Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/183

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tacking, or his severity in executing them without mercy when they fell into his hands than he did offence to the gentlemen of the country by his hasty and rough manner of treating them.’ As president of Munster St. Leger had a commission to execute martial law; but in March 1641 he found it necessary or prudent to sue out a pardon under the great seal for anything that he had done or might have done in that way. Instances are given, but it may be doubted whether his rough ways had really much to do with the spread of civil war. St. Leger hanged rebels wholesale, but so did many other officers, and the work had been begun by the Ulster insurgents.

Bellings says St. Leger was ‘a man of long experience and good conduct in the war, who hoped … to deter the loose rovers by the exemplary punishment of some among them. Yet this his prudent design being executed confusedly in so great a distraction of all things, and some innocent labourers and husbandmen having suffered by martial law for the transgressions of others,’ many were driven to despair, and the evil increased (Confederation and War, i. 64, 244). In December 1641 Lord Cork described St. Leger as ‘a brave, martial man, who acts all the parts of a good governor.’ Rushworth records but misdates his death, as that of ‘a brave, prudent gentleman, and hearty protestant.’ It appears, from an amusing story told in Borlase's ‘Reduction of Ireland’ (p. 157), and repeated in Ware's account of Chappel, bishop of Cork, that St. Leger had some taste for theological controversy, and also that he was on friendly terms with the Roman catholic dean of Cork. A portrait of St. Leger, painted by William Dobson, belonged in 1866 to Mr. W. H. Blaauw (cf. Cat. of First Loan Exhibition, No. 734).

By his first wife, Gertrude de Vries of Dort, St. Leger had a daughter Elizabeth, who married Murrough O'Brien, first earl of Inchiquin [q. v.] The eldest of his four sons fell at the second battle of Newbury, fighting on the king's side. The Doneraile peerage was first granted to Sir William's grandson. St. Leger built a church at Doneraile, which was rebuilt in 1726. His house there, where the presidency court was usually held in his time, was burned by the Irish in 1645.

[Calendar of Irish State Papers, James I; Strafford's Letters and Despatches; Lismore Papers, ed. Grosart, 2nd ser.; Morrin's Calendar of Patent Rolls, Charles I; Confederation and War in Ireland, ed. Gilbert, vol. i.; True and Happy News from Ireland, being a letter read in the House of Commons on Tuesday, 25 April 1642; Carte's Ormonde; Clarendon's Hist. of the Rebellion; Borlase's Hist. of the Execrable Irish Rebellion; Lodge's Peerage of Ireland, ed. Archdall, vol. vi.; Stemmata Leodegaria, by E. F. S. L., pedigree in the British Museum; Council Books of Cork and Youghal, ed. Caulfield; Morrice's Life of Orrery and Letters in vol. i. of Orrery State Letters; Ireland in the Seventeenth Century, ed. Hickson; Smith's Histories of Cork and Waterford.]

R. B-l.


SAINT LEGER or Salinger, William (1600–1665), Irish jesuit, was born in the county of Kilkenny in 1600, entered the Society of Jesus at Tournai in 1621, studied afterwards in Sicily, and was professed of the four vows in 1635. After his return to Ireland he became superior of his brethren in that country during the time of the rebellion, which began in 1641. He was rector of the college of Kilkenny in 1650, and, when the former city was taken by Cromwell's army, he removed to Galway. At the end of the rebellion he escaped to Spain, and succeeded Father John Lombard as rector of the residence of Compostella, where he died on 9 June 1665.

He wrote ‘De Vita et Morte Illustrissimi Domini Thomæ Valesii [Walsh] Archiepiscopi Casiliensis in Hibernia,’ Antwerp, 1655, 4to, a work of great rarity.

[Catholic Miscellany (1828), ix. 40; Dodd's Church Hist. iii. 313; Foley's Records, vii. 680; Hogan's Chronological Cat. of the Irish Province S. J. p. 30; Oliver's Jesuit Collections, p. 265; Southwell's Bibl. Soc. Jesu, p. 319; Ware's Writers of Ireland (Harris), p. 144.]

T. C.

ST. LEONARDS, Baron. [See Sugden, Edward Burtenshaw, 1781–1875.]

ST. LIFARD, GILBERT of (d. 1305), bishop of Chichester. [See Gilbert.]

ST. LIZ, SIMON de, Earl of Northampton (d. 1109). [See Senlis.]

ST. LO, EDWARD (1682?–1729), rear-admiral, probably the son of Commissioner George St. Lo [q. v.], was born about 1682, and entered the navy in March 1695 on board the Lichfield with Lord Archibald Hamilton. In 1702 he was a lieutenant of the Chichester, one of the fleet with Sir George Rooke [q. v.] off Cadiz and at Vigo. On 9 Sept. 1703 he was promoted to be captain of the Pendennis in the fleet under Vice-admiral John Graydon [q. v.] in the West Indies and at Placentia. In 1704 he was again in the West Indies in the Dolphin, which in 1705 was employed in convoy service in the North Sea. In 1706 he was in command of the Gosport of 32 guns, appointed to convoy a fleet of merchant