Camillo. I very well agree with you in the hopes of him:

it is a gallant child.

SHAKESPEARE.

FAMILY OF DE BURGH OR BURKE-PARENTAGE AND KINDRED OF EDMUND
BURKE EDMUND BURKE'S BIRTH-EARLY EDUCATION-THE SHACKLE-
TONS COLLEGE LIFE-ESSAYS AGAINST LUCAS-BURKE ENTERED AT
THE MIDDLE TEMPLE-HIS ARRIVAL IN LONDON.

THE family, originally Norman, of De Burgh, Bourke, or Burke,
established in the sister island by William Fitz- Adelm, who was
sent there with Hugh de Lacie to receive the submission of Rode-
rick O'Connor, king of Connaught, temp. Henry II., has "yielded

B

(to quote from Sir Richard Cox, the historian,) "many brave and worthy men, that have proved eminently serviceable to their king and country, whereby the name and estate are preserved in great honour and reputation to this day." The race thus referred to has been for centuries spread over the counties of Galway, Mayo, Limerick, Cork, and Tipperary; has possessed extensive landed property, and been ennobled at various epochs, under the titles of Clanricarde, Ulster, Clanmoris, St. Alban's, Leitrim, Brittas, Mayo, Tyaquin, Galway, Castle Connell, and Downes. The derivative branches were numerous, and many still maintain their footing in the west of Ireland, despite of the ruthless confiscations of Cromwell and William's times, and the scarcely less sweeping spoliation of the Encumbered Estates Court of the present day. From which of these branches Edmund Burke traced his ancestry has never been clearly ascertained. That he was a descendant of an offshoot of Clanricarde, several circumstances tend to show. Tradition, so often, and more especially in Ireland, an unerring guide on the misty path of the genealogist, affirms that the branch from which the great statesman sprung was a scion of the main stem of Clanricarde, long settled in the counties of Galway and Limerick; and this popular belief is corroborated by the arms borne by Edmund Burke, and his proved progenitors, which were those precisely of the Clanricarde family; as well as by the recognition of John Smith Burke the eleventh Earl, who on more than one occasion addressed the rising statesman as "cousin."

It is, at any rate, pretty certain that Edmund Burke's immediate progenitors possessed estates in the county of Limerick, the greater portion of which were lost in the civil commotions of the seventeenth century: the great grandfather of the statesman retired, in consequence, to the property he possessed in the county of Cork, and settled there in the neighbourhood of Castletown Roche, a village about five miles from Doneraile. The grandson, Richard Bourke or Burke, the father of Edmund Burke, was

HIS PARENTS AND KINDRED.

brought up to the profession of the law, and resided for some time in Limerick, but eventually removed to Dublin, where he took a house on Arran Quay, and there practised as an attorney with eminent success. About the year 1725 he married Mary,

3

daughter of Patrick Nagle, Esq., of Ballyduff and Moneaminy (descended from an ancient family in the county of Cork, of which was Sir Richard Nagle, Attorney-General for Ireland, temp. James II.). Through the Nagles, Edmund Burke was in a distant degree connected with the illustrious poet Edmund Spenser. Spenser's eldest son, Sylvanus of Kilcolman in the county of Cork, married Ellen, daughter of David Nagle, Esq. of Moneaminy.

Mr. Richard Burke had, by his wife, no less than fifteen children, all of whom died in youth except Garrett-EDMUND

magnum nomen— -Richard, and Juliana. Garrett, the eldest son, followed his parent's profession, and resided in Dublin; he was never married, and died, not long after his father, in 1765, when the county of Cork property, which had been for several generations in his ancestors' possession, devolved on his brother Edmund, by whom it was sold for 4000l. Richard, the third son, acquired reputation in the political circles of London as a barrister, a wit, and a writer. More will be related of him in the course of this biography. Of the only daughter, Juliana, afterwards Mrs. French, further mention also will be made.

EDMUND BURKE, the second son, was born in his father's house, on Arran Quay, Dublin, the 1st January, 1730; or, as otherwise alleged, 1728. In his early years he was extremely delicate, even to the risk of consumption. This caused him to remain at home longer than youths usually do. His first instructor was his mother, and he was fortunate in `being taught by her.

There are few men of transcendent ability who have not been the children of clever women, and Burke was no exception to this: his mother had a strong and cultivated understanding; to this she added the highest moral sense and the most fervent piety. No doubt her lessons kindled in the infant mind of her pupil the incipient sparks of that intellectual fire which was afterwards to burn so brightly; no doubt also the fond care of such a woman implanted in her child's breast those seeds of virtue and religion which grew with his growth, and secured the remarkable purity of his after-life. Another circumstance contributed not a little to give early vent to the ardent aspirations of the boy. Necessity for country air, for the invigoration of his frame, made the parents of Edmund Burke send him to sojourn at intervals in his grandfather's house at Castletown Roche, in the county of Cork, a town situate in a neighbourhood of romantic and surpassingly rural attractions and of glorious recollections. Here, at Kilcolman Castle, had Spenser written the Faerie Queene; here had lived Essex and Raleigh, and here were plenty of stories and legends about them.