Taghmon, when captain M'Manus, of the Antrim, and lieutenant Hay, of the North-Cork militia, who had been prisoners with the rebels, arrived with proposals from the inhabitants of Wexford to surrender the town, and to return to their allegiance, provided that their lives and properties should be guaranteed by the commanding officer. To these proposals, which were forwarded to his superior commander, no answer was returned by general Moore; but, instead of proceeding to Taghmon, he immediately directed his march to Wexford, and stationed his army within a mile of that town.

The loyalists of Wexford, like those of Enniscorthy, had, since the place had fallen into the hands of the insurgents, been in a state of woe and incessant fear. Of a vast number of protestants assembled in this place, inhabitants of the town, and refugees and prisoners from several parts of the country, two hundred and sixty were confined in the goal, and other places of imprisonment; the rest were prisoners in their houses, under perpetual apprehensions of being shot, piked, or starved to death. Among the latter, was the Rev. John Elgee, rector of Wexford, whose life was saved by the gratitude of some of the lowest of the people, for the Christian charity which he had on all occasions manifested to unfortunate wretches committed to the public prison. The Rev. William East

wood, rector of Killan, who was fully entitled to the same gratitude on the same account, had the good fortune to escape to Wales without hazarding a trial of this virtue in the rebels. Great numbers were saved by the humane endeavours of the chiefs, whose influence, though very far from controuling the furious rabble in all cases, had so far an effect as to prevent the massacres of Wexford, (which were, however, horribly atrocious) from equalling in extent those of Enniscorthy. The chiefs themselves, particularly those few among them who had been educated in the protestant religion, were in perpetual danger of death, or violence at least, from the ungovernable multitude, whom they had unwisely hoped to command. A strong instance of this was, that captain Keugh, who had been appointed governor of Wexford by the rebels, was one day, as he was sitting in committee with a number of other chiefs, arrested by a common fellow, by the authority of the rabble, as a traitor in league with orange-men; and when the arrest was resisted by the members of the committee, the infuriate multitude without, who were crowded together in thousands in the streets, roared with horrid vehemence to those who stood most convenient for the purpose, to drive out the committee, and pull down the house. This alarming tumult was appeased by the address of Keugh, who, in a speech from a window,

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displayed on the occasion no despicable talent of eloquence.

As I am fully persuaded that most, I hope all, of the rebel officers, who had received the education of gentlemen, most certainly those who were protestants, would have prevented massacres, if it had been in their power, so I have reason to believe that some low-bred persons, chosen to this rank by the rebels, rather instigated than restrained the sanguinary dispo sition of the rabble. Of the latter description. appears to have been Thomas Dixon, who from a captain, and in part owner, of a trading vessel, became captain in the rebel army; a man who, like Robespierre, and other unfeeling monsters in the French revolution, would probably, in case of success on the side of the rebels, have endeavoured to raise himself to eminence by exciting the lowest of the rabble, under the mask of zeal for their cause, to the murder, not only of all those who had not acceded to their party, but also of the then existing chiefs of the insurrection. Orange furniture being found by the wife of this man in the drawing-room of Mr. Le Hunte, four miles from Wexford, particularly two firescreens, with emblematical figures, Dixon informed the mob that this room had been the meeting place of orange-men, and that the figures denoted the manner in which the Roman

catholics were to be put to death by these conspirators; that they were to be first deprived of their sight, and then burned alive, without the exception even of children; and particularly that the seamen of this communion were to be roasted to death on red-hot anchors. Le Hunte, who had hitherto been permitted to remain with little molestation in a private house in the town, was instantly dragged into the street by the rabble, who would soon have torn him in pieces, if he had not been saved by the exertions of two of the chiefs, Edward Hay,* and Robert Carty, who hurried him into the gaol, under pretence of bringing him to trial, and parried in the crowd the thrusts of the pikes, two of which, in spite of their endeavours, wounded him slightly in the back.

In so perturbed a state of affairs, among a mob so absurdly credulous, so imflammable and ferocious, a general massacre might justly be apprehended; and if partial massacres had frequently taken place we could not be surprised. On the 6th of June, the day after the battle of Ross, perhaps as an immolation to the departed souls of Romanists killed in that bloody encounter, ten men were selected for execution by a rebel guard sent for that purpose from Enniscorthy.

* I am convinced that Mr. Hay had no command among the rebels, and exerted himself only to save lives and property. See appendix, No. 8.

These victims were protestants from that unfortunate place; and thither they were conveyed back by the guard, and massacred. The difference in degree of resentment shewn by the rebels to the loyalists of Enniscorthy and Wexford may have arisen from the different receptions which they had found at these two towns; the yeomen and volunteers of the former having fought with a valour fatal to many of the assailants, while the latter had surrendered without a struggle, the post being abandoned by the army, whose retreat was notified by a deputation to the rebels. This distinction, however, could produce only a short respite. A general slaughter of the prisoners, to which the townsmen of Wexford were adverse, was twice in vain attempted by Dixon, at the head of bands of peasants. He was magnanimously opposed, first by one Hore, à butcher, and next by one Scallion a nautical trader, the former with a sword, the latter with a pistol, defying him to single combat, and insisting that he must shew himself a man before he should dare to put defenceless men to death.

Dixon, however, relinquished not his bloody design, and at length, on the 20th of June, commenced a great massacre, doubtless intended to be much greater, probably universal, of all the prisoners, perhaps, of all the loyalists in Wexford. The victims were conducted in successive parcels, of from ten to twenty with horrible solemnity