All his family traditions, all the lessons taught him by his foster mother and by his priests, had been of a very different tendency.

He had been brought up to regard the foreign sovereigns of his native land with the feeling with which the Jew regarded Caesar, with which the Scot regarded Edward the First, with which the Castilian regarded Joseph Buonaparte, with which the Pole regards the Autocrat of the Russias.

It was the boast of the highborn Milesian that, from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, every generation of his family had been in arms against the English crown.

His remote ancestors had contended with Fitzstephen and De Burgh.
His greatgrandfather had cloven down the soldiers of Elizabeth in the battle of the Blackwater.

His grandfather had conspired with O'Donnel against James the First.