Charles Wogan
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Charles Wogan (1698?–1752?) was a Jacobite soldier of fortune, also known as the Chevalier Wogan.
Early life
Wogan was the second son of William Wogan and his wife, Anne Gaydon. His great-grandfather, William Wogan of Rathcoffey (1544–1616), was twelfth in descent from Sir John Wogan, Chief Justice of Ireland.
Career as soldier
In 1715 Charles and his younger brother Nicholas took service under Colonel Henry Oxburgh, whose force surrendered to General Charles Wills at Preston on 14 November.
In the following April the grand jury of
He succeeded in getting to France, where he took service in
Wogan then took service as a colonel in the Spanish army, and in 1723 distinguished himself at the relief of Santa Cruz, besieged by the Moors under the Bey Bigotellos. He was promoted to the rank of brigadier-general and made governor of La Mancha. Thence he sent to Jonathan Swift in 1732 a cask of Spanish wine and a parcel of his writings. Swift wrote him in return a characteristic letter deploring that he did not see his way to get Wogan's effusions published: ‘Dublin booksellers,’ he says, ‘have not the least notion of paying for copy.’ On 27 February 1733 Wogan despatched to Swift, in his capacity as the ‘mentor and champion of the Irish nation,’ a long budget of grievances (printed in Scott's Swift, xvii. 447–97). He followed this up with another cask of Spanish wine, the merits of which Swift acknowledged in another entertaining letter (ib. xviii. 341).
Later life
In 1746 the Chevalier Wogan was with the Duke of York at Dunkirk in the hope of being able to join Prince Charles Edward in England (see Stuart MSS. at Windsor, Wogan to Edgar, 1752). He seems to have returned to La Mancha, and to have died there soon after 1752.