Lord Kilgobbin | Page 3

of them, Michael
O'Kearney, having acted as aide-de-camp at the 'Boyne,' and conducted
the king to Kilgobbin, where he passed the night after the defeat, and,
as the tradition records, held a court the next morning, at which he
thanked the owner of the castle for his hospitality, and created him on
the spot a viscount by the style and title of Lord Kilgobbin.
It is needless to say that the newly-created noble saw good reason to
keep his elevation to himself. They were somewhat critical times just
then for the adherents of the lost cause, and the followers of King
William were keen at scenting out any disloyalty that might be turned
to good account by a confiscation. The Kearneys, however, were
prudent. They entertained a Dutch officer, Van Straaten, on King

William's staff, and gave such valuable information besides as to the
condition of the country, that no suspicions of disloyalty attached to
them.
To these succeeded more peaceful times, during which the Kearneys
were more engaged in endeavouring to reconstruct the fallen condition
of their fortunes than in political intrigue. Indeed, a very small portion
of the original estate now remained to them, and of what once had
produced above four thousand a year, there was left a property barely
worth eight hundred.
The present owner, with whose fortunes we are more Immediately
concerned, was a widower. Mathew Kearney's family consisted of a
son and a daughter: the former about two-and-twenty, the latter four
years younger, though to all appearance there did not seem a year
between them.
Mathew Kearney himself was a man of about fifty-four or fifty-six;
hale, handsome, and powerful; his snow-white hair and bright
complexion, with his full grey eyes and regular teeth giving him an air
of genial cordiality at first sight which was fully confirmed by further
acquaintance. So long as the world went well with him, Mathew
seemed to enjoy life thoroughly, and even its rubs he bore with an easy
jocularity that showed what a stout heart he could oppose to Fortune. A
long minority had provided him with a considerable sum on his coming
of age, but he spent it freely, and when it was exhausted, continued to
live on at the same rate as before, till at last, as creditors grew pressing,
and mortgages threatened foreclosure, he saw himself reduced to
something less than one-fifth of his former outlay; and though he
seemed to address himself to the task with a bold spirit and a resolute
mind, the old habits were too deeply rooted to be eradicated, and the
pleasant companionship of his equals, his life at the club in Dublin, his
joyous conviviality, no longer possible, he suffered himself to descend
to an inferior rank, and sought his associates amongst humbler men,
whose flattering reception of him soon reconciled him to his fallen
condition. His companions were now the small farmers of the
neighbourhood and the shopkeepers in the adjoining town of Moate, to

whose habits and modes of thought and expression he gradually
conformed, till it became positively irksome to himself to keep the
company of his equals. Whether, however, it was that age had breached
the stronghold of his good spirits, or that conscience rebuked him for
having derogated from his station, certain it is that all his buoyancy
failed him when away from society, and that in the quietness of his
home he was depressed and dispirited to a degree; and to that genial
temper, which once he could count on against every reverse that befell
him, there now succeeded an irritable, peevish spirit, that led him to
attribute every annoyance he met with to some fault or shortcoming of
others.
By his neighbours in the town and by his tenantry he was always
addressed as 'My lord,' and treated with all the deference that pertained
to such difference of station. By the gentry, however, when at rare
occasions he met them, he was known as Mr. Kearney; and in the
village post-office, the letters with the name Mathew Kearney, Esq.,
were perpetual reminders of what rank was accorded him by that wider
section of the world that lived beyond the shadow of Kilgobbin Castle.
Perhaps the impossible task of serving two masters is never more
palpably displayed than when the attempt attaches to a divided
identity--when a man tries to be himself in two distinct parts in life,
without the slightest misgiving of hypocrisy while doing so. Mathew
Kearney not only did not assume any pretension to nobility amongst his
equals, but he would have felt that any reference to his title from one of
them would have been an impertinence, and an impertinence to be
resented; while, at the same time, had a shopkeeper of Moate, or one of
the tenants, addressed him