of several magistrates, about two hours before the evacuation of Wexford by the king's troops. He was at the time when he wrote it, ill of the gout. "I have been treated in prison with all possible humanity, and am now at liberty. I have procured the liberty of all the prisoners. If you pretend to Christian charity, do not commit massacre, or burn the property of the inhabitants; and spare your prisoners' lives. Wednesday, May 30, 1798. B. B. HARVEY." The places of confinement of loyalist prisoners in Wexford, while the town was in possession of the rebels, are thus stated, with the number of prisoners in each. In the jail In the market-house In the barrack In the prison ship In all 148 48 36 22 3 3 260 NUMBER V. SIR RICHARD REMARKS ON MEMOIRS OF MUSGRAVE'S REBELLIONS IN IRELAND. SIR RICHARD, residing in the capital, collecting a perplexing mass of materials of the same kind, and having no personal knowledge of the transactions in the country, has been led into a multitude of errors of little moment. Those few, indeed, which I think proper at present to notice, are hardly of any consequence. In page 344 of the quarto edition, he says, that Gorey was attacked on the 30th of May by a numerous body of rebels. This is totally destitute of foundation, except that a great number of women were assembling at the distance of three or four miles, with intention of marching to plunder the town, which had been in a most extraordinary manner deserted by the army. This female brigade, however, dispersed without approaching the town, on a false report of the advance of a body of Welch cavalry. He says in page 442, that our troops got possession of Gorey on the 12th of June. They certainly did not till the 19th, the day previous to that of general Needham's memorable march to Vinegar-hill. In his appendix, page 83, he says that Father * He has corrected this in his third edition. Murphy's journal was found by captain Hugh Moore. It was found by an officer of the fensible regiment of Durham infantry, lieutenant-colonel Bainbridge, from whom captain Moore procured it, as he also procured a plan of the battle of Arklow. In page 431, he calls Father Philip Roche an inhuman savage. So far as his having a rough and boisterous exterior, and his being often in a tate of intoxication, the term may in some degree be applicable; but for a charge of cruelty against him, I can find no foundation. On the contrary, I have heard, from indubitable authority, many instances of his active humanity. I knew Father Roche for some years before the rebellion, and he was certainly not a favourite with me, as I disliked his rough familiar manner, and his too frequent indulgence of ebriety; but his behaviour in the rebellion has convinced me, that he possessed a humane and generous heart, with an uncommon share of personal courage. My information comes from numbers of protestants, who were protected in his camp. I have already elsewhere noticed Sir Richard's estimate of the population of Ireland. He supposes the number of men capable of bearing arms in the county of Wexford to be sixty-nine thousand; from which we must infer the number of persons of all ages and both sexes in this county to be three hundred and forty-five thousand; since males of the military age constitute in European countries a fifth part only of the whole population. He supposes the county of Wexford to contain a thirty-fourth part of the number of people in the whole island: hence we are to infer the number of people in the whole island to be eleven millions and seven hundred and thirty thousand! I know of no rational estimate of the population of Ireland, except that of Chalmers. In page 370 he plainly insinuates, that all those among the rebels who were above the rank of the vulgar, some of whom he particularizes by name, were guilty of, or consenting to, the massacre of protestants. John Hay, however, who, to the infamy of his memory, murdered a man called Grey Thomas, on Vinegar-hill, was the only Romish gentleman whom I consider, from what I have heard, as guilty of murder, from motives of religious hatred; yet I am informed, that even this murder arose from a private pique in Hay. Some, whose names I have already mentioned, were certainly men of active humanity; and some were never near any scene of massacre at the time of its perpetration. Of this piece of fortune several have since good cause to be glad, since their successful interference to prevent murder might have been brought against them as a proof of their having a command among the rebels, and might have brought them to the gallows. I know of no religious murders committed at the camps of Three-rocks, Carrickburn, Slyeevekeelter, or Lacken, where men of education and property presided. I know many protestants, whose names I could mention, who were in the hands of the rebels in these camps, none of whom ever heard of any murders of protestants committed in them. The places of butchery were Vinegarhill and Wexford; besides that many murders were committed here and there in the country. Concerning one person mentioned, in the above-quoted page, Jeremiah Fitzhenry, from whom I took a lease of the place where I now reside, I have made a very particular inquiry. Whether he had any command among the rebels, may be a matter of doubt; my opinion is, that he had none; but I have not a shadow of reason to suspect that he was near any place of murder at the time of its commission, or that he ever approved of the perpetration of such acts.† Mr. * Scullabogue lies at the foot of Carrickburn mountain; but at the time of the massacre no encampment existed there. + To prevent misconception, I here copy Sir Richard's own words. "Unwilling to disgust the reader, I will give him a circum"stantial account of but a few of the various cruelties practised "on the victims who were immolated on Vinegar-hill by these "ferocious fanatics; had they been perpetrated by the dregs of "the people, some allowance might have been made for the "force of religious bigotry on the minds of the vulgar herd; Dd. |