabited the venerable monastery had been banished from its now mouldering walls, yet Catholic devotion still brought many to pray with sighing among its ruins. Here young Cranwell read with interest the time-worn epitaphs on the grey stones which marked the graves of the by D |