on the 12th of July, and hanged two days after. A reprieve for Henry came too late-five minutes after the execution. 900. The stoppage of the mail coaches from Dublin on the night of the 23rd of May, was to be the signal for the simultaneous rising. They were stopped about two o'clock on the morning of the 24th, and the people rose. But Dublin did not rise, for it had been placed under martial law, and almost the whole of the leaders had been arrested. The rising was only partial: confined to the counties of Kildare, Wicklow, and Wexford; and there were some slight attempts in Carlow, Meath, and Dublin. It was premature: the people were almost without arms, without discipline, plan, or leaders.

901. On the 26th of May a body of 4,000 insurgents were defeated on the hill of Tara. On the same day or rather on Whitsunday the 27th, the rising broke out in Wexford. Here the rebellion assumed a religious character which it had not elsewhere: the rebels were nearly all Roman Catholics, though many of their leaders were Protestants.

902. This Wexford rising was not the result of any concert with the Dublin directory; for the society of United Irishmen had not made much headway among the quiet industrious peasants of that county. The Wexford people were driven to rebellion simply by the terrible barbarities of the military, the yeomen, and more especially the North Cork militia; and they rose in desperation without any plan or any idea of what they were to do. In their vengeful fury they committed many terrible excesses on the Protestant loyalist inhabitants, in blind retaliation for the worse excesses of the militia.

903. Father John Murphy, parish priest of Kilcormick, finding his little chapel of Boleyvogue (five miles southeast of Ferns) burned by the yeomen, took the lead of the rebels, with another priest, father Michael Murphy, whose chapel had also been burned; and on the 27th of May they defeated and annihilated a party of the North Cork militia on the Hill of Oulart, six miles east of Enniscorthy. 904. The rebels, having captured 800 stand of arms,

marched next on Enniscorthy; and by the stratagem of driving a herd of bullocks before them to break the ranks of the military, they took the town after a contest of four hours. The garrison and the Protestant inhabitants fled to Wexford. About the same time Gorey was abandoned by its garrison, who fled to Arklow.

905. About the 29th of May the rebels fixed their chief encampment on Vinegar Hill, an eminence rising over Enniscorthy, at the opposite side of the Slaney. On the 30th of May a detachment of military was attacked and destroyed at the Three Rocks, four miles from the town of Wexford. The rebels advanced towards Wexford: but the garrison did not wait to be attacked: they marched away leaving the town to the rebels. The retreating soldiers burned and pillaged and shot the peasantry on their way. The exultant rebels having taken possession, drank and feasted and plundered, and committed many outrages on those they considered enemies. A Protestant gentleman named Bagenal Harvey who had been seized by government on suspicion and imprisoned in Wexford jail, was released by the rebels and made their general.

906. Besides the principal encampment on Vinegar Hill, the rebels had now two others; one on Carrickbyrne Hill, eight miles from New Ross on the road to Wexford: the other on Carrigroe Hill, four miles east of Ferns. General Loftus with 1,500 men marched from Gorey in two divisions to attack Carrigroe. One of these divisions under colonel Walpole was surprised at Toberanierin or Tubberneering near Gorey and defeated with great loss; Walpole himself being killed and three cannons left with the insurgents. This placed Gorey in their hands.

907. From Vinegar Hill the rebels marched on Newtownbarry on the 2nd of June and took the town: but dispersing themselves to drink and plunder, they were attacked in turn by the soldiers whom they had driven out, and routed with a loss of 400.

908. The same thing happened at New Ross, on the 5th of June. The rebels marched from Carrickbyrne, and

attacking the town with great bravery in the early morning, drove the military under general Johnson from the streets out over the bridge. But there was no discipline: they fell to drink: the soldiers returned and were twice repulsed. But still the drinking went on; and late in the evening the military returned and expelled the rebels in turn. The fighting had continued with little intermission for ten hours, the troops lost 300, among whom was lord Mountjoy colonel of the Dublin Militia (Luke Gardiner; see 793): the rebels lost more than 1,000.

909. Father Philip Roche, the moving spirit in this attack on New Ross, being dissatisfied with Bagenal Harvey, who had indeed no military skill, placed a man named Edward Roche in command, removing Harvey to another less active position.

