GINKELL, GODART DE, FIRST EARL OF ATHLONE, was a native of Holland, and the head of a family of great antiquity among the nobility of that country, where he bore tho titles of Baron do Iteede, de Oinks% &a., and was a general of cavalry. Ile came to England with the Prince of Orange, at the Limo of the revolution of 1688. When two Scotch regiments, in the beginning of March 16S9, declared for King Janie., and marched from Abingdon, where they were quartered, for Scotland, Oatmeal Ginkell was sent after them with a body of horse, and soon overtook and reduced them. In 1690 he accompanied King William to Ireland, and commanded a party of Dutch borne at the battle of the Moyne (July 1st). When the king returned to England, the conduct of the war was left in the hands of Woke11 ; and he succeeded in effecting the reduction of the country before the end of the following year. The town Baltimore surren dered to him on the 7th of June 1691 ; Athlone was taken by storm on the lit of July; on the 12th of the same month he gained the battle of Aughrim ; and on the 3rd of October an end was put to the war by the surrender of Limerick. On the 3rd of November Ginkell returned to Dublin, and was banqueted by the corporation ; he then came over to England, where, on the 4th of January 1692, the Commons ordered mean of their members to attend him with the thank. of the House, and on the 20th of February ho was made n peer of Ireland, with the titles of Earl of Athlone and Baron of Aughrim. The next week he was entertained at Merchant Taylors' Hall by the lord mayor and corporation of London. The following year the king, after the house of Commons had sent up au address requesting that a recompense might bo given to him suitable to his cervices, made him a grant of the forfeited estates of the Earl of Limerick, amounting to 28,480 acres, which was confirmed by an act of tho Irish parliament pawed on the 7th of December 1695 ; but in 1699 an Eoglish act was passed appointing a commission to inquire into the considerations upon which thin and other similar granta had been made in Ireland ; iu the next session by another act all the lands eo granted were vested in trustees authorised to hear and determine upon all claims relatiug to them ; and one of the acts of this board appears to have been the resumption or invalidation of the grant made to the Earl of Athlone. It is said that thereupon the family
retired to Holland; the Earl of Athlone however continued his mili tary services to the end of the reign of King William. He shared in William's defeat at Landen on the 29th of July 1693; and he com manded the Dutch horse in Flanders in 1695 and 1696. He also com manded the Dutch forces serving under Marlborough in the war with Franeo which broke out in ]702, after the accession of Queen Anne. But this post be did not hold long, his death having taken place on the 10th of February 1703. The Peerage. state that the first earl of Athlone married Urenla-Philipota do Itaasfeldt, and bad by her two eons, of whom the eldest succeeded to the title. It afterwards how ever fell to the son of the second, who succeeded ns the fifth earl in 1747 ; and his descendants inherited the title till the death of the ninth earl, without issue, in 1844, when it became extinct. It is remarkable that, with the exeeptiou of the first earl, if he ever took his seat, no earl of Athlone sat in the Irish parliament for more than a ceutury after the creation of the peerage. The family continued to reside in Holland; but Frederick Christian Renaud, the sixth earl, came over here on the French invasion of that country in 1795, and took his seat in the Irish House of Lords on the 10th of March in that year.