the Check, of the armies and garrisons, for life, upon which advancement, it being then a place of great trust, he was knighted at Whitehall, and called into the Privy Council. In 1611 he obtained from the Crown a Wednesday market, and a fair at Tulsk, with court of pie poudre, and the usual tolls; and in 1613 and 1615, represented the County of Roscommon in parliament. Sir John, at this time, resided at Bagotrath, near Dublin, the ancient fief of Robert le Bagot, and in that castle, the struggle for whose possession, a few years afterwards, led on the memorable battle of Rathmines. In May, 1615, he was appointed of council for the charge of Munster, and in the June following was commissioned, with Sir Thomas Rotheram, and the rest of the Council of Connaught, for the civil government and administration of justice in that province, during the absence of the president and vice-president. In the following year he was selected of the commission for fiating grants of escheated lands in Ulster, in virtue of which, and as a co-trustee, he had a grant, jointly with Sir Adam Loftus, of various manors, castles, lands, messuages, mills, granges, loughs, rectories, fisheries, weirs, markets, fairs, chiefries, &c. In 1617, he was appointed with the chief judges on the Commission of the Court of Wards in Ireland. In the November of that year he had a more distinct and ample grant of the Abbey of Boyle and its possessions; and about the same time he conveyed the rectory of Killyan, in the County of Meath, as his fee, to certain family uses. In 1618 His Majesty was pleased, "in acceptance of his many and faithful services, whereof he had not only received good testimony from Ireland, but also from his council in England, who had been eye-witnesses thereof," so far to extend his favours, as to direct that his eldest son, Robert, might partake thereof; and he had accordingly, in the April of that year, a grant of the office of Muster-Master General, &c. In January, 1619, Sir John, "in consideration of good, true, faithful, and acceptable service," had a very extensive confirmatory patent of the ambit and precinct of the abbey of Boyle, with the appurtenances, mills, waters, watercourses, mill-heads, and all the land sover which the manor of Boyle extends, together with the numerous eel-weirs that had appertained to the abbey, and a moiety of certain tithes as hereafter mentioned in the General History, with courts leet and baron, and other privileges, within that manor. In the same year he was appointed a commissioner for the plantation of Longford County, and the territory of Ely O'Carrol in the King's County; in 1621 was constituted a Receiver of the fines of the Court of Wards, and of all other fines payable upon Royal letters and patents, and in the same year had a grant of Corhawna (641A.), in the plantation of Leitrim. In 1624 he was, amongst other great officers of State, constituted an especial Commissioner and Guardian of the Peace in the provinces of Leinster and Ulster, while the Lord Deputy Falkland was making a journey in various parts of Ireland to oversee the plantations, and settle the government there. In the same year, according to the existing incidents of feudal tenures, he had a grant of the wardship and marriage of Lucas, the second Viscount Dillon, then aged fourteen years, and in 1625 was nominated on a commission to inquire into abuses in the army, with a view to their being early and effectively redressed. In August, 1630, he purchased from William, Earl of Meath, the estate of Nether-Whitacre in Warwickshire. Sir John had married Catherine, daughter of Robert Drury, who was the nephew of Sir William Drury, Lord Justice of Ireland, in 1578. She died in 1617, and he in 1636, having a short time previously made his will, wherein, as before mentioned, he described himself as "Sir John King, of the Close of the Cathedral Church of Lichfield," and directed, that if he died there, his body should be buried within that church, but if he died in Ireland, in the parish church of St. Michan, Dublin, near his late wife (nevertheless at the discretion of his executor), but without any unnecessary cost or charge; and, after providing for his children, he bequeathed to the bailiffs and citizens of Lichfield, for the use and benefit of the poor thereof, the sum of £20; to all his servants a year's wages, &c.; and he constituted his eldest son, Robert, executor and residuary legatee, who, in the exercise of the discretion given to him, directed the interment of his father within the abbey of Boyle. Sir John left issue by his said wife, six sons and three daughters. The sons were, 1st. Sir Robert, his heir, of whom hereafter. 