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>For the latter, a composite battalion of infantry ("Irish Picquets") comprising detachments from each of the regiments of the Irish Brigade, plus one squadron of cavalry, was sent to Scotland. This force saw action at the second Battle of Falkirk (where they cemented the victory by driving off the Hanoverians causing the clans to waver) and Culloden, alongside the regiment of Royal Scots (Royal Ecossais) which had been raised the year before in French service. As serving soldiers of the French King the Irish Picquets were permitted to formally surrender after Culloden with a promise of honourable treatment, and were not subjected to the reprisals suffered by the Highland clansmen. Many other exiled Jacobites in the French army were captured en route to Scotland in late 1745 and early 1746, including significantly, Charles Radcliffe, 5th Earl of Derwentwater, a captain in Dillon's regiment who was executed in London in 1746

>Freemasonry in Ireland is the second oldest system in the world and the first evidence for its formally institutionalized existence comes from the Dublin Weekly Journal of June 26th 1725

>The paper describes an event which took place two days previously on June 24th - a meeting to install the new Grand Master, the 1st Earl of Rosse. Unfortunately the exact date of the foundation of the Grand Lodge is not known, but the installation of a new Grand Master would suggest it was already in existence for some time

>There is considerable evidence that there were Masonic Lodges meeting in Ireland prior to the eighteenth century, for example the manuscript known as "the Trinity Tripos" dating to the 1680s, and the Baal's Bridge Square, discovered in Limerick in the mid nineteenth century, which dates to the early sixteenth century

>The following article sheds some light on the presence and involvement of Irish Masons in the Irish Brigades in France prior to the French Revolution