Talk:Nicholas Taaffe, 6th Viscount Taaffe

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1677–1769). Like so many of his family, he was brought up in Lorraine and passed into the Austrian army; he fought in the Silesian wars, rose to be Field Marshal, and was made a count of the Empire. His Irish estates were, however, claimed under the Act of 1703 by a Protestant heir: a lawsuit followed, which was ended by a compromise embodied in a private act of parliament, by which the estates were sold and one-third of the value given to him. With the money he acquired the castle of Ellischau, in Bohemia; he had also inherited other property in the Austrian dominions. He was naturalized in Bohemia, and left on record that the reason for this step was that he did not wish his descendants to be exposed to the temptation of becoming Protestants so as to avoid the operation of the Penal Laws. A Committee of Privileges of the House of Lords in 1860 recognized the right of the family to hold the Irish title.

Above cut and pasted from Earl of Carlingford Page Aatomic1 06:47, 20 April 2007 (UTC)