2nd. John King, who was appointed Clerk of the Hanaper, and who marrying Margaret, the daughter of Francis Edgeworth, Esq., had issue by her two sons, John and Francis: 1. John King was joined with his father in the Clerkship of the Hanaper in 1627, but afterwards, in the civil wars, attached himself to Cromwell's party, became a Major in that service, and was, by Sir Charles Coote, the Lord President of Connaught, appointed, on behalf of the Parliament, to conclude the Articles of Agreement for the surrender of Galway, which Articles he signed on the 5th of April, 1652. 2. Francis King, styled of Rathdooney, County Sligo, married Susanna, daughter of Edmund Southwell, of Castle Mattress, in the County Limerick, Esq., and had issue four sons and two daughters, viz.: Captain Francis; John of Boyle (who, in 1672, did service in Lord Kingston's troop, and died in that year unmarried); Robert; William (who left no issue); Mary (married to Captain Robert Ffolliott); and Catherine. Captain Francis, described as of Knocklough, the eldest of these children, and to whom his father left all his estate in the County Sligo, "fallen to him by lot, in satisfaction of his debenture for service in Ireland," was sheriff of the County Sligo in 1677, in two years previous to which he married Magdalen, daughter of Thomas Guyhin of Ballyconnel, County Cavan, and had by her three sons and two daughters, viz.: Francis, the eldest son; Robert and John, who both died unmarried; Mary and Susanna, the latter of whom married, in 1713, Robert Savage of Dublin. The aforesaid Francis, the eldest son, married, in 1698, Dorcas, eldest daughter of William Ormsby of Annagh, County Sligo, and dying in 1708, left issue by her (who re-married with Edward Jackson of the same county, Esq.), two sons and one daughter, viz., William, of Annagh-Ibanagher, otherwise Kingsborough, in the County of Sligo (who dying at Douglas in the Isle of Man, in 1736, unmarried, was buried at Abbey Boyle); Robert, who also died unmarried; and Mary, first married to Henry Smyth of Dublin, Esq., and secondly to Edward Smyth, attorney-at-law. 3rd. Roger, who died young. 4th. Edward, the fourth son of Sir John King and Catherine, his lady, born in 1612, was baptized by his namesake, the Right Reverend Edward King, Bishop of Elphin (before noticed in this Memoir). He received the earlier elements of his education in Trinity College, Dublin, whence he removed to Cambridge, where he became the fellow-collegian and intimate friend of Milton, and appears to have been possessed of talents and acquirements not overrated by the friendship of the immortal bard. In 1633, this Edward King was a Fellow of Christ Church College, Cambridge. In August, 1637, he left the scene of his academic honours and friendships, to revisit his native country, but was unfortunately drowned on his passage from Chester, at the early age of twenty-five. So universal was the regret felt for his untimely fate, that immediately after, a volume of poems in Greek, Latin, and English, entitled "Justa Edouardo King naufrago," was printed and circulated at Cambridge in honour of his memory. Those in Greek are three in number, one by Henry More, the great Platonic theologist, and then, or soon after, a Fellow of Christ College; those in Latin are nineteen; and the English elegies thirteen in number; the last of these being the wellknown Monody of Lycidas, by Milton, and inscribed with his initials. In this tribute of friendship, the immortal bard thus touchingly laments his friend: "Yet once more, oh ye laurels ! and once more, I come to pluck your berries harsh and crude, Shatter your leaves before the mellowing year. Unwept, and welter to the parching wind, * For we were nursed upon the self-same hill, Towards Heaven's descent had sloped his burnished wheel. But, oh! the heavy change! now thou art gone !— Now thou art gone !—and never must return. The willow and the hazle copses green Shall now no more be seen, Fanning their joyous leaves to thy soft lays. Where were ye, Nymphs! when the remorseless deep Nor on the shaggy top of Mona high, Nor yet, where Deva spreads her wizard stream,— Weep no more, woful shepherds! weep no more, Sunk though he be beneath the watery floor, So sinks the day-star in the ocean bed, And yet anon repairs his drooping head, And tricks his beams, and with new spangled ore |