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their supplementary associates, without the direct authority of their superiors, or command of the magistrates, is a question which I am not able. positively to answer.* In the neighbourhood of Gorey, if I am not mistaken, the terror of the whippings was in particular, so great, that the people would have been extremely glad to renounce for ever all notions of opposition to government, if they could have been assured of

* Perhaps the true state of the case is this :-- The people were so determined on insurrection, that it could not otherwise have been prevented than by a proper disposition of a large military force. The sending of such a force was prevented by the representations of Earl Mountnorris, and therefore the insurrection took place. In my opinion, the force which was sent, ill commanded, and, with some exceptions, ill officered, promoted the work of rebellion by previous irritation and posterior timidity.

Some magistrates of the county of Wexford affirm that not more than one man was flogged in all the county before the insurrection. I wish these gentlemen would publish their affirmation or negation in print. They must admit that several were flogged in the town of Gorey alone. Of these I know three: Anthony Bolger, Michael Davis, and one Howlet; and they must admit that at least one flagellation, if not more, was ex acted in the town of little Limerick, near Gorey. I have not at present sufficient ground to suspect that any of these were flogged without proper cause; but half-hangings enough were committed by others without any consultation of magistrates. The floggings, however, in the county of Wexford, were almost nothing comparatively with other counties; and the terror of people of this county arose chiefly from floggings inflicted elsewhere; and the incipiency of floggings among themselves, pouse-burnings, &c.

permission to remain in a state of quietness. As an instance of this terror, I shall relate the following fact. On the morning of the 23d of May, a labouring man, named Dennis M'Daniel, came to my house, with looks of the utmost consternation and dismay, and confessed to me that he had taken the United Irishman's oath, and had paid for a pike with which he had not yet been furnished, nineteen-pence-halfpenny, to one Kilty, a smith, who had administered the oath to him and many others. While I sent my eldest son, who was a lieutenant of yeomanry, to arrest Kilty, I exhorted M'Daniel to surrender himself to a magistrate and make his confession; but this he positively refused, saying that he should in that case be lashed to make him produce a pike which he had not, and to confess what he knew not. I then advised him, as the only alternative, to remain quietly at home, promising that if he should be arrested on the information of others, I would represent his case to the magistrates, He took my advice, but the fear of arrest and lashing, had so taken possession of his thoughts, that he could neither eat nor sleep, and on the morning of the 25th, he fell on his face and expired in a little grove near my house,

Whatever might have been the state of affairs with different management, the standard of rebellion, after an apparently passive submission,

was at last hoisted between Gorey and Wexford, on the night of the 26th of May, by John Murphy, Romish priest of Boulavogue, commonly known by the denomination of Father John, as in the south of Ireland the title of father is commonly prefixed to the name of each priest. This man, who was coadjutor, or assistant curate, of the parish priest, was a man of shallow intellect, a fanatic in religion, and, from the latter circumstance, too well qualified to inflame the superstitious minds of the ignorant multitude. In an attempt to disperse a body of the insurgents, at the head of a part of his troop, Thomas Bookey, a brave young man, first lieutenant of the Camolin cavalry, was killed, as he incautiously advanced before his men to harangue the rebels; and his house, about seven miles from Gorey, was burned. From this commencement of hostility, the commotion spread rapidly on all sides; and the collection of rebel parties was greatly promoted by the reports disseminated of numbers of people shot in the roads, at work in the fields, and even in their houses, unarmed and unoffending, by straggling parties of yeomen. Influenced by these reports, which certainly were not without too much foundation, great numbers took refuge with their friends in arms, insomuch that, on the following morning of Whit-Sunday, the 27th of May, two large bodies were collected, one on the hill of Qulart, nearly

midway between Gorey and Wexford, about eleven miles to the south of the former; the other on Kilthomas hill, an inferior ridge of SlyeeveBwee mountain, about nine miles westward of Gorey. Each, especially that of Oulart, where the number of combatants was less than at Kilthomas, was a confused multitude of both sexes and all ages.

Against the latter body of insurgents, consisting of two or three thousand men in arms, marched a body of yeomen, on the same morning, between two and three hundred in number, infantry and cavalry, from the neighbouring town of Carnew, in the county of Wicklow. The infantry of this little army, or corps of Shillela yeomen, flanked at a considerable distance on the left by the cavalry, advanced intrepidly up the hill against the rebels, who were posted on the summit. The latter, if they had been sensible of their advantage, and known how to improve it, might, as has appeared by subsequent events, have surrounded and destroyed this little body of brave men; but they were struck with a panic, and fled, after a few discharges of musketry from the yeomen, at too great a distance to make any considerable execution. About a hundred and fifty of the rebels were killed in the pursuit, and the yeomen, exasperated by the death of lieutenant Bookey, and other violent acts, burned two Romish chapels, and about a

hundred cabins and farm-houses of Romanists, in the course of seven miles march.

The event of battle was very different, on the same day, on the hill of Oulart, where Father John commanded. A detachment of a hundred and ten chosen men of the North-Cork militia, under the command of lieutenant colonel Foote, marched from Wexford, and attacked the rebels on the southern side of the hill. Such contempt of an enemy, as creates incaution, has often proved fatal. The rebels fled at the first onset, and were pursued at full speed by the militia, who were so little apprehensive of resistance, that no rank or order was observed. While the

rebels were making their escape with precipitation toward the northern side of the hill, they were admonished that a large body of cavalry had been seen that morning advancing against them in the opposite direction, apparently with design to intercept their flight, or co-operate with the militia in a double attack. As the Wexfordian insurgents as yet were totally unacquainted with warfare, the onset of cavalry was in the imaginations of many among them morc terrible than that of infantry. They therefore ignorantly supposing the cavalry to be still in their neighbourhood, while Father John exclaimed that they must either conquer or perish, turned against the militia, who were now arrived near the summit, almost breathless; and charg

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