(Dillon) (Wentworth) Earl of Roscommon,

This nobleman was born in Ireland during the lieutenancy of the earl of Strafford, in the reign of King Charles I. Lord Strafford was his godfather, and named him by his own surname.  He passed some of his first years in his native country, till the earl of Strafford imagining, when the rebellion first broke out, that his father who had been converted by archbishop Usher to the Protestant religion, would be exposed to great danger, and be unable to protect his family, sent for his godson, and placed him at his own seat in Yorkshire, under the tuition, of Dr. Hall, afterwards bishop of Norwich; by whom he was instructed in Latin, and without learning the common rules of grammar, which he could never retain in his memory, he attained to write in that language with classical elegance and propriety, and with so much ease, that he chose it to correspond with those friends who had learning sufficient to support the commerce.  When the earl of Strafford was prosecuted, lord Roscommon went to Caen in Normandy, by the advice of bishop Usher, to continue his studies under Bochart, where he is said to have had an extraordinary impulse of his father’s death, which is related by Mr. Aubrey in his miscellany, ’Our author then a boy of about ten years of age, one day was as it were madly extravagant, in playing, getting over the tables, boards, &c.  He was wont to be sober enough.  They who observed him said, God grant this proves no ill luck to him.  In the heat of this extravagant fit, he cries out my father is dead.  A fortnight after news came from Ireland, that his father was dead.  This account I had from Mr. Knowles who was his governor, and then with him, since secretary to the earl of Strafford; and I have heard his Lordship’s relations confirm the same.’

The ingenious author of lord Roscommon’s life, publish’d in the Gentleman’s Magazine for the month of May, 1748, has the following remarks on the above relation of Aubrey’s.

’The present age is very little inclined to favour any accounts of this sort, nor will the name of Aubrey much recommend it to credit; it ought not however to be omitted, because better evidence of a fact is not easily to be found, than is here offered, and it must be, by preserving such relations, that we may at least judge how much they are to be regarded.  If we stay to examine this account we shall find difficulties on both sides; here is a relation of a fact given by a man who had no interest to deceive himself; and here is on the other hand a miracle which produces no effect; the order of nature is interrupted to discover not a future, but only a distant event, the knowledge of which is of no use to him to whom it is revealed.  Between these difficulties what way shall be found?  Is reason or testimony to be rejected?  I believe what Osborne says of an appearance of sanctity, may be applied to such impulses, or anticipations.  “Do not wholly slight them, because they may be true; but do not easily trust them, because they may be false."’