Since the days of Adam, there has been hardly a mischief done in
this world but a woman has been at the bottom of it. Ever since ours
was a family (and that must be very NEAR Adam's time,--so old,
noble, and illustrious are the Barrys, as everybody knows) women
have played a mighty part with the destinies of our race.
I presume that there is no gentleman in Europe that has not heard of
the house of Barry of Barryogue, of the kingdom of Ireland, than
which a more famous name is not to be found in Gwillim or D'Hozier;
and though, as a man of the world, I have learned to despise
heartily the claims of some PRETENDERS to high birth who have no
more genealogy than the lacquey who cleans my boots, and though I
laugh to utter scorn the boasting of many of my countrymen, who are
all for descending from kings of Ireland, and talk of a domain no
bigger than would feed a pig as if it were a principality; yet truth
compels me to assert that my family was the noblest of the island,
and, perhaps, of the universal world; while their possessions, now
insignificant and torn from us by war, by treachery, by the loss of
time, by ancestral extravagance, by adhesion to the old faith and
monarch, were formerly prodigious, and embraced many counties, at a
time when Ireland was vastly more prosperous than now. I would
assume the Irish crown over my coat-of-arms, but that there are so
many silly pretenders to that distinction who bear it and render it
common.
Who knows, but for the fault of a woman, I might have been wearing
it now? You start with incredulity. I say, why not? Had there been a
gallant chief to lead my countrymen, instead or puling knaves who
bent the knee to King Richard II., they might have been freemen; had
there been a resolute leader to meet the murderous ruffian Oliver
Cromwell, we should have shaken off the English for ever. But there
was no Barry in the field against the usurper; on the contrary, my
ancestor, Simon de Bary, came over with the first-named monarch, and
married the daughter of the then King of Munster, whose sons in
battle he pitilessly slew.
In Oliver's time it was too late for a chief of the name of Barry to
lift up his war-cry against that of the murderous brewer. We were
princes of the land no longer; our unhappy race had lost its
possessions a century previously, and by the most shameful treason.
This I know to be the fact, for my mother has often told me the
story, and besides had worked it in a worsted pedigree which hung up
in the yellow saloon at Barryville where we lived.
That very estate which the Lyndons now possess in Ireland was once
the property of my race. Rory Barry of Barryogue owned it in
Elizabeth's time, and half Munster beside. The Barry was always in
feud with the O'Mahonys in those times; and, as it happened, a
certain English colonel passed through the former's country with a
body of men-at-arms, on the very day when the O'Mahonys had made an
inroad upon our territories, and carried off a frightful plunder of
our flocks and herds.
This young Englishman, whose name was Roger Lyndon, Linden, or
Lyndaine, having been most hospitably received by the Barry, and
finding him just on the point of carrying an inroad into the
O'Mahonys' land, offered the aid of himself and his lances, and
behaved himself so well, as it appeared, that the O'Mahonys were
entirely overcome, all the Barrys' property restored, and with it,
says the old chronicle, twice as much of the O'Mahonys' goods and
cattle.
It was the setting in of the winter season, and the young soldier
was pressed by the Barry not to quit his house of Barryogue, and
remained there during several months, his men being quartered with
Barry's own gallowglasses, man by man in the cottages round about.
They conducted themselves, as is their wont, with the most
intolerable insolence towards the Irish; so much so, that fights and
murders continually ensued, and the people vowed to destroy them.
The Barry's son (from whom I descend) was as hostile to the English
as any other man on his domain; and, as they would not go when
bidden, he and his friends consulted together and determined on
destroying these English to a man.
But they had let a woman into their plot, and this was the Barry's
daughter. She was in love with the English Lyndon, and broke the
whole secret to him; and the dastardly English prevented the just
massacre of themselves by falling on the Irish, and destroying
Phaudrig Barry, my ancestor, and many hundreds of his men. The cross
at Barrycross near Carrignadihioul is the spot where the odious
butchery took place.
