occurrences produced a general meeting of the principal inhabitants on the 1st of June, wherein Mr. Harvey was called on to act as commander-in-chief, and various other appointments and regulations took place for the maintenance and supply of the country. The day after, Mr. Harvey took the command in person at Carrickbyrne, where, on his arrival, several fugitives appeared, giving dreadful accounts of their suffering from the yeomanry, and at the time several houses were on fire about Old Ross. The commander-in-chief instantly ordered Mr. Thomas Cloney, with all the horsemen that could be collected, to proceed against the depredators, who fled on their approach, and were chased in full speed to Ross. At this critical period, the Protestant church of Old Ross was burned, by no means with the knowledge or consent of Mr. Cloney or his party; and the result of every inquiry at the time was, that the church was set on fire in revenge and retaliation by individual sufferers, as many houses were burned, and several unresisting persons were shot immediately preceding this conflagration. I should wish to be able to give a more circumstantial account of this occurrence, as it was the only one of the kind that took place during the insurrection, but have not been able to procure further information; however, a witness on the trial of Mr. Cloney by court-martial at Wexford, in 1799, mentioned the circumstance, but in such a manner as only to attract the notice of an enthusiastic maniac. By having reference to the trial, it will also appear, that Mr. Cloney's humanity and exertions for those in any kind of distress, was as conspicuous as his courage in the field, after he had been forced from his house when the military had fled, and left the insurgents in uncontrollable possession of the country.

On the 2d of June, as one of the armed oysterboats already noticed, was cruising outside the harbor of Wexford, she fell in with a boat from Arklow, which, upon being hailed, came to and was taken. On board this vessel were three officers of the North Cork militia, Lord Kingsborough, the colonel, Captain O'Hea, and Lieutenant Bourke, who were accordingly made prisoners. This nobleman and these his officers were in Dublin when informed of the defeat of part of their regiment at Oulart, as before stated, and immediately purposed to join it; for which purpose, proceeding by land as far as Arklow, and finding the insurrection more formidable than they could be brought before to imagine, they there hired a boat to carry them to Wexford, not conceiving it possible that it had been abandoned and then was in the hands of the insurgents. They were taken, therefore, at their entrance into the harbor, and conducted without any person in town being previously informed of the fact, to the house of Captain Keugh, then the acknowledged military commander of the town. Here his lordship and the two officers made prisoners with him were entertained for some days before the people expressed any dissatisfaction or apprehension that they might be enabled to escape; but these manifestations of popular distrust being made known, they were conveyed to a house in the bull-ring, near the main guardhouse, where sentinels were posted inside and outside; and there they continued, under these measures of precaution, until the subsequent surrender of the town to his lordship himself as an officer in the king's service.

The people of the barony of Forth, having by this time sufficiently equipped themselves with pikes, joined the encampment now formed on the hill of Carrickbyrne, whither, it must be observed, the in

surgents of the camp near Taghmon had shifted on the first of June. A small party from Wexford also, denominated the Faith Corps, joined the encampment on Carrigrew.

The committee of general regulation appointed in Wexford, and already noticed, waited on Mr. Harvey, commander-in-chief of the insurgents, expressing their hopes that the service in the Protestant church, which had been hitherto interrupted, might be no longer discontinued; as they wished to do all in their power to dissipate religious animosities, by inculcating the absurdity of fear on this account alone, and to undeceive the numbers of sudden converts who were applying to the Catholic priests to be baptized, beseeching in the most earnest manner to be thus received into the bosom of the Catholic Church, from an idea that it was then the only plan of safety. Nay, so persevering were the generality in their piteous entreaties, that the Catholic clergy found themselves very distressingly circumstanced; for should they refuse to comply with the wishes and earnest solicitations of such Protestants as offered themselves in this way, they perceived that they would be subject to the most violent animadversions for any fatal accident that might befall any of them; and on the other hand, knowing that imagined necessity alone was the motive of apparent conversion, they must have considered it improper to accept their conformity without serious and solemn probation. On this occasion, however, the humanity of many superseded the dictates of duty, so far as to induce them to risk the profanation of a sacrament for the preservation of lives, and to dispel the dreadful apprehensions from Orangemen; the greatest assurance of not belonging to that combination being that of conversion to the Catholic communion, which was considered to render

any person inadmissible into an association which the majority of the people absolutely believed to be instituted for their destruction. Their alarms, however, worked so strongly on the minds of the affected converts, that all arguments exerted to dispel their fears generally proved ineffectual, as they would still persist in most earnest solicitation for admission. Some clergymen, however, in this dilemma, positively refused baptizing Protestant converts, but then they took a far better and consistent mode of quieting alarms. They gave the strongest assurances to such as applied to them, that the Catholic Church does not deem it necessary to rebaptize any denomination of Christians otherwise than conditionally, as the existence of any previous baptism whatever, and attendance on duties and divine service, was sufficient conformity.

A curious circumstance, however, occurred in Wexford at this time, which eventually produced a great number of conditional baptisms. A young lady who on first application failed of persuading a Catholic priest to confer on her the favor of baptism, had the diligence and address afterwards to discover that the Protestant minister who had undertaken to perform that ceremony in her infancy, had only filliped or sprinkled the water at her with his finger, and so it was within the limits of probability that a drop might not have reached her head so as to form an ablution. Being very ingenious and persevering in her arguments, so as to appear capable of puzzling the nicest casuist, she at last made out her own a doubtful case, and was accordingly quieted by conditional baptism. When the particulars of this transaction got abroad, the solicitations to the Catholic clergy for the boon of conditional baptism became considerably more frequent, the applicants quoting

this recent precedent, and adducing the hearsay evidence and far-fetched recollection of grandmothers, grand-aunts, and other grave and venerated relatives, with a long train of minute circumstances, to prove a similarity of cases, and claiming on this account an equal consideration. Notwithstanding the earnest exertions of the committee, and many of the principal Catholics, to dispel the fears of their Protestant brethren, whom they offered to protect even at the risk of their own lives, all endeavors to have service performed in the Protestant church proved ineffectual. It must be remarked, however, that the place itself suffered not the smallest indignity during the whole period of the insurrection, except in the instance of the abandonment of their usual place of worship by the Protestants, of whom great numbers flocked in the most public and conspicuous manner to the Catholic chapel, where they affected the greatest piety and devotion. The epithet of "craw-thumpers," opprobriously applied to Catholics for contritely striking their breasts at their devotions, was never more strongly exemplified than by these converts. Catholics strike their breasts gently on certain occasions, and with the right hand alone, but Protestants who attended at mass in these times generally continued to strike themselves vehemently with both hands almost during the whole service. I had the good fortune to prevent all such as consulted me on the occasion as to the expediency of conforming, by persuading them to avoid the disgrace of such a mockery; and I had the satisfaction afterwards to hear those applauded who did not appear to change their religion, while those who turned with the times were reprobated-some as hypocrites, and others as cowards. And, in good truth, what favorable opinion could be entertained of such as did not continue