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II. 



THE IRISH GUARDS, 1661-1798. 

 By C. LITTON PALKINER, M.A. 



[I^ead November 30, 1901.] 



The recent addition to the strength of the British Army of a Regiment 

 of Irish Guards has been hailed with acclamation as an appropriate 

 compliment to the soldierly qualities of Irishmen, and as a graceful 

 recognition of the valour displayed by Irish troops on the battle-fields 

 of South Africa. The innovation has also been criticised, on the other 

 hand, as a somewhat tardy recognition of the claims of Ireland to 

 a share in the honour of furnishing those regiments which are most 

 closely associated with the personal service of the Sovereign, and 

 which have enjoyed for centuries a traditional precedence in the regi- 

 mental roll. It is not a little curious that a people, who, differing 

 among themselves in many things, are at one in their common pride 

 in those martial instincts which Irishmen have manifested wherever 

 and whenever opportunity has served, should have so completely 

 forgotten an episode so interesting in the history of Irish arms as the 

 raising of the first regiment of Irish Guards. Tet it is a fact that 

 what has been greeted as a belated innovation is really only a revival 

 of a corps which is coeval in antiquity with the institution of the 

 standing army, and which, under the title of "His Majesty's Regiment 

 of Guards in Ireland," enjoyed a distinguished reputation for valoiu' 

 and military efficiency at a most interesting period of Irish history. 



The occasion, therefore, seems appropriate for an attempt to trace 

 the record of a regiment which anciently held a distinguished place at 

 the head of the military establishment of Ireland, and to recall the 

 history of the remarkable corps which constituted the flower of the 

 Irish army fi'om the Restoration to the Revolution. And the 

 inquiry is not the less interesting because it is in this Restoration 

 Regiment of Irish Guards that we shall find the origin of one of the 