Lyndon married the daughter of Roderick Barry, and claimed the
estate which he left: and though the descendants of Phaudrig were
alive, as indeed they are in my person,[Footnote: As we have never
been able to find proofs of the marriage of my ancestor Phaudrig
with his wife, I make no doubt that Lyndon destroyed the contract,
and murdered the priest and witnesses of the marriage.--B. L.] on
appealing to the English courts, the estate was awarded to the
Englishman, as has ever been the case where English and Irish were
concerned.
Thus, had it not been for the weakness of a woman, I should have
been born to the possession of those very estates which afterwards
came to me by merit, as you shall hear. But to proceed with my
family, history.
My father was well known to the best circles in this kingdom, as in
that of Ireland, under the name of Roaring Harry Barry. He was bred
like many other young sons of genteel families to the profession of
the law, being articled to a celebrated attorney of Sackville Street
in the city of Dublin; and, from his great genius and aptitude for
learning, there is no doubt he would have made an eminent figure in
his profession, had not his social qualities, love of field-sports,
and extraordinary graces of manner, marked him out for a higher
sphere. While he was attorney's clerk he kept seven race-horses, and
hunted regularly both with the Kildare and Wicklow hunts; and rode
on his grey horse Endymion that famous match against Captain Punter,
which is still remembered by lovers of the sport, and of which I
caused a splendid picture to be made and hung over my dining-hall
mantelpiece at Castle Lyndon. A year afterwards he had the honour of
riding that very horse Endymion before his late Majesty King George
II. at New-market, and won the plate there and the attention of the
august sovereign.
Although he was only the second son of our family, my dear father
came naturally into the estate (now miserably reduced to L400 a
year); for my grandfather's eldest son Cornelius Barry (called the
Chevalier Borgne, from a wound which he received in Germany)
remained constant to the old religion in which our family was
educated, and not only served abroad with credit, but against His
Most Sacred Majesty George II. in the unhappy Scotch disturbances in
'45. We shall hear more of the Chevalier hereafter.
For the conversion of my father I have to thank my dear mother, Miss
Bell Brady, daughter of Ulysses Brady of Castle Brady, county Kerry,
Esquire and J.P. She was the most beautiful woman of her day in
Dublin, and universally called the Dasher there. Seeing her at the
assembly, my father became passionately attached to her; but her
soul was above marrying a Papist or an attorney's clerk; and so, for
the love of her, the good old laws being then in force, my dear
father slipped into my uncle Cornelius's shoes and took the family
estate. Besides the force of my mother's bright eyes, several
persons, and of the genteelest society too, contributed to this
happy change; and I have often heard my mother laughingly tell the
story of my father's recantation, which was solemnly pronounced at
the tavern in the company of Sir Dick Ringwood, Lord Bagwig, Captain
Punter, and two or three other young sparks of the town. Roaring
Harry won 300 pieces that very night at faro, and laid the necessary
information the next morning against his brother; but his conversion
caused a coolness between him and my uncle Corney, who joined the
rebels in consequence.
This great difficulty being settled, my Lord Bagwig lent my father
his own yacht, then lying at the Pigeon House, and the handsome Bell
Brady was induced to run away with him to England, although her
parents were against the match, and her lovers (as I have heard her
tell many thousands of times) were among the most numerous and the
most wealthy in all the kingdom of Ireland. They were married at the
Savoy, and my grandfather dying very soon, Harry Barry, Esquire,
took possession of his paternal property and supported our
illustrious name with credit in London. He pinked the famous Count
Tiercelin behind Montague House, he was a member of 'White's,' and a
frequenter of all the chocolate-houses; and my mother, likewise,
made no small figure. At length, after his great day of triumph
before His Sacred Majesty at Newmarket, Harry's fortune was just on
the point of being made, for the gracious monarch promised to
provide for him. But alas! he was taken in charge by another
monarch, whose will have no delay or denial,--by Death, namely, who
seized upon my father at Chester races, leaving me a helpless
orphan. Peace be to his ashes! He was not faultless, and dissipated
all our princely family property; but he was as brave a fellow as
ever tossed a bumper or called a main, and he drove his coach-and-
six like a man of fashion.
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