Mercer Chronicle

12 THE MERCER CHRONICLE.
So runs the chronicle by Scotchman writ,
But Irishmen are wanting not in wit. 29
We too of Captain William, 30 uncle write
Poet, annalist, and warrior right ;
He too the Mercer where the ladies were ;
He speaks, whilst thou thyself the bachelors spare !
greater man ! he halted half ivay ; his candour was his own and that of
his ■profession, his faults those of his age : had he remained loyal like
Captain John, he had remained poor ! Those soldiers who want to see
how the Commonwealth paid their troops, should read his works : no
" daily payments" then ! In troublous times, the few clever rogues may
thrive, but the many, honest or otherwise, will suffer ! This is proved by
the great joy manifested on the return of Charles II.
29 Except when they listen to American Fenians, who have disgraced
the noble name so well immortalized by the learned and patriotic Dr.
William Hamilton Drummond, D.D. of Dublin, in his " Ancient Irish
Minstrelsy."
30 We have always known him only as Captain William; but politics
causing a disagreement, the want of intimacy between the brothers
was increased by the roving disposition of Captain William, whose
descendants by his "four fyne wives," of course must have chiefly
settled near their mamas ; except, indeed, the first wife and her children,
who all perished in the rebellion of 1641. Captain William was bom in
Scotland, went to England when young with his father, whence his
family emigrated with others from Yorkshire and Lancashire, at the
instance of James I. of England, by whom was formed the plantation of
Ulster ; hence is found throughout his writing the uncertainty of his
locale, for he speaks indifferently of the three countries ; the bias was,
perhaps, against Ireland :
a I lost my being in that Irish land,
Where by commission I had first command;' 1 ''
which last line, however, does not prove he was not there, before he " had
command," and by " being " he means substance — means of living, as we
all too well remember, as the feeling was in favour of Scotland, where
all the high connections of the family remained. The last intelligence
heard of Captain William, or as some call him Lt.-Colonel William
Mercer, appears to have been at Cork, in 1669, that is, if Mr. Grenville
be considered as an authority, as see " The Moderate Caualier " (Cavalier)