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Interchapter 1 - Virtue Rewarded; or, the Irish Princess

Burgeoning silence and the new novel form in Ireland

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Derek Hand
Affiliation:
St Patrick's College, Dublin
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Summary

Laws are silent in time of war.

(Cicero, Pro Milone)

When Dean Rowland Davies – a chaplain with King William's forces – passed through the Munster town of Clonmel in July 1690, he had his pistol and his boots stolen, he believed ‘by some Danes quartered there’. This, it might be said, is one instance of lawlessness from the margins of history, and yet it is a detail interesting enough to catch the novelistic eye of Elizabeth Bowen, who mentions it in her family chronicle Bowen's Court. It signals a perhaps unconscious tension within the victorious Williamite camp between the Irish Protestant community represented by Davies and those others who have come to Ireland to fight for various reasons – be they personal, political or venal. Dean Davies also talks of having to preach a sermon against swearing to the victors of the Battle of the Boyne. It seems to have been a common complaint among local Anglicans about the Williamite army, who felt that the soldiers seemed

to have banished all but the name of religion, and the only entertainment to be found among the army is drunkenness, injustice, rapine, profanation of the Sabbath, horrid oaths and execrations, and all manner of debauchery: as if they thought their successes were only designed to give them liberty to commit so many great abominations.

If nothing else, the spoils of war should not be corrupted by immoral behaviour.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2011

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