Letter from John O'Sullivan at age 60, hoping to induce his old friend James Edgar to put in a good word to the aging Stuart Pretender: Sir,
I profit with the greatest pleasure of the occasion of the New Year to renew me in your memory and assure you a few men liveing wishes you more sincerely all measure of satisfaction and happiness. I wrote to me Lord Alford, to pray him on this occasion to lay me most dutifully at His Majestie's feet and beg the favour of you to d the same. I depend to much upon your friendship for me not to expect yt upon all occasions, you'll pay my Court. Assure His Majesty of my Duty and Zelle for his service, but with all the misfortunes I meet with, nothing gives me more concern than to see yt nothing appears favorably for yt end. The Almighty comfort us and preserve the King and Royal family. I am here alone a month and intend to stay till the New Year, but am afraid all to no purpose, for without protection one can expect no success here. It cant be helpt, we must take patience and expect better times. Once more my good wishes will alwaise attend you and beg you would be persuaded yt I am most sincerely, Sir, Your most humble and most obedient servant, Le Chevr. O'Sullivan."
We lose track of John O'Sullivan after this letter, written when the aging exile was age 60. There are indications that his wife died, that he returned to his old role of tutor, perhaps after taking holy orders. Like Donal O'Sullivan Beare, John O'Sullivan had spent, one might say wasted, much of his manhood trying to revitalize and then increasingly recreate the symbols of the old order. But whereas Donal was able the intervening century had drained the resources and hopes of Catholic, Mediterranean Europe which left O'Sullivan spending his sixth decade in pursuit of a doomed and unprofitable cause. We are in middle age no doubt powerfully attracted to relive recreation of the past, and perhaps that is our best and most creative function; but in contemplating John O'Sullivan's fifties we are forced to think of the style of this pursuit, where the high romance of Don Quixote decays to foolish and undignified pursuit of lost causes and unworthy clients. For my own part I like to think that O'Sullivan did in fact in the end recognize the futility of the Stuart cause, spending the last of his days tonsure, contemplative, thoughtful, sitting in this summer garden, grey stone wall, commenting on the writings of a ten year old child, perhaps his own. O'Sullivan's son, Thomas Hubert Sullivan, was evidently inspired enough by his father's example to join pirate John Paul Jones in a similar role to his father's relation with Charles. However, Jones and the younger Sullivan quarrelled in 1779, and Sullivan fought with the British General Clinton in America. Leaving America in 1883, he fought with the Dutch, died in 1824
Mr. O'Sullivan (1700?-1761?) who was Marechal Maillebois's (1682-1762) aid du camp in Corsica (1739).
"The Prince was never easy but when this agreeable Irishman