I can't believe it. Finally. Fucking finally. I can update this thing. It has been literally months that I couldn't blog one damn word because every time I tried to do it, the new Blogger 'upgraded' interface hosed me wholesale. So I switched my browser to Firefox and I'm able to make the interface work. And no, that doesn't get Blogger off the hook. It's not like fucking IE is the new kid on the block.

Wonderful new book in my hands. New to me at least. Published in 1967. The Royal Apothecaries, Leslie G. Matthews. Published by the Wellcome HIstorical Medical Library.

Excellent information on the Dutch contingent of apothecaries in service to His Majesty, as well as details related to the costs for opening the King's body and embalming same.

Find this one if you can.

I know I've been remiss in posting, but this blog has it's own particular function which really doesn't have anything to do with you. It's like the overflow bottle on a car radiator. Used to catch the excess that bubbles.

In other words, this is for the extraneous thoughts that are dashing around when I'm trying to concentrate on the main event. Clears the mind. Fortunately for me, I have been able to concentrate full bore on the main event without a lot of detritis flicking through my mind. Ergo, few blog entries.

But I have had some fluttering today and I do have the autopsy report from the poor Duke of Gloucester waiting in the wings to be posted.

By the year 1696, all hopes for the Stuart succession rested on the shoulders of one frail boy, William Henry (YES, another William Henry), the Duke of Gloucester. He was the only surviving child of Princess Anne (Queen Mary's sister and William's cousin).

The boy was born on 24 July 1689, named after his uncle, the King, who also stood as his godfather. As the boy grew up he developed a great admiration for his uncle tending towards hero worship. The little Duke desperately wanted to follow in his uncle's footsteps and be a soldier.

But he was a frail little boy whose head was to big for his body 'insomuch that his hat was big enough for most men'. By age 7 he had 'a blood-shot eye which water'd very much, and occasion'd the lid to swell, not could he see clearly with it.'

So much did he want to emulate his uncle that he raised his own two companies of soldiers -- young boys like himself -- and paraded them for the King before he went off to Flanders. The soldiers numbered 90 little boys with red grenadier caps armed with wooden swords and muskets, formed into ranks by the beating of a drum.

William loved the young boy as his own, and inspected the 'troops' with all seriousness, walking up and down the files inspecting each one. And young Gloucester, being completely dedicated to showing his uncle that he was a soldier, would salute his uncle and talk gamely about horses and arms and artillery.

Sadly, the boy would never reach his majority. He died in the year 1700 at the age of 11 years, leaving William once again bereft with grief, and leaving the Stuart dynasty without an heir.

Recommended Reading: Queen Anne's Son, Memoirs of the DUke of Gloucester, ed. W.J. Loftie (London, 1881)

I'm done beating my head against the wall on the Irish forfeitures. I've tried too many times to boil this down to Blog level and it can't be done. Not to my satisfaction, which is the only satisfaction that counts.

If you really need to know what this is about, and you really should so you don't die completely ignorant, then find this book -- J.G. Simms, The Williamite confiscation in Ireland 1690-1703 (London, 1956).

Back to your regular programming ....

The Williamite confiscation of Irish lands was the last of a series which in the course of a century and a half changed the ownership of the greater part of Ireland. The history of the Williamite forfeitures cover 13 years between the Battle of the Boyne and the final disposal of the forfeited estates. In the course of these proceedings most of the Catholics who still owned land ran the gauntlet in some form or another. Some succeeded in recovering their lands. Some lost their lands irrevocably. After 1703 the deed was done. There were no more wholesale confiscations because, quite frankly, there wasn't much left to confiscate. The stage was set for the period of the Irish penal laws and the supremacy of the 'Protestant nation', whether the Irish wanted it or not.

To say that the course of the Williamite confiscations is chequered is a frigging understatement. Policy changed course several times and much of what was done was later undone. The situation was complicated by some lands being restored under specific articles and/or pardons, and by the parliamentary resumption of a hugh chunk of William's grants to Bentinck, Keppel, and Lady Villiers. The best I can see, the story drops into three segments.

First there is the period of the war -- 1689-91. The issue of the forfeitures was used as a strategic policy piece by both sides and loomed large during the negotiations of the Treaty of Limerick.

The second opus is the period up to 1699. This is when the English parliament appointed a commission to inquire into the administration of the Irish forfeitures. The commissioners reviewed the entire process from 1690 onwards -- outlawries, adjudications under the articles of Limerick and Galway, pardons and the troublesome royal grants. It will be the royal grants and the subsequent fight over their disposition that will push England to a constitutional crisis on the issue of the King's prerogative and Parliament's power.

The third portion deals with the period from the Resumption Act of 1700 to the completion of the trustee's sales in 1703. Parliament strongly objected to the large grants William made to Keppel, Bentinck, Villiers, and other close associates and successfully wrested the grants away from recipients and ordered them to be vested in trustees where they would be eventually sold.

Ready? Good, because I'm not.

Against my better judgement I'm going to try and explain the Irish forfeitures. I'm not sure that it is such a great idea since what can be blogged with reasonableness won't really convey the depth of the issues involved. So I guess you'll get the down and dirty version because Christ knows I can't impart to you in 25 words or less the backstory and subtleties of all this that it has taken me years to learn. But, then they say ignorance is bliss.

Stand by ....