As everything connected with General Wolfe is entitled to notice, the following names and public positions of his direct or collateral ancestors may not be uninteresting to your readers. I lately furnished you, from Ferrar's _History of Limerick_, a statement of the circumstances under which his great-grandfather, Captain George Woulfe, sought refuge in Yorkshire (I believe) from the proscription of Ireton, after the capitulation, in 1651, of Limerick, when his brother Francis, the superior of the Franciscan friars, not having been equally fortunate in escaping, was executed, with several others, excepted from the general pardon.
The family, of English origin, like the Roches, the Arthurs, Stackpoles, Sextons, Creaghes, Whites, &c., settled in Limerick between the thirteenth and fifteenth centuries, and gradually obtained high civil positions, when their successful commercial pursuits enabled them to acquire landed property in the adjoining county of Clare, where nearly all the above-named English families equally became extensive proprietors. In
1470. Garret Woulfe was one of the city bailiffs, as those subsequently called sheriffs were then named.
1476. Thomas Woulfe filled the same office, as did in
1585. } Patrick Woulfe was bailiff these two years,
1591. Richard Woulfe } were successively bailiffs,
From this date till 1613 scarcely a year passed without the dismissal of the chosen Catholic magistrates, and substitution by royal mandate of Protestants. In 1613 George Woulfe, grandfather[7] of the proscribed Captain of the same name as above, then sheriff (the title assumed since 1609), with his colleagues, John Arthur, and the mayor, David Creagh, was deposed for refusing the oaths of supremacy, &c.
[Footnote 7: So I was assured, many years ago, by the late Lord Chief Baron Wolfe, from whom I also learned that all these magistrates certainly sprung from the same stem, though how they should be respectively placed as to constitute a form of genealogy, I cannot now exactly indicate.]
In 1647 Patrick Woulfe was sheriff; but from 1654, when the city surrendered to Ireton, until June 1656, Limerick was ruled by twelve English aldermen. In 1656 Colonel Henry Ingolsby became mayor, and the regular order of magistracy was subsequently pursued.