910. In the evening of that day some fugitive rebels from New Ross broke into Scullabogue House at the foot of Carrickbyrne Hill (906), where a crowd of loyalist prisoners were confined, and pretending they had orders from Harvey, which they had not, brought forth 37 of the prisoners and murdered them. Then setting fire to a barn in which all the others were locked up-more than a hundred-they burned them all to death. This barbarous massacre was the work of an irresponsible rabble.

911. The rebels now prepared to march on Dublin. Major-general Needham with 1,600 men garrisoned Arklow on the coast, through which the rebel army would have to pass. On the 9th of June they attacked the town, and there was a desperate fight, in which the cavalry were at first driven back But the death of father Michael Murphy who was killed by a cannon ball, so disheartened the rebels that they gave way and abandoned the march to Dublin.

912. The encampment on Vinegar Hill was now the chief rebel station, and the commander in chief, general Lake, organized an attack on it with 20,000 men, who were to approach simultaneously in several divisions from several different points.

All the divisions arrived in proper time on the morning

of the 21st of June, except that of general Needham, which for some reason did not come up till the fighting was all over. A heavy fire of grape and musketry did great execution on the rebels, who though almost without ammunition, maintained the fight for an hour and a half, when they had to give way. The space intended for general Needham's division lay open to the south, and through this opening "Needham's Gap" as they called it-they escaped with comparatively trifling loss, and made their way to Wexford.

913. This was the last considerable action of the Wexford rebellion: the rebels lost heart, and there was very little more fighting. Many of the leaders were now arrested, tried by court-martial, and hanged, among them Bagenal Harvey, Mr. Grogan of Johnstown, and father John Murphy. Wexford was evacuated and was occupied by general Lake. The rebellion here was to all intents and purposes at an end. The whole county was now at the mercy of the yeomanry and the militia, who, without any attempt being made to stop them by their leaders, perpetrated dreadful atrocities on the peasantry. Straggling bands of rebels traversed the country free of all restraint, and committed many outrages in retaliation for those of the yeomanry.

Within about two years, while the civil war was at its height, sixty-five Catholic chapels and one Protestant church were burned or destroyed in Leinster, besides a countless number of dwelling houses.

914. During the Irish occupation of Wexford, a fellow named Dixon on the rebel side, the captain of a small coasting vessel, who had never taken any part in the real fighting, collecting a rabble and plying them with whiskey, broke open the jail where numbers of the Protestant gentry and others were confined, and in spite of the expostulations of the more respectable leaders, brought a number of them to the bridge and after a mock trial began to kill them one by one.

Thirty-six had been murdered, and another batch were

brought out, when a young priest, father Corrin, rushed in at the risk of his life and commanded the executioners to their knees. Down they knelt instinctively, when in a loud voice he dictated a prayer which they repeated after him that God might show to them the same mercy that they were about to show the prisoners; which so awed and terrified them that they immediately stopped the executions. Forty years afterwards, Captain Kellett of Clonard, one of the Protestant gentlemen he had saved, followed, with sorrow and reverence, the remains of that good priest to the grave.

915. By some misunderstanding the rebellion in the north was delayed. The Antrim insurgents under Henry Joy M'Cracken attacked and took the town of Antrim on the 7th of June; but the military returning with reinforcements, recovered the town after a stubborn fight. M'Cracken was taken and hanged on the 17th of the same month.

916. In Down the rebels, under Henry Munro, captured Saintfield, and encamped in Lord Moira's demesne near Ballinahinch. On the 14th of June they were attacked by generals Nugent and Barber, and defeated after a very obstinate fight-commonly known as the battle of Ballinahinch. Munro escaped, but was soon after captured, convicted in courtmartial, and hanged at his own door.

917. Lord Cornwallis, a humane and distinguished man, was appointed lord lieutenant on the 21st of June, with supreme military command. He endeavoured to restore quiet; and his first step was to stop the dreadful cruelties now committed by the soldiers and militia all over the country. On the 29th of July he entered into an arrangement with some of the leaders now imprisoned in Dublin, over seventy in number, to tell all they knew of the internal arrangements of the United Irishmen, without implicating individuals, after which they were to be permitted to leave Ireland.

Accordingly Arthur O'Connor, Thomas Addis Emmet, Dr. MacNevin, Samuel Neilson, and several others, were