Google Book’s ever-growing collection of books is amazing. Here’s a biography of Caption John Keating of King James’s Irish Army, from 1689.
From: D’Alton, John, Illustrations, Historical and Genealogical, of King James’s Irish Army List, (1689), published 1855 by the author in Dublin, pp. 829-830.
Available via Google.com at: http://books.google.com/books?vid=OCLC13541522&id=_qANAAAAIAAJ&pg=RA3-PA829.
CAPTAIN ‘JOHN KEATING.’
‘Ketyng’ is a name recorded in the Irish records from the time of Edward the Second. In 1302, James ‘de Ketyng’ was one of the Irish magnates invited to aid King Edward in the Scottish war. None of the name appear on the Attainders of 1642; and the Act of Settlement of 1662 provided (s. 214) that Maurice, son and heir of Edmund or Edward Keating of Narraghmore, County of Kildare, should hold all and every the manors, towns, and lands purchased in the King’s County, in trust for his said father from John Carroll, before the 23rd of October, 1641, “if the Lord Lieutenant and Council on hearing merits, shall adjudge the same.” This Maurice died in 1683, and was buried in Narraghmore. “He had married,” says a funeral entry in Bermingham Tower, “Judith, daughter of — Cocks, by whom he had issue four sons, Maurice, Edward, John, and Charles: and two daughters; Eleanor, married to Edward Bolton of Brazeel, and Catherine. Said Maurice was brother to John Keating, Lord Chief Justice of Ireland;” and this Captain John appears to have been Maurice’s aforesaid third son. Besides Captain Keating, Edmund Keating was a Lieutenant in Tyrconnel’s Horse, and Richard a Quarter-master in Colonel Purcell’s. In King James’s new Charter to Swords, the Chief Justice was one of the Burgesses; as was Walter in that to Wexford, and Henry in that to Waterford. The Attainders of 1691 include eleven of this name.
The aforesaid Chief Justice was the most distinguished member of the family of Narraghmore, and had been a servitor of King James when Duke of York. In 1679, he was appointed Chief Justice of the Common Pleas in Ireland, and so continued until the close of the year 1691, when William and Mary substituted Pyne for him. He married the widow of Sir Richard Shucksburgh of Downton House, Wiltshire, who died in 1677, before his advancement to the bench. In the Parliament of 1689, this judge made a bold appeal to King James in behalf of the purchasers under theAct of Settlement, and opposed the party that would fain effect its total repeal; while he prudently suggested that a committee of both houses of the then sitting Parliament might be appointed, to devise some medium course of legislation, to accommodate, as nearly as possible, the claims of both the purchasers and the old proprietors.* He was, in the opinion of the Earl of Clarendon, “an able and loyal judge, and gave frequent evidence of his temperance and discretion, as in advising the withdrawal of a prosecution, designed to be instituted for words spoken of James the Second when Duke of York, &c. ;” see also of him Duhig’s History of the King’s Inns. p. 358.
* Clarke’s Life of James II., v. 2, p. 358.