Lieutenant-General Richard Talbot, who was in Ireland in 1685, had recommended himself to his bigoted master, James II, by his arbitrary treatment of the Protestants in that country, and in the following year he was created Earl of Tyrconnel, and, being a furious Papist, was nominated by the King to the Lord Lieutenancy of Ireland.  In 1688 he was going to Ireland on a second expedition at the time that the advanced guard of William of Orange reached Honiton, and when the advanced guard of King James’s English army was at Salisbury.  It was at this critical period that Lord Wharton, who has been described as “a political weathercock, a bad spendthrift, and a poet of some pretensions,” joined the Prince of Orange in the Revolution, and published this famous song.  He seems to have been a dissolute man, and ended badly, although he was a visitor at the “Dolphin” at that time, with many distinguished personages.  In the third edition of the small pamphlet in which the song was first published Lord Wharton was described “as a Late Viceroy of Ireland who has so often boasted himself upon his talent for mischief, invention, and lying, and for making a certain ‘Lilliburlero’ song with which, if you will believe himself, he sung a deluded Prince out of three kingdoms.”  It was said that the music of the song was composed by Henry Purcell, the organist of Westminster Abbey, and contributed not a little to the success of the Revolution.  Be this as it may, Burnet, then Bishop of Salisbury, wrote: 

It made an impression on the King’s army that cannot be imagined....  The whole army, and at last the people, both in city and country, were singing it perpetually ... never had so slight a thing so great an effect.

Purcell’s music generally was much admired, and the music to “Lilli Burlero,” which was the name of the song, must have been “taking” and a good tune to march to, for the words themselves would scarcely have had such a momentous result.  It was a long time before it died out in the country districts, where we could remember the chorus being sung in our childhood’s days.  A copy of the words but not the music appeared in Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry: 

  Ho! broder Teague, dost hear de decree? 
   Lilli burlero, bullen a-la—­
  Dat we shall have a new deputie,
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la.

  Chorus: 

    Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a-la,
    Lero lero, lilli burlero, lero lero, bullen a-la.

  Ho! by Shaint Tyburn, it is de Talbote: 
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la—­
  And he will cut all de English troate: 
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la.

  Dough by my shoul de English do praat,
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la—­
  De law’s on dare side, breish knows what: 
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la.

  But if dispense do come from de Pope,
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la—­
  We’ll hang Magna Charta and dem in a rope: 
    Lilli burlero, bullen a-la.