20/3/23. The Life of Richard Kane: Britain's First Lieutenant-Governor of Minorca. Richard Kane was born in the village of Duneane, in the Ulster county of Antrim, in 1662. He grew up in the turbulent years of the Restoration, which culminated in the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688. It was an age of many conflicting loyalties, and of these Kane chose the "English interest," the central pillar of which was the defense of the Protestant realm against the growing menace of the Catholic monarch Louis XIV. By the time William III landed in Carrickfergus in 1690 Kane had already joined a British regiment. It was incorporated into William's army and with it Kane marched south (thus becoming one of the first "Orangemen") to participate in the Battle of the Boyne. This and other battles in William's victorious campaign saw the end of Catholic political influence in Ireland at that time, and the imposition of the cruel Penal Laws. The next phase in the struggle against the hegemony of Louis XIV was the War of the Spanish Succession. Kane and his regiment fought with the Duke of Marlborough in all the land campaigns of this war. Later Kane participated in Viscount Bolingbroke's secret, ill-fated Canadian expedition in 1711, which returned to England without ever having set foot in Canada.