The Confusion

Dundalk, Ireland
6 SEPTEMBER 1689

To Eliza, Countess de la Zeur

From Sgt. Bob Shaftoe

Dundalk, Ireland

6 September 1689

My lady,

I am speaking these words to a Presbyterian scrivener who followed our regiments down from our points of disembarkation around Belfast, and has hung out his shingle on a hut near Dundalk camp. From this, you may draw what conclusions you will concerning which matters I will address straightforwardly, and which I will speak not of.

A queue of soldiers begins at my left shoulder and extends out the door and down the lane. I rank most of them, and so could keep the scribbler busy all day if I chose, but I will address important matters first and try to conclude our business directly so that the others may send greetings to their mums and mistresses in England.

Your letter of June 15th reached me just before we embarked for Belfast, and was read to me aboard ship by a chaplain. It is well that I made your acquaintance and took your measure in the Hague, or I would have dismissed its contents as idle and womanish chatter. Your stylings are finer than the discourse that one is accustomed to hearing aboard a troop-ship. All the blokes who overheard it were gobsmacked that such pretty phrases had been directed to one such as me. I am now reputed to be a man of parts, and a fellow with many high and mighty connexions.

Upon listening to certain phrases for the third and fourth time, I collected that you had run afoul of a French count by the name of d’Avaux, who had obtained some knowledge of you that put you in his power. The Revolution in London had caused this d’Avaux to be recalled suddenly to France. Later the unfortunate Count was despatched to Brest, the remotest port of France, and loaded aboard ship in company of none other than Mr. James Stuart, who was formerly known as James II by the Grace of God of England, etc., King.

Off they sailed to the sophisticated metropolis of Bantry, Ireland. Later you had news that they had assembled an army of Frenchmen, Irish Catholics, and Jacobites (as we now refer to James’s supporters in Merry England) and established themselves in Dublin.

You are too courtly, my lady, ever to come out and say what you mean directly, and so the exact meaning of your letter was unclear to me and is unclear still. As I was situated in London, and your letter was addressed thither, you cannot have known that I’d have it read to me during a passage to Ireland. Or perhaps you are so clever and well-informed that you anticipated this. Surely it could never have been a request for my help? For how could I give you any aid in such a matter?

Brother Jack begat two sons by a strapping Irish lass named Mary Dolores Partry-he must have told you. She died. The boys have been raised by the kin of their late mum. I have made efforts to know them and to tender such support as I might-for example, by recruiting a few of their uncles and cousins into our Regiment. My life as a soldier has made me a poor uncle indeed. But the boys, who have inherited their dad’s weakness to impulses of a perverse kind, and who have been raised by Irishmen to boot, seem to respect me all the more, the more I neglect them.

Last year, Jim Stuart, then King, conceived a malignant distrust of his very own English regiments, and brought in several Irish ones to put down our Revolution (which he styled an uprising). These were phant’sied, by ordinary Englishmen, to be Crusaders, ten feet tall, bearing French bayonets red with English blood, led by Jesuits, controlled directly from Rome, yet just as wild in their ways as Irishmen ever were.

My Presbyterian scrivener is giving me the evil eye now, for making light of them. His folk have oft felt besieged in various corners of Ulster by such-by your leave, sir, put it down just as I have spoke it.

’Twas an even worse time than usual to be Irish in England, so all the kinfolk of Mary Dolores, including Jack’s boys, took passage on the first ship they could find that was Ireland-bound. This happened to set them down in Dublin-the wrong part of the island by far, as the Partrys are Connaught folk and seafarers. But Dublin they found more to their liking than they had foreseen. They’d raised two generations in London and grown used to city ways. During the same interval Dublin had grown to thrice its former size. Now these people, and Dublin, suited each other.

No sooner had they established themselves than James arrived with his motley Court, and his French generals began offering gold coins to any man who would join the Jacobite army. They had recruited a horde of naked bog-trotters whilst sloshing across the island and were calling them an army. Imagine, then, how pleased they were to encounter these fellows who had served in a Guards regiment, learnt to fire muskets, and fought in battles! Those fellows-not my in-laws, since Jack and Mary Dolores never married, but, if you will, my out-laws-were not merely accepted but embraced into James’s regiments, and made sergeants on the spot. They were quartered in the houses of the Protestant gentry of Dublin, who by this time had already fled to England or America.

So now the Partrys and I are ranged on opposing sides of the battle-front, which is a sleepy one at present. If I survive, and if they do, I am invited to join them over pints of black beer and to have strange, rousing yarns related to me of Dublin under the Jacobites, and of how one Connaught family made themselves at home there.

Now during the past summer, the Ulster towns of Derry and Enniskillen were put under siege by elements of this queer French-Irish army. James’s eagerness to score victories for the Pope exceeds his intelligence by an amount too great to measure. So on two occasions he dashed out of Dublin on short notice with all his entourage in the hopes of making his way north to Ulster and planting the Crusader-flag on the ruins of a Presbyterian church or two. The poor roads and scarcity of bridges hindered the royal progress, and the disinclination of the besieged Scotsmen to surrender might have balked him in any event.

My scrivener, who is at this moment glowing with pride and sniffling with emotion, will perhaps append a few lines extolling the manliness of the defenders of those two towns.

When d’Avaux-who had no choice but to accompany James on these excursions-returned, he was given the unwelcome news that some enterprising Dubliners (described by witnesses as a pair of towheaded lads) had climbed up some vines and a drain-pipe, entered his house through a window, and stolen everything that was of value, as well as a few items that were of no use to anyone but himself.

I will leave it to you, my lady, to guess whether there may be any connexion between these events, and a letter I had sent to my Dublin out-laws a few weeks previously, in which I had described this d’Avaux, and mentioned that he was now residing across the square from the house where their company had been quartered.

Not long after, I received a nocturnal delivery of papers, written out in what I am assured, by learned men, is the French language. Though I cannot read, I can recognize some of the words, and I half phant’sy I see your name in some of them. I have enclosed them in this packet.

During our memorable meeting in the Hague, you voiced sympathy for my problem, namely, that my true love, Miss Abigail Frome, was made a slave, and given to the Earl of Upnor. You seemed to doubt that I could ever be of use to you. Perhaps it is time for a new reckoning.

I attempted to settle the issue personally on the day of the Revolution but was baffled-you may hear the story from my lord Upnor if you care to know it.

This concludes my letter. You may direct any response to me at Dundalk. I am here with a stew of English, Dutch, Huguenot, Ulster, Danish, and Brandenburg regiments, enlivened by a sprinkling of unreconstructed Phanatiques whose fathers came over with Cromwell, conquered this island, and were paid for their work in Irish land. Now the Irish have got it back, and these hectical Nonconformists are disgruntled, and undecided whether they should join our army and conquer it anew, or sail to America and conquer that instead. They shall have a good eight or nine months to make up their minds, as Marshal Schomberg-the general whom King William has put in charge of this army-is desultory, and intends to tarry here in Dundalk for the entire winter.

So here is where I may be reached, if I am not killed by pestilence, starvation, or boredom.

Your humble and obedient servant,

Bob Shaftoe