1659: William Lamport, the real Zorro?

ExecutedToday.com ^ | November 19, 2016 | Headsman

[CheshireTheCat]

On this date in 1659, an Irish adventurer named Don Guillen Lombardo went to the stake in Mexico City as a heretic — en route to a destiny as a romantic swordsman.

William Lamport was born in Wexford, by blood the descendant of English aristocracy and by conviction kin to Ireland’s Gaelic resistance to English incursion. His grandfather Patrick fought for Irish rebels at the Battle of Kinsale.

This was years before Lamport’s own birth but the youth must have been a chip off the old block: by the 1620s, as a student, William got himself run out of London for his aggressive Catholic proselytizing. Or at least, this is what William would say of himself: for his early years, we have mostly just his own word to go by.

[LS]

Thanks. These are useful for my web site’s little “Did You Know” about history that I put out weekly.

[CheshireTheCat]

You are welcome.

It’s weird how sometimes only 1 or 2 people reply on these threads and then other times 20 or more do.