BELFAST (Reuters) – Few Nobel laureates can have endured as much vitriol during their careers as David Trimble, the one-time hardliner who led Northern Ireland’s Protestant majority into a historic peace pact with their Catholic rivals and who died on Monday aged 77. Many Protestants regarded him as a traitor selling out their British identity to Irish republicans, while few Catholics warmed to a man a good number suspected never really wanted to treat them as equals. But despite the brickbats, Trimble persuaded his fractious people to sign up to the 1998 Good Friday agreement and as first min…