Horses in War and Piece Horses in War and Piece | Page 4

Commissioned by the Conyngham
family of the Slane Castle to
acknowledge the family’s involvement
in the battle, Sir Albert, pictured on
the centrepiece, raised a regiment of
Dragoons for William and played an
important part in the battle. Slane
Castle, where this centrepiece would
have once resided, was the family home
of the Conynghams since 1701 and the
river Boyne flows below the castle.
The Boyne Obelisk, featured on one
of the plaques, was a monument to the
battle of the Boyne, erected in 1736.
The Battle of the Boyne took place in
1690 between the English king, James
II and his nephew the Dutch prince,
William of Orange who was married
to James’s daughter, Mary. Together
William and Mary had overthrown
James in 1688 and taken the English
throne. The battle took place across the
river Boyne near the town of Drogheda
on the east coast of Ireland. William’s
defeat of James sealed the latter’s failure
to retake his throne and ensured the
continued Protestant ascendancy in
Ireland. To this day the Protestant
Orange Order commemorates the battle
in Northern Ireland and it is a constant
source of sectarian tension between
Ulster’s Protestants and Catholics.
For the Jacobite supporters of James
II the battle was part of a war fought
for religious tolerance of Catholicism
and disputed land ownership for
the Catholic upper classes who had
lost most of their land under Oliver
Cromwell’s brutal conquest of Ireland
in the mid-17th century and a desire for
Irish autonomy which they believed
James supported. For William and the
Protestant cause the war was about
maintaining their rule in Ireland.
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