480 Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy. 



probably from David Edwards, who appears in the Census of 1659 as 

 among tbe three " tituladoes " for Chapelizod, that Eustace had purchased 

 it in the following year. The house with its garden stood between 

 the river and the Chapelizod road, a little beyond the present Roman 

 Catholic church, and the green meadows margined by a few decaying 

 remnants of formerly abundant timber which run down to the north 

 bank of the Li:ffey, a little westward of the new Boat Club premises on 

 the opposite side, still reveal to a careful survey some traces of their 

 former stateliness. "When first taken over by Ormond, the house and 

 grounds lay within the Park, and, though excluded from its precincts 

 by Sir John Temple's wall, they were excepted from the grant of 

 severed land by which Temple was remunerated, and preserved as the 

 viceregal residence, a character which they retained for a full centuiy 

 from their first acquisition by the Crown. 



Here a succession of Viceroys and Deputies, including Ormond him- 

 self, his sons, Lords Ossory and Arran,^Essex, Clarendon, andTyrconnell, 

 constantly resided down to the Revolution ; and though the straitened 

 finances of the times could not afford any large expenditure on the 

 place, the King's House was evidently regarded by its tenants as a 

 desirable abode. Essex, in the correspondence already referred to, 

 dwells with animation on the importance of the Park residence as an 

 alternative to the unwholesomeness of the Castle, and from the 

 correspondence of Henry Lord Clarendon, who preceded Tyrconnell as 

 Yiceroy, some idea of its character may be gleaned. Both Clarendon 

 and his wife were correspondents of the accomplished Evelyn. The 

 Countess — " a blue who looked like a madwoman and talked like a 

 scholar " — writes to the author of " Sylva," lamenting her coming to 

 a country which he had not cultivated, but with evident enjoyment of 

 her surroundings, though she deplored a deficiency of trees and shrubs. 

 Clarendon himself describes to the same friend the fertility of the 

 extensive kitchen gardens attached to the place, dwelling with the 

 gusto of a gourmand on the excellence of the asparagus. Clarendon 

 was followed at Chapelizod by Tyrconnell, who lay ill there before 

 joining James II. in the decisive struggle for the Crown of the Three 

 Kingdoms, and the next occupant of " the King's House " was the 

 victor of the Boyne. William III., the only Sovereign prior to 

 George lY. who at any time dwelt in any of the residences attached to 

 the Park, came to Chapelizod at the end of the stirring month which 



1 Lord Arran's first wife, Lady Mary Stewart, died at tlie King's House, 

 July 4, 1668. 



