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Hi,
Maybe of help researching Walker family of Northern Ireland.
REV. GEORGE WALKER, GOVERNOR OF LONDONDERRY. BORN ABOUT A.D. 1617 KILLED A.D. 1691. THE great struggle to which the events in the preceding memoir may be held as preliminary, was destined to be terminated by a personal conflict between the heads of the adverse interests on the banks of the Boyne; and we preserve the order of events by giving a summary ac- count of them from the landing of James until that decisive fight in the course of the present memoir. From a small but compendious account written by the Rev. John Graham, we learn the few following particulars respecting the family history of the hero of Londonderry. His father was appointed to a benefice in Derry in 1 630, and in a few years after, obtained the rec- tory of Cappagh in the county of Tyrone ; from which he was further preferred to the chancellorship of Armagh. He had a son and u daughter; the son George Walker was " instituted to the rectories of Donaghmore and Erigal Keerogal, in the county of Tyrone," in March, 1662.* He was educated in the college of Glasgow. Of this brave man the history is wrapped in comparative obscurity, until we arrive at the last few glorious and eventful years of his long life, spent, we have every reason to believe, in the strenuous practice of the less ambitious but not less exalted and elevating duties of a Christian pastor. Thus presenting an eminent instance of the truth, that those divine precepts and that holy spirit which inculcates and imparts humili- ty and charity, can, when the cause of God and the call of the country demand, send the hero to stand in the breach, and lead soldiers and patriots to their desperate and devoted duty. If it be said in abate- ment of these reflections, that George Walker was naturally of a busy and ambitious temper, and however noble was his service on that emergent hour of national peril, yet that it was his military taste which spurred him to the honourable post he filled; we must deny the infer- ence: in the following memoir there will be amply found the evi- dence of a nobler spirit. But there is one preliminary observation which must to all reflecting minds render superfluous all further evidence on this question: when George Walker left his ministerial duties, to take the lead in that dreadful and trying scene of danger and privation, of heroic patience and daring, he was seventy-one years of age. For nearly half a century he had pursued the homely and retired path of a minister of God's word, in a country resounding on every side with the din of arms. In the strength and energy of his four- and-twentieth year he saw the troubles of the great rebellion, when there was every temptation for the enterprising, and when the safest refuge was in arms. But Walker's bold and leading spirit was not either tempted or driven to the field. It was when the sacred ram- parts of the protestant church were assailed, that the soldier of Christ stood up in the very path of his duty to lay down his life, if so required, in its defence. It may perhaps be alleged by many a pious Christian * Memoir of Walker by the Rev. J. Graharr,_1832. REV. GEORGE WALKER. 425 reader, that even in such a case the consecrated teacher of the word of charity should have taken a different course ; we are not here con- cerned to deny the affirmation ; Walker may have erred, we tiiink not; but all that is here required is the inference that his error, if such, had origin in a sense of duty, in a moment so critical and appalling, that it may well have been permitted to the Christian, like Peter, to draw the sword of the flesh, when the enemies of the Lord were come up with swords and staves to do him violence. Rather let the pious Christian believe that the minister of Donaghmore was the approved soldier of Him, to whom victory muse be ascribed. At the breaking out of the contests of this period, the citizens of Derry and the protestants of the north looked with great and declared satisfaction on the protection which they anticipated in the presence of a protestant commander, many of whose soldiers were also protestants. Sir William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy, had distinguished himself and received two dangerous wounds in fighting in the Imperial service against the Turks, had on his return to Ireland, in 1687, obtained the rank of general of brigade, and, being of Scotch descent, an earnest protestant, and his family connected for nearly half a century with the military government of Derry, his appointment to the military com- mand in Ulster procured the exemption of that province from the general disarming of the protestants which obtained elsewhere in Ireland. Accordingly, when the fearful rumour of an intended massacre of the protestants, prepared in desperation by Tyrconnel, on the success of the landing of William in England becoming known, spread wild and uncontrollable dismay among the defenceless crowd in Leinster and other protestant districts, it only aroused in the north to a firm uncom- promising resolution of self-defence. In his first alarm at the state of matters in England, Tyrconnel had determined to reunite all the troops under the command of Mountjoy with its garrison for the defence of Dublin. But on learning the spirit and defensive preparations of Ulster following their removal, he hastily endeavoured to repair the error by placing garrisons anew in the frontier towns, and by directing that a newly raised regiment, entirely composed of papists, under the Earl of Antrim, should take up its quarters in Londonderry, which was at this time filled with refugees apprehensive of the imaginary massacre. These apprehensions now fearfully presented themselves to their minds, and on learning that the dreaded regiment had already reached New- town-Limavaddy, twelve miles distant, a resolution to resist its entrance began to be diffused among the citizens; and before night a plan had been concerted between Horatio Kennedy, one of the sheriffs, and a few youths of Scottish extraction, ever since commemorated by the honour- able appellation of the " Prentice Boys of Derry," for mastering the guard, seizing the keys, raising the drawbridge, and locking the gate at the ferry of the river on the occasion of the regiment approaching next day and attempting to enter the town, which was successfully carried out on Friday the 7th December, 1688. Like the other cor- porations of Ireland, that of Londonderry had just been arbitrarily remodelled. The magistrates were men of low station and character ; among them was only one person of Anglo-Saxon extraction, and lie had turned papist. A contemporaneous epic poem in its praise, quoted
Debbie